Solid Writing from Sports Illustrated on Baseball & ESPN on Football

There's four excellent pieces of sports writing to note here with two from ESPN the Magazine and two from Sports Illustrated.

The ESPN features came from the September 3 NFL Preview issue and both dealt extremely well with the important and much discussed idea of the negatives of the game weighed against the positives. The lead story was a J.R. Moehringer essay "Football is dead. Long live football" that featured the subtitle "Concussions, lawsuits, death -- but fans are still cheering" followed by 120 points to consider about America's most popular sport.

Additionally, David Fleming wrote the piece "Neither saint nor sinner" that looks at Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita and the suspension the NFL gave him from the Bountygate scandal while he was a New Orleans Saint. Tremendously interesting story that similar to the Moehringer piece delves into the good as well as dark side of pro football.

Switching to a different sport, two Sports Illustrated pieces a few months apart shared for me the common bond of being very good writing about baseball superstars. The recent August 27 issue had Angels 21 year old outfield Mike Trout on the cover and the story within was "Kid Dynamite" by Tom Verducci. It was an well written piece and brought to mind past pieces I've linked to on phenoms Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and Trevor Bauer.

Going a while back in time, but also on a baseball superstar was the June 11 SI cover story "The Curse Of Bigness" by S.L. Price on Josh Hamilton. The piece featured the same type of great in-depth writing that Price seems to always provide and showed a fascinating portrait of Hamilton. Some of the stories told showed character tendencies towards the dramatic and attention craving and that certainly doesn't make Hamilton a bad guy, but does seem to tie into his past drug and alcohol addictions and the possibility (certainly not the guarantee, but possibility) of future struggles.

Great Tennis Writing from John Jeremiah Sullivan & S.L. Price

There was an excellent profile of Venus and Serena Williams recently that brought to mind another solid piece of writing following Serena's Wimbledon championship last month.

The recent story was the remarkable "Venus and Serena Against the World" by John Jeremiah Sullivan for the New York Times and piece last month on the Sports Illustrated website "Emotion and all, Williams breaks through for fifth Wimbledon" by S.L. Price.

Two exemplary writers who did revealing work under entirely different circumstances, Sullivan as a feature profile and Price a shorter match recap that he still managed to put a lot of heft into. Both highly recommended.

Sports Illustrated Writing: from Layden, Jenkins & Wertheim

There's been a few cases of Sports Illustrated writing lately that stood out as excellent and can be linked to (an additional solid story from the recent issue should be online in about a week).

From the August 20 College Football preview issue was a profile of USC quarterback Matt Barkley as well as a piece on a horrific injury and the two University of Georgia baseball players involved.

The Barkley piece is titled "Trophy Life" and in it, Lee Jenkins writes a thorough look at the Heisman Trophy contender. Striking from the feature was the friendship detailed between the USC signal caller and a man 70 years his elder, Olympic athlete and Japanese POW Louie Zamperini. It's an odd connection, but Barkley being close to the awe-inspiring subject of one of my favorite books of the year, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, seems reason to like him.

The other piece of note from this Aug 20 issue was "Why Ask Why?" from Jon Wertheim. It's a powerful story on Zach Cone and Jonathan Taylor and the paralyzing injury suffered by Taylor after they collided going for an outfield fly ball. Wertheim reveals in the story a remarkable resiliency from Taylor... as well another UGA baseball player paralyzed not long before.

Final SI piece to note here was from the website rather than the magazine. Following on the heels of my blog post a few weeks back on great Olympic writing was a story featuring two of my two favorite story lines out of the London Games. From Tim Layden, "In a Games filled with memorable moments, few resonate like Bolt" covers of course the accomplishments of the great sprinter, but also the double gold by U.K. distance runner Mo Farah (who had been featured in one of the earlier pieces of excellent writing noted). Excellent writing from Layden on two amazing athletes.

"Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey" by Todd Denault

Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey was a book that I wanted to enjoy more than I actually did. Written by Todd Denault, it's a biography of the Hall of Famer best known for becoming the first NHL goalie to wear a mask.



