073: Digging for insights
And another roundup of AI+Creativity links and inspiration
Is it Wednesday? I’ve been aiming to recap Monday evening MCAD classes within 24 hours but life has been all kinds of interesting. I spent Monday morning a few hours north presenting “AI for Marketing” at the Minnesota Hospitality conference. Then Tuesday morning I drove south to run a similar workshop for the team at Red Wing Shoes. In the interim I’ve been discovering where all of the gas, electric and internet cables are buried in my yard.
Quick backstory: we’re installing an elevator so our six year old, who is disabled, can move his power chair from floor to floor. We’re now at the “time to excavate a large hole” phase. Which includes relocating all the service lines to the house. Hence me, digging.
But here’s the cool part
I just had a very nuanced conversation with a Comcast service technician entirely via Google Translate. 🤯 Maybe it wasn’t exactly Google Translate, but the intent was the same.
Jorge showed up this morning. He handed me his smartphone, which read, “Hello, sir, my name is Jorge and I’m here to relocate your Comcast cable. Do you have any questions for me?” And Jorge gestures for me to speak, and voila—we go back and forth to work out a plan of attack.
Clearly, I need to fulfill my promise to learn Spanish. Regardless, this interaction gave me all kinds of hope for humanity.
You know who else gives me hope for humanity?
Enthusiastic entrepreneurs.
We were so fortunate to welcome Erik Brust (on the right), co-founder of Jonny Pops, and his collaborator, the energetic designer Jeff Johnson (left) of Replace Inc., to class this week.
“How do you build products which people want to buy in three seconds?”
That’s Erik’s foundational question. He and Jeff recounted their journey together, from Erik’s dorm to 150 employees. For Erik, everything boils down to engaged curiosity, and diligent process. “Step 1: Make a plan. Then change it. But make a plan,” he advised. The entrepreneurial path is riddled with good intentions which remain just that, because there was no plan, no commitment. So the route to remarkable products for Erik is articulating and committing; a viewpoint shared by Feld and Mendleson in Venture Deals. As Erik puts it, “You don’t know where success will be.” Which is almost entirely the point of entrepreneurialism—to not know, yet take action anyway. Knowing you will adjust, knowing you will evolve, but at least you’re moving.
Erik’s second point about being entrepreneurial:
“Everyone is in sales. Whether you want to be in sales or not. You are in sales.”
And I take this to mean you’ve got to have courage.
The business of ideas, the practice of creativity, is in large part a recognition: The work does not sell itself, necessarily. Oh sure, you might develop a concept which is universally self evident; no selling its brilliance and necessity required. And you’ll do that maybe once in your career. The rest of the time you have to prepare, and rehearse, and hone your emotions to sell your work to other people who have better things to do with their time. Those of us who create must also sell.
A profound thanks to Erik and Jeff for sharing the inside story of an opportunity and an idea, its many pivots, so many learnings, and valuable perspectives.
AI+Creativity Update
☎️ I was on a Zoom call earlier today which included a timeOS AI agent. Loved the summary it provided of the five of us. Thanks, Erin! While I don’t utilize an AI to summarize calls at the moment, I sense I will soon. We all will. The same conversation recommended Anyword for marketing writing tasks. My bet: We’ll each have a roster of AI-writing tools—one for strategic work, one for comms, one for creative exploration. As marvelous and all-encompassing as ChatGPT or Claude might seem, I am questioning the ability for one tool to be all things I need for writing. I mentioned Seenapse, but have also been experimenting with Type.ai.
📰 The BBC has a newly evolved policy regarding use of generative AI. "We will always prioritise and prize authentic, human storytelling by reporters, writers and broadcasters.” Sounds good.
🧐 Now in its sixth year, Air Street Capital’s State of AI report offers lots of salient analysis. Start with their blog post summary first.
🪩 We’re increasingly realizing GPTs can be leveraged to comprehend and react to almost anything, including images. Here’s a selection of prompts in that realm which might prove useful.
3️⃣ I’ve only recently been testing the Dall-e3 image creator, via Bing. Wow. Like the rest of you, I’m eager for Dall-e3 to arrive in full, and perhaps do away with archaic prompt writing. The weirdness of prompts today is a bubble, and code will make that less cumbersome.
🔥🚀 And Adobe’s made significant updates to Firefly. To the previous point, one of their aims is to demonstrate, “how to expand or reword prompts to generate superior results faster.” Definitely worth your time to play around in their sandbox.