Extraneous Concept Patrol

My job involves a lot of talking to people about ideas, from high level mission, vision, and strategy, to nitty gritty things like how teams communicate, how projects fit together, and how people think about the process of doing their job. Clear thinking is incredibly important to my work, both for me and for the …

Arts Entrepreneurship is a Resistance Movement

There’s been a lot of great discussion of arts entrepreneurship on NewMusicBox recently. There’s a lot of good stuff there, and also plenty I disagree with. The emphasis on arts entrepreneurship in education in particular has come under some fire. Teaching young artists this stuff is about helping them to survive in an unfair world. …

Make It Simple? Hire an artist.

People keep talking about the new wisdom for building technology products, from web apps to phones to enterprise software: “Keep it simple. It’s gotta make sense to people.” “Focus on making amazing things instead of a profit.” “Trust your instincts and your talent, and push them.” “Refine and simplify over and over again.” “It can’t …