I was recently asked an unusual question: What was my biggest non-technical hack? How had I found a workaround or trick that let me do something that ordinarily wouldn't be possible or allowed.
That made me think. The best example I can think of involves the study of Chinese. I was able to study the language in a way that reaped major benefits for my career and overseas lifestyle in just six months.
Backstory: I arrived in Taiwan in early 1993 to study Mandarin and continue an overseas adventure that had started in London two years prior. While Chinese grammar and syntax is quite simple, Western students are often tripped up by two extremely difficult elements: Tones in the spoken language and characters in the written language. Most curricula emphasize the latter through rote memorization (necessary for reading) and stroke order (necessary for writing). Writing/memorization exercises take up 75% of a student’s time.
Speaking was given short shrift in many programs at the time -- it’s difficult to effectively teach tones and vocabulary is always taught in conjunction with reading/writing. This really slows progress, as a single term takes extra long to learn, thanks to the emphasis on learning the characters as well as the spoken form.
The result is many people who have formally studied Chinese for a year or more are unable to effectively talk in Mandarin, but will be able to understand characters and even write calligraphy. I had actually taken this approach in the United States in high school and college for two years total, but only knew the words for numbers and a few simple phrases when I arrived in Taipei.
My "hack" was to skip writing and concentrate on the spoken language, with a minimal amount of attention devoted to learning characters. In other words, instead of spending 25% of my time on verbal exercises and practice, I spent 90% of my time on learning how to speak Mandarin.
My first experiment involved self-immersion, living with a family on the outskirts of Taipei, where I thought I could have a chance to practice talking. It didn’t work -- the children in the family wanted mainly to speak English, and the parents spoke a different dialect that is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin. The experiment failed. I learned almost nothing.
I then decided to take formal classes. Most Western students studied at local universities, but I found a private language school that didn’t force character study at the early levels, and had teachers that really emphasized spoken Mandarin (to the point that no English was spoken in class).
Ten hours of study in school and hours of additional practice every day on the streets of Taipei really worked. I was intensely focused on getting the tones and pronunciation right. Within two months I had the local accent and tones down cold, to the point where some people hearing me answer the phone initially supposed I was local. Within six months I had learned enough vocabulary and grammar to become a highly proficient speaker. I could barely read and my stroke order was positively embarrassing, but it didn’t matter -- I was interacting with local people at a very high level on a face-to-face level and really becoming immersed in social life there.
The proof of my competency came in mid-1994, less than a year after I had restarted my studies, when I was invited to take part in a highly competitive job interview for a news editor at one of Taiwan’s largest television networks. The interview was completely in Mandarin with three station executives. I passed with flying colors, beating out 300 other applicants. A few years later, I wrote and composed a Mandarin song for my rock band that became a minor underground hit in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It wasn't fine calligraphy, but it made it possible for me to interact with people and improve my own career.
Showing posts with label Shameless self-promotion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shameless self-promotion. Show all posts
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Thursday, February 06, 2014
February 2014 Update
I haven’t posted to this blog for five months. This post is an update for old readers, and an introduction to new readers of what’s going on in my professional life.
For those of you coming to this blog for the first time, I am the founder of i30 Media, which publishes In 30 Minutes® guides. We publish information that helps people understand the complexities of the world around them.
Starting with a Dropbox user guide in the summer of 2012, we now have 10 guides available for the Kindle, iPad, Nook, and Android tablets. Besides the technology guides, there are also titles that help people understand health (C. Diff In 30 Minutes) and even a title about cooking (Easy Chinese Recipes In 30 Minutes).
Some people may think it’s crazy to start a new publishing or media company, but there is incredible opportunity in an industry that’s being disrupted.
In the past 20-odd years, I’ve learned that in the media business, no matter what you are producing, you have to stay on top of the platforms. If you stay focused on the past, or place your bets on a losing platform, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt.
