Technically Speaking

Dumb it down

That was a term that an old band of mine used. What we meant by that is, sure any bunch of musicians with a bit of talent could write the next 6-9 minute “Metallica‘isque” opus, but here is the question that you need to ask yourself - “Why?!?”. Is it to satisfy your ego? Is it to impress your fans? Trust me, your fans don’t care.

The general listener (the fan) of music doesn’t care if you wrote a 3:30 hit song or if you wrote the 6 minute song with massive amounts of changes, breakdowns, and segues. Fans do not care. Even the 70% of the crowd that are other bands who are your competition and watching, they do not care. About 1% of the audience gives a hoot that it took days to complete the song. Only 1% of the audience will ever care about the 90% it took to write the 6-9 minute song.

How does that apply to the startup world or to technology in general?

Well case in point. Companies that are successful have a pretty simple idea and concept. Twitter is a great example. Simple idea. Simple concept. When they started out, they had no idea beyond a communication tool. Make sure it worked, and see if we can get some people to use it. Everything else came later.

Of course they had no idea it was going to take off in the massive fashion that it did. But at least they were able to dumb it down enough to be useful and simple. Great concept and great introduction to a world that only 1% cares how it works, what the API does, etc.

Play to your main audience and not the 5 nerds in your basement playing D&D with odd shaped dice. That’s the ticket and the point of “dumb it down“. Technology is impressive only when you make it apparent to your audience what you are doing. Leave the 5 nerds in your basement because they are the 1% that you can address at a later time.

What is this snowglobe thing?

I just logged into my Facebook account a few moments ago, and I was already thinking about posting the above, and saw Yan tweet something about TSA taking a snowglobe from some old man at the airport. I saw the same thing happen a few weeks back in Denver!

TSA - Here is a note for you - Akmehd ain’t going to be carrying a snowglobe! Trust me. Hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings is so 2001. It’s not going to happen again. Akmehd and his group of terrorists are not that stupid.

Further more, why is it every time we all talk about terrorists, we instantly call them “Akmehd” or some other racially profiled Arab name? Don’t you find that a little disturbing that we call every terrorist “Akmehd” or something similar. Makes you think how warped the news media is, driving that thought deep into our head.

“Arabs are bad” “Akmehd is a suspect” “Terrorists will fly planes into buildings again” - Crazy stuff! But it’s the truth, we already racially profile thanks to the mainstream media. Seriously - Bill, the terrorist is not going to make a snowglobe bomb.

For those of you that haven’t caught the new HBO series - “True Blood” - you really need to watch it. It’s a well written show that shows just how racist we really are. Kind of tongue in cheek, but if you have watched, you know where I came up with the last line above about “Bill, the terrorist“.

Technically Speaking, that felt good!