This post is part of a series I started after reading “Notice, Collect, Share” by Russell Davies. I’m more inspired than ever to get back into the habit of…noticing, collecting and sharing. As part of that return to habit, I’m going to try and find five things that interest me every week, and share them here on my blog. 5 things per week, for 20 weeks, equals 100 Interesting things. Maybe one of these things will inspire you. Maybe one of them will inspire me. We’ll all learn something along the way.
I’ve also been tracking all of the stuff I find in my “Deck Of Interesting” - it’s screenshots, links, and assorted notes of things that might make into one of these posts.
#31 Stepping Back In Time in August I spent two weeks in the Adirondack region of New York state, and it felt like I’d travelled back to the earlier part of the 20th century. Everywhere I went had wood-panelling. Stores weren’t open on Sundays. We spent a lot of time on dirt roads. I flew a plane. I hiked. I ate ice cream made in a machine that had been operating since 1953. It was a pretty cool trip.
#32 Towards A Unified Field Theory Of Strategy I like a lot of what Jon Crowley posts on various channels (mostly Threads these days, it seems). And I really like his most recent post about how different types of strategy fit together.
I’ve always thought that strategy was a beautiful mix of art and science: It needs to be grounded in data and actual information, but it also needs to leap beyond that.
Crowley calls this the Stats > Vibes spectrum and, in classic plannerly fashion, makes a grid out of it with another spectrum: Theory > Action:
“Brand strategy is theory. A creative brief is theory. A comms plan is action. Go-to-market plan is action. Theory generally lives pre-idea. Action generally lives post-idea. You cannot succeed without a mix of theory and action in your work. You will either create high minded trash, or vapid beauty. No one’s interested in either for very long.”
Crowley continues with:
“Better than that: if you commit to developing your skill set in each of these quadrants, you will actually be good at your job, regardless of which client you’re working with, what agency you end up at, or what media plan you need to work with.....But departments are getting smaller. Tools are getting better. And when I say you will thrive if you learn to live all across the matrix of strategic approaches, I don’t mean future you, I mean present you.”
A Benign Conspiracy - Towards A Unified Field Theory Of Strategy
#33 The Change In Vibes Like everyone these days, I think I’m having trouble turning away from what’s happening in US politics. It’s like a car crash, but not one that you’re driving by on the highway: it’s one of those slow-motion ones that happen on an icy, snowy day on a residential street. The initial crash has happened, people are outside on their front steps, and more cars are piling up. Everyone is horrified, but no one knows how to help.
I’ve been trying to read more, and more varied sources, to understand what’s happening and why. This has led me back to Tyler Cowen, a blogger I followed regularly a few years back. His relatively short post on “The Change In Vibes” that we’re seeing lately is insightful in that it provides reasons beyond simple “racism” for why the GOP is doing as well as they are (or that the Democrats aren’t doing as well as we might hope).
*I also read Cowen’s book “The Complacent Class” a few years ago, and really enjoyed it. I wonder though how much of it is relevant in the post-Covid world. From his site:
“The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist and best selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition—we’re working harder than ever to avoid change. We’re moving residences less, marrying people more like ourselves and choosing our music and our mates based on algorithms that wall us off from anything that might be too new or too different. Match.com matches us in love. Spotify and Pandora match us in music. Facebook matches us to just about everything else.”
#34 Digital Street Ghosts A few years ago artist Paulo Cirio created life-size stickers of people from Google Streetview and pasted them in the same location. It’s one of those cool things that probably has a great artistic statement but is also cool enough to just think of as “Digital Street Ghosts”
#35 Garfield As Eldritch Horror This image appeared on the camera roll on my phone out of nowhere. I’m sure I saw it on Reddit or Threads and saved it because it’s the kind of thing I find hilarious. But as I return to it again and again I also find it an almost perfect specimen of writing. The hierarchy of messaging, the mix of straight and twisted. The absolute rhythm of it. It’s perfect.
This week’s photo is fro NASA’s photo of the day and is of The Andromeda Galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away.