You also have to focus on your customers, whether it’s readers, gamers, audiences, or whatever. That may seem obvious, but I still see many media products that are devised in a conference room, built over a period of a year or more, and then launched without any real idea if there are audiences out there who want to consume them. The crop of slick iPad apps pumped out by magazine publishers in the early part of this decade are examples. They were expensive gambles, and most failed.
My philosophy toward product development in the media world is something I call “lean media”, which draws upon the lean startup methodology as well as the MIT spirit of product development, which zeroes in on prototyping, metrics, and iteration. The lean media idea is to get products, marketing, and business models out in the marketplace as soon as possible. Make a true connection with your audience/customers. Measure the impact, iterate, and improve.
The term “lean media” may be new, but over the past half-century decades many successful musicians, game studios, blog sites, magazines, and app developers have used these ideas to get established. As a guy who grew up with classic rock, one example I like to point to is Led Zeppelin. Most people think of them as the bloated supergroup from the 1970s, but the way they established themselves starting in 1968 was totally lean — touring in small and medium sized venues, and recording on a shoestring. Their first album was recorded in 3 weeks, and their second, Led Zeppelin II, consisted of songs they wrote in hotel rooms and recorded in studios along their tour route. They had an instant feedback loop with their audiences, and man, is that stuff good! I see the same lean media spirit in some of the blog/news/new media companies that emerged in the mid–2000s, including Mashable, Gawker, and TMZ.
More recently, book publishing has seen the same sort of lean media innovation, enabled by powerful new platforms and business models. The Internet is only part of it. Amazon has been the provider of not only a platform for sales of ebooks and the devices to read them on, but also provides a platform for self-publishing — the KDP program.
For In 30 Minutes guides, I’ve leveraged these platforms and applied lean media concepts to new products, design, pricing, marketing, and more. Lean media methods help clarify what’s working, what’s not, and ultimately, what readers are willing to pay for.
While I will continue to post entries here, they will be infrequent ... I am simply too busy. The best way to keep up with what I am doing is to check out the In 30 Minutes blog and follow me on Twitter at @ilamont.
Onward and upward!
For those of you coming to this blog for the first time, I am the founder of i30 Media, which publishes In 30 Minutes® guides. We publish information that helps people understand the complexities of the world around them.
Starting with a Dropbox user guide in the summer of 2012, we now have 10 guides available for the Kindle, iPad, Nook, and Android tablets. Besides the technology guides, there are also titles that help people understand health (C. Diff In 30 Minutes) and even a title about cooking (Easy Chinese Recipes In 30 Minutes).
Some people may think it’s crazy to start a new publishing or media company, but there is incredible opportunity in an industry that’s being disrupted.
My 20+ Year Perspective On Media
I’ve worked in media for most of my life. It includes stints in the music industry, broadcasting, newspapers, IT trade publications, and for more than 10 years, online and mobile media. I was also an MIT Sloan Fellow from 2010–2011, which really gave me a chance to learn about new media innovation, entrepreneurship, and business among some incredible faculty and peers.In the past 20-odd years, I’ve learned that in the media business, no matter what you are producing, you have to stay on top of the platforms. If you stay focused on the past, or place your bets on a losing platform, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt.
You also have to focus on your customers, whether it’s readers, gamers, audiences, or whatever. That may seem obvious, but I still see many media products that are devised in a conference room, built over a period of a year or more, and then launched without any real idea if there are audiences out there who want to consume them. The crop of slick iPad apps pumped out by magazine publishers in the early part of this decade are examples. They were expensive gambles, and most failed.
Lean Media And In 30 Minutes Guides
My philosophy toward product development in the media world is something I call “lean media”, which draws upon the lean startup methodology as well as the MIT spirit of product development, which zeroes in on prototyping, metrics, and iteration. The lean media idea is to get products, marketing, and business models out in the marketplace as soon as possible. Make a true connection with your audience/customers. Measure the impact, iterate, and improve.