While I was drawn to the subject, the book itself didn't really hold my interest as it struck me as too much of a collection of "this happened and then that happened" event recaps. It definitely seemed to be extremely well reported (especially for a first book from Denault), but I found it lacked the heart of other hockey writing, like by Jack Falla, that I enjoyed quite a bit. Interesting to me, this criticism I had of the book was also said (down to the Falla book comparison) in a review I came across online... with that review having a more positive impression.

Things may potentially have changed later in the book as I set it aside a third of the way through, but just not enough human drama to compel me to keep going.

College Football Pieces by Rick Bragg, Wright Thompson & Kevin Van Valkenburg for ESPN

Three features from the Aug 20 ESPN the Magazine College Football preview stood out to me as excellent.

Lengthiest was the profile "Urban Meyer will be home for dinner" on the Ohio State head coach. It's an excellent piece by Wright Thompson that delves into whether Meyer will be able to coach at the level he's accustomed to while avoiding the deterioration in health and loss of family time that plagued him at Florida. It's definitely a question with an unknown outcome and Thompson frames it exceptionally well (with a Thompson interview about the piece here).

Also from this issue was another another excellent profile revealing internal conflict. From Kevin Van Valkenburg, "Who's afraid of the Honey Badger?" is on Tyrann Mathieu, the now dismissed from the team Heisman trophy finalist for LSU. It's fascinating to know that Van Valkenburg wrote this piece questioning whether Mathieu's story "the beginning of a cautionary tale?" prior to him getting booted from the Tigers.

Final story that stood out was from Rick Bragg with "Down here: To understand football's place in the South, you first have to see it from the inside." Reminiscent of the Warren St. John book Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania, it shows (for better or worse) just how much college football matters to people in SEC country.

Writers on Writing - from Thompson, Whitehead & Stout

I've come across a few different pieces lately that feature some really solid content by writers on how they do (or have done) their work. Most recent was insight from Wright Thompson of ESPN via an interview he did with Brandon Sneed titled "Can Urban Meyer Really Make It Home For Dinner? Wright Thompson On Profiling The Man Who Can't Quit Coaching." Sneed is a freelance writer who has published in a number of major magazines and I've linked a number of times to his website... particularly when like is the case here it's to interviews he does with writers dishing on their craft. It's excellent stuff from Thompson, with two of most interesting things being the description of how much work he puts in to his writing and the importance of caring about your subject and what you write (which brought to mind a similar perspective from Anne Lamott).

Also of interest in the craft of writing category was a recent New York Times piece "How to Write" by Colson Whitehead. With 10 (well, 11 sort of) rules for writing, it's insightful content from the acclaimed novelist.

Finally, it's a different angle on the topic, but another excellent piece I've seen of late on writing was by Glenn Stout, series editor of the Best American Sports Writing books. On his blog "Verbplow: Where I Turn Words Over" Stout posted "How I became a writer: a true story." Super fascinating missive by a guy who sought out and then seized an opportunity.

Favorite Olympic Writing So Far

There's quite possibly been better pieces that have been and are still to be written on the London Olympics, but a few have stood out to me so far for the subject covered and/or excellence of prose.

In the category of post-event recap writing was Bruce Arthur for Toronto's National Post newspaper with "Canada delivers something worth remembering in Olympic soccer loss to U.S." Really great work done quickly.

With an insightful and important take from the Olympics was the Jen Floyd Engel column "Games of the Girls? Not really" for Fox Sports.

Finally, two additional pieces that stood out were "Painful, Poignant Memories of 1992" by Joe Posnanski for the site Sports on Earth and "Olympics 2012: Rupp follows good friend Farah to podium in 10K" by Pat Graham in the Washington Times. Both were short works of writing that covered tremendously cool events on the track.

Two great pieces on light and dark side of football - by Wright Thompson & Patrick Hruby

There's two pieces of writing I've seen lately that take completely different approaches to looking at football and which seem equally well done and true.