The term “lean media” may be new, but over the past half-century decades many successful musicians, game studios, blog sites, magazines, and app developers have used these ideas to get established. As a guy who grew up with classic rock, one example I like to point to is Led Zeppelin. Most people think of them as the bloated supergroup from the 1970s, but the way they established themselves starting in 1968 was totally lean — touring in small and medium sized venues, and recording on a shoestring. Their first album was recorded in 3 weeks, and their second, Led Zeppelin II, consisted of songs they wrote in hotel rooms and recorded in studios along their tour route. They had an instant feedback loop with their audiences, and man, is that stuff good! I see the same lean media spirit in some of the blog/news/new media companies that emerged in the mid–2000s, including Mashable, Gawker, and TMZ.
More recently, book publishing has seen the same sort of lean media innovation, enabled by powerful new platforms and business models. The Internet is only part of it. Amazon has been the provider of not only a platform for sales of ebooks and the devices to read them on, but also provides a platform for self-publishing — the KDP program.
For In 30 Minutes guides, I’ve leveraged these platforms and applied lean media concepts to new products, design, pricing, marketing, and more. Lean media methods help clarify what’s working, what’s not, and ultimately, what readers are willing to pay for.
While I will continue to post entries here, they will be infrequent ... I am simply too busy. The best way to keep up with what I am doing is to check out the In 30 Minutes blog and follow me on Twitter at @ilamont.
Onward and upward!
Monday, March 26, 2012
Blogging for 10 years
Ten years ago today, I started my first blog. I was taking IT classes at Boston College at the time, and one of my instructors (Aaron Walsh, now a friend and advisor) told me about this new, powerful concept in online publishing called "blogging". Although he suggested using one of the nascent online blogging platforms at the time, I was getting my online career off the ground and decided to create my own blog, using hand-coded HTML and CSS. The result was this:
This early blog didn't last -- hand-coding pages and FTPing files to my personal site was too much of a pain -- but I liked the format of short observations with links and later photos. I started a Blogger blog in 2004, which I still maintain today (you are looking at it right now). I also expanded to many more locations on the Web. Since 2002, I have written thousands of posts that have appeared on ilamont.com, digitalmediamachine.com, Computerworld, The Industry Standard (no longer online), Harvard Extended, Ipso Facto, Terra Nova, and MIT.
What will the next 10 years bring? Surely a lot more, as content creation moves into the mobile sphere and new ways of gathering and presenting content appear on the scene. It's been a ton of fun, and I can't wait to see what happens next ...
This early blog didn't last -- hand-coding pages and FTPing files to my personal site was too much of a pain -- but I liked the format of short observations with links and later photos. I started a Blogger blog in 2004, which I still maintain today (you are looking at it right now). I also expanded to many more locations on the Web. Since 2002, I have written thousands of posts that have appeared on ilamont.com, digitalmediamachine.com, Computerworld, The Industry Standard (no longer online), Harvard Extended, Ipso Facto, Terra Nova, and MIT.
What will the next 10 years bring? Surely a lot more, as content creation moves into the mobile sphere and new ways of gathering and presenting content appear on the scene. It's been a ton of fun, and I can't wait to see what happens next ...
Friday, November 20, 2009
The Social Enterprise
Since September, I've been experimenting with a new blogging focus on The Industry Standard. The blog is called "The Social Enterprise," and it's all about how companies and large organizations are dealing with technologies relating to collaboration, communication, and community. It's a rich topic area that lets me talk about the various networked technologies that are transforming the workplace, from Google Apps to Second Life.
Naturally, there is also a big focus on social networks. For instance, this week I had a chance to write about Salesforce.com's new "Chatter" tool. Here's an excerpt:
But my Industry Standard blog is my main outlet. Here are some posts which illustrate the kinds of topics and technologies I'm writing about:
Naturally, there is also a big focus on social networks. For instance, this week I had a chance to write about Salesforce.com's new "Chatter" tool. Here's an excerpt:
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck. That is, unless you're Salesforce.com, and you're talking about its new Chatter application. While observers have looked at features like profiles, status updates, Twitter and Facebook integration as proof that Chatter is an enterprise-grade social network, the company and its executives are taking pains to call it something else -- a "social platform," or, as carefully noted by Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff, a collaboration tool …"The Social Enterprise" has also led to some opportunities to share my thoughts on other sites and Twitter, and take part in a panel discussion on enterprise social technologies at a Bentley University entrepreneurship class a few days ago.
But my Industry Standard blog is my main outlet. Here are some posts which illustrate the kinds of topics and technologies I'm writing about:
- Real-time search and Twitter: What's in it for corporate America?
- The write-once, run-anywhere dream fades as languages and platforms proliferate
- Microsoft vs. Google: When it comes to the cloud, it's war
- Amazon Relational Database Service hits the cloud, but users wonder what will happen to SimpleDB
- Outside the U.S., alternate social networks grow under Facebook's shadow
- Abandoned sims in Second Life: Don't forget to turn out the lights
- Social networking in hospitals: A nuisance and liability, or "important adjunct" to traditional communication?
- Readers respond: Apple Inc. and the "unpleasant odor" of social media
- A lesson from the Sidekick's cloud failure: Personal phones are used for work
Thursday, April 19, 2007
New media projects at Computerworld: Internet video news and Tech Dispenser
One of the best aspects of my current job at Computerworld is that I am often involved in many new media projects for the Computerworld website. I was hired in early 2005 to get Computerworld's blogging area and editorial webcasts off the ground, but since then I have also helped develop Computerworld's podcasts as well as user-generated/community content offerings such as Shark Bait. Currently, I am involved in two new editorial initiatives: Web video programming and Tech Dispenser.
The event video is a sponsored daily recap and interview show from one of Computerworld's largest events, Storage Networking World. The event ended this morning, and we created three episodes in all. The second episode will give you a good idea of what the program is about in terms of the format and content:
SNW In Focus, day 2: Mini SANs and the UK's fastest supercomputer
This is not the first time I've worked with video -- my first job in journalism, back in the mid-1990s, was working as a newswriter and narrator for an English-language TV program at the China Television Company (CTV, 中國電視公司 or 中視 in Chinese). Then, as now, producing professional-quality video programming was an extremely labor-intensive effort, requiring a great deal of teamwork and coordination. I know there is a big movement toward vlogging and user-submitted video content a la YouTube, but anyone interested in sponsoring or creating professional, TV-quality content should know that it's not as easy as it looks. My colleague Lucas Mearian and I were the faces of Computerworld Events: SNW In Focus, but behind the scenes there was a video production crew working full time, not to mention additional help from editors and online production staff back at Computerworld HQ in Framingham. Despite all of the work required, we consider the program a success, and look forward to doing similar editorial video programs in the future.
The second new initiative that I am involved with at Computerworld is Tech Dispenser. This is an editor-driven blogs aggregator that I think could be a useful alternative to traditional, algorithm-driven aggregators like Megite.
Wait a second, you say: Aren't you the same guy whose research interests include advanced data-mining technologies and computer content analysis? What have you got against algorithms and existing aggregators that highlight interesting news and blog content in the giant, semi-structured database that is the Web?
My answer to that is best summed up on a recent post on my Computerworld blog:
The event video is a sponsored daily recap and interview show from one of Computerworld's largest events, Storage Networking World. The event ended this morning, and we created three episodes in all. The second episode will give you a good idea of what the program is about in terms of the format and content:
SNW In Focus, day 2: Mini SANs and the UK's fastest supercomputer
This is not the first time I've worked with video -- my first job in journalism, back in the mid-1990s, was working as a newswriter and narrator for an English-language TV program at the China Television Company (CTV, 中國電視公司 or 中視 in Chinese). Then, as now, producing professional-quality video programming was an extremely labor-intensive effort, requiring a great deal of teamwork and coordination. I know there is a big movement toward vlogging and user-submitted video content a la YouTube, but anyone interested in sponsoring or creating professional, TV-quality content should know that it's not as easy as it looks. My colleague Lucas Mearian and I were the faces of Computerworld Events: SNW In Focus, but behind the scenes there was a video production crew working full time, not to mention additional help from editors and online production staff back at Computerworld HQ in Framingham. Despite all of the work required, we consider the program a success, and look forward to doing similar editorial video programs in the future.