With the view of football as a fan experience is "Pulled Pork & Pigskin: a Love Letter to Southern Football" by Wright Thompson for ESPN. The piece is from 2007 and covers all that's great about college football, particularly in the states that care about it the most. The pageantry, the fan devotion, the gameday traditions... all chronicled by Thompson in a way that reminds me of Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird (which I reviewed the other day) urging a writing approach of reverence to the subject.

Not necessarily exactly on the flip side, but with an approach looking at the player rather than fan experience was a recent Patrick Hruby feature for The Washingtonian. "Did Football Kill Austin Trenum?" is on the impact of concussions in the sport and tells the at times gut-wrenching piece of a Virginia high school player. Hruby often writes of the darker side of sports (with the most recent piece I've linked to being on the business of sports) and it's solid writing he provides on Trenum, the dangers of concussions and things any parent of a concussed young athlete should be aware of.

Again, both very different pieces, but both excellent in their own right.

"Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott

In the oldie but goodie category is Anne Lamott's 1995 Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life about... both of those things.



I head about the book from author Chris Guillebeau who recommended Bird by Bird for anyone wanting to write better and found myself drawn to not only Lamott's views on writing but also her take on the world. I like interesting contradictions in people and Lamott comes across as religious (with her citing C.S. Lewis and his Surprised by Joy as an influence), profane, funny and with good insight. One thing that particularly stuck with me was how she seems to see the world with reverence and have that come across in her writing. At the same time that she write with wonder, though, she very much writes her world, with all it's warts.

In terms of the more nuts and bolts advice she gives around writing, the biggest notion that stands out is a writer writes. It's appointment work that requires putting in the time and good writing something that often can come when you just keep writing and then gleam the good out of the bad. The eloquent (and memorable) phrase used by Lamott is "shitty first drafts." Not to cause injury patting myself on the back, but this idea very much reminds me of the process of writing college English papers way back when... actually, just prior to the original publican of Bird by Bird.

Lamott also notes that if stuck on what to write about, someone should narrow down as much as possible (with the idea of "writing through a one inch frame") and just start describing. She recommends giving yourself short assignments about things as random as school lunches from childhood and people interacted with. The point is to just get started... with the Bird by Bird title coming from Lamott's father telling her brother how to get a report on birds done.

Just a very cool book that strikes me as a kind of (extremely honest, warts and all) love letter about writing by someone who has also taught classes on the subject. She also references the writer as a chronicler of events who stands apart and takes notes as things occur (or just occur to them) and the benefit of writing groups for people who take on this at times solitary pursuit.

Whether someone writes for a living, hopes to, or just loves to write, Lamott notes the reward for a writer in daily work done with devotion and commitment. It's not so important what's written and especially not important what the work starts out being (again, "shitty first drafts"), just to sit down, write... and then repeat the process.

Penn State Crimes, Moral Failures & Journalism Part 2 - on Joe Paterno & Freeh report

After the Penn State scandal first broke and now convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky was indicted, I did the blog post "Penn State Crimes, Moral Failures & Journalism" linking to a few pieces of great writing on the horrific subject. It's now been a few weeks since the Freeh report came out putting a large amount of blame on late coach Joe Paterno for knowingly covering up Sandusky's crimes and especially in the few days after the report published, there was some new remarkable writing done that's very much worth linking to.

The first two pieces that come to mind were by preeminent sports writers on how they were deceived by Sandusky. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post wrote "Joe Paterno, at the end, showed more interest in his legacy than Jerry Sandusky’s victims" and Rick Reilly "The sins of the father" for ESPN. Both were very well written and an additional column that stood out at the time was "The Deadspin Five-Point Plan To Rescue Penn State Football" by Drew Magary for Deadspin. Magary generally writes very funny stuff and his piece was both caustic as well as seemingly spot-on.

In line with my blog post idea of preserving some of the best writing on the subject were two posts I came across by others. On his personal tumbler site, LA Times writer Baxter Holmes did "Round-up of fine sentences, part 36 (feat. pieces written about Penn State/Joe Paterno)" and Wired Magazine contributing editor Jason Fagone published "The 5 best and 5 worst sentences written about Penn State in the aftermath of the Freeh Report" on his blog. Both noted some excellent work and Fagone's piece especially stood out with his analysis of the writing he found notable.