The second new initiative that I am involved with at Computerworld is Tech Dispenser. This is an editor-driven blogs aggregator that I think could be a useful alternative to traditional, algorithm-driven aggregators like Megite.
Wait a second, you say: Aren't you the same guy whose research interests include advanced data-mining technologies and computer content analysis? What have you got against algorithms and existing aggregators that highlight interesting news and blog content in the giant, semi-structured database that is the Web?
My answer to that is best summed up on a recent post on my Computerworld blog:
The aggregators are extremely efficient in finding and highlighting news or topics of discussion, but there is a flaw that all share: An inability to identify quality content. Computers are good at counting the number of links pointing to a specific blog post, or measuring the number of topical keywords in a news article. But they are incapable of spotting a scoop, let alone an elegant analysis of a technology trend. Hence, we see lots of highlighted articles and blog posts on the aggregator sites that are simply repeating what someone else has already said, or weak writing samples that are a waste of readers' time. A few sites use deceptive SEO techniques and other weaknesses in the algorithms to manipulate the aggregators to get their articles or posts to the top positions, and on several occasions I have seen suspected astroturfing campaigns highlighted on the blog aggregators.Tech Dispenser hasn't launched yet, but I am interested in seeing how the tech blog community reacts to the idea. Besides driving traffic to blogs that participate in the Tech Dispenser blog network, the site also includes a revenue share model that should appeal to many tech blog writers.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Shark Bait, Social Media, and PR
Last evening I spoke at a gathering of the Social Media Club (Boston chapter), about a new area on Computerworld that I helped develop and launch this week: Shark Bait.
Shark Bait is a place where visitors to Computerworld.com can talk about IT in a freewheeling atmosphere. Registered or anonymous users submit "baits", which might be an anecdote, question, or comment that relates to technology. Other users can react to the bait by rating it, or leaving a comment. There is a points-based system to encourage participation -- registered users get 1000 points for registering, 500 for leaving a valid bait (i.e., relates to IT, encourages discussion, is not spam, etc.) and 100 for leaving a valid comment. Part of the points system is intended to appeal to "nerd cred", but there are lots of possibilities to tie this into promotions.
Shark Bait also leverages an existing part of Computerworld that has been a fan favorite for years: Shark Tank. Shark Tank contains anecdotes about IT and tech support that are sent in by readers, but are rewritten by "Sharky" (a Computerworld writer who shall remain anonymous). Part of the challenge of launching Shark Bait was letting users know that it's a spinoff of Shark Tank, rather than a copy -- unlike Shark Tank, which consists of rewritten and condensed user submissions, the Shark baits" are pretty much written by users; if we do any editing at all, it's just to correct grammar or punctuation, or make the headline more appealing (I've seen one bait that was simply "Shark Bait submission"). We also open up the funnel for Shark Bait: Almost anything relating to IT that prompts a discussion can be submitted, not just tech support tales.
The baits we've received thus far run the gamut from pleas for advice to Shark Tankish recollections. I've also created a few news-based baits. Here's a list of some of the more interesting baits, that either received high ratings or a relatively high number of comments:
Shark Bait is a place where visitors to Computerworld.com can talk about IT in a freewheeling atmosphere. Registered or anonymous users submit "baits", which might be an anecdote, question, or comment that relates to technology. Other users can react to the bait by rating it, or leaving a comment. There is a points-based system to encourage participation -- registered users get 1000 points for registering, 500 for leaving a valid bait (i.e., relates to IT, encourages discussion, is not spam, etc.) and 100 for leaving a valid comment. Part of the points system is intended to appeal to "nerd cred", but there are lots of possibilities to tie this into promotions.
Shark Bait also leverages an existing part of Computerworld that has been a fan favorite for years: Shark Tank. Shark Tank contains anecdotes about IT and tech support that are sent in by readers, but are rewritten by "Sharky" (a Computerworld writer who shall remain anonymous). Part of the challenge of launching Shark Bait was letting users know that it's a spinoff of Shark Tank, rather than a copy -- unlike Shark Tank, which consists of rewritten and condensed user submissions, the Shark baits" are pretty much written by users; if we do any editing at all, it's just to correct grammar or punctuation, or make the headline more appealing (I've seen one bait that was simply "Shark Bait submission"). We also open up the funnel for Shark Bait: Almost anything relating to IT that prompts a discussion can be submitted, not just tech support tales.
The baits we've received thus far run the gamut from pleas for advice to Shark Tankish recollections. I've also created a few news-based baits. Here's a list of some of the more interesting baits, that either received high ratings or a relatively high number of comments:
- Female tech workers, negative stereotypes
- Apple's mobile phone: A must-have product, or will it go the way of the Newton?
- The Four Curses of the IT Biz
- A networking tech confirms: Miracles can - and will - happen!
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Presentations and professional experience
Twice in recent months I've given presentations about future media trends. The first presentation was at the Siggraph Summit at Boston City Hall. The second was at Boston College, to a smaller group. It was very interesting drawing upon my print and television journalism experience, as well as my current work at Computerworld producing blogs and podcasts.
I was also able to draw upon my academic interest in Chinese mass media and Internet development in my presentations. I cited two examples. The first relates to the increasing connectedness of the Chinese population, and how they are using cheap video cameras, camera phones, and other devices to capture and distribute images that bypass the official messages put out by Xinhua/NCNA (新華社) and other state-sanctioned media outlets. These developments will have a wide-ranging effect on how people in China (and, for that matter, all over the world) understand news events:
The second example was something I picked up from Roland Soong's EastSouthWestNorth blog (東南西北). Roland spotted a Beijing Evening News report about an online protest in a Chinese MMORPG which is, I believe, the first example of a mass protest over real-world issues taking place in a virtual world. The protest was sparked by a mural in the game which looked suspiciously like the "Rising Sun" flag the Japanese used in the 1930s and 1940s:
I was also able to draw upon my academic interest in Chinese mass media and Internet development in my presentations. I cited two examples. The first relates to the increasing connectedness of the Chinese population, and how they are using cheap video cameras, camera phones, and other devices to capture and distribute images that bypass the official messages put out by Xinhua/NCNA (新華社) and other state-sanctioned media outlets. These developments will have a wide-ranging effect on how people in China (and, for that matter, all over the world) understand news events:
Think about Tiananmen Square and its most enduring image. The guy standing in front of a tank. There were two shots of this incident, both taken by pros. Imagine if something similar took place with thousands of people uploading images and video from the scene. We're already starting to see that ... the most recent example is the 2004 Tsunami, where most of the footage was from people on holiday pointing their cameras out of the windows of their hotels.(Since I gave this presentation, there has been a more relevant news event relating to China, the video from the Rui'an riots.)
The second example was something I picked up from Roland Soong's EastSouthWestNorth blog (東南西北). Roland spotted a Beijing Evening News report about an online protest in a Chinese MMORPG which is, I believe, the first example of a mass protest over real-world issues taking place in a virtual world. The protest was sparked by a mural in the game which looked suspiciously like the "Rising Sun" flag the Japanese used in the 1930s and 1940s:
A virtual demonstration, in a Chinese online 3D game. Thousands of players from all over China converging on a virtual space, to vent about a virtual prop. These are people who are very comfortable in a 3D environment, and even bringing real-world concerns there to discuss.Incidents such as these will become more common in the years to come, and will have a very big impact on the news, newsgatherers, and audiences all over the world.
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