Finally, it's another approach altogether, but I thought excellent a recent ESPN The Magazine back page column by Chris Jones. Titled "Statue of limitations" it looks at the now mothballed statue of Paterno and the craftsman who built it. It was an interesting story idea and very well written work.

"Start Something That Matters" by Blake Mycoskie

In his book Start Something That Matters, TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie provides a solid business book by guy who appears to genuinely believe in helping others.

TOMS is known for it's One for One practice of giving away a pair of shoe (often via Shoe Drops to needy children) for each pair ordered and Mycoskie in the book provides an interesting tale of his background and thoughts about succeeding in business while also doing good.

He began starting companies at 19 and TOMS came out of a trip to Argentina in which Mycoskie saw both huge numbers of children without shoes and a local shoe that he felt could be adapted and sold in the US. The combination of this philanthropic goal with the intent of a for-profit shoe company turned into what the company is today.

In terms of content in the book, Mycoskie provides some solid ideas for success and references examples of their utilization both by himself and others. Method Products is noted as company which (just like TOMS) uses the power of an authentic story to build towards success and the casual dining chain Chipotle brought up as a company founded and run around simple ideas executed on well. Additionally, Charity: water is noted as being a philanthropic organization that's done great work in part due to it's incredibly open and transparent approach to where donations are spent.

Also noted as important by Mycoskie are the ideas of facing ones fears (with him referencing Tim Ferriss writing about worst case scenarios not being that bad) and the huge import of employee trust and morale. The idea from Mycoskie was that the better a company's employees feel about their jobs, the better business will be... which follows very much in line with the idea I've long felt that how employees treat customers is a reflection on how they're treated by management.

A couple of other things mentioned that Mycoskie didn't devote as many words to, but still seemed of import were writing down ideas as they come to you and living simply... with owning as little as possible. Both solid concepts within what was an excellent book by someone doing good work.

Writing Posts Done

After last month doing a post titled "Business Topics of Interest (& Companies) Written On So Far", it seemed to make sense to also write on some of the things posted about in another area my book segmented into, Writing.

There's been 50 different posts that have Writing as a tag and the contents of them seem to fall into the categories of either (A) accomplished writers dishing on their work or (B) my ruminations on writing as an activity.

Wisdom gleamed from accomplished writers:

Spending the time writing - Biggest thing I saw time and time again written on the topic of writing is if you want to be a writer (or improve as one), just write… and then write more. Between the Internet and available ways to self-publish books, there's avenues to have work seen, but you have to actually be doing writing for those available avenues to matter. Something that seems to be repeated over and over by writers discussing their work is they don’t always produce great work, but they just keep at it. Part of the concept around writing is the importance of rewriting... write it, then write it again, then write more, then repeat, and oh yeah... writers have to read a lot as well.

Writing as building something - Another concept I've seen noted by many different writers is the idea of building a story. This takes difference forms ranging from the importance of researching and reporting to outlining and editing, but the idea is to keep in mind that the work isn't just letting flowery prose flow onto the page... it's often to utilize planning, structure, and a methodical approach to writing works (and rework).

The importance of subject - It may be an obvious point, but good writing on something people don't care about is going to have a lot less impact that something solid on a topic of interest. Going into this idea of interesting... there's both the traditional interesting of a celebrity or sports star, but also a lot of interesting stories on people and things less known, whether they be someone doing dangerous pursuits (which can be very interesting) or just something a bit different than normal.

Having writing matter to you - One thing that I've seen written about often is the need to actually love writing and words to if you're going to spend significant time trying to create good writing. Part of this is the work produced will be better if you care about it, but part of it is writing one of those pursuits that someone may do well, but not get fully recognized or rewarded for (this piece by John Hyduk seems to resonate on the topic). Point is that if writing your thing, then yes, bills have to get paid, but there should also be intrinsic value in the writing itself.

My ramblings on writing:

Some of the posts done where I did the most expository musing on writing are those noted below...

- "Words Written Down Book Process" - posted March 2012

- "Working Towards Something - a Career in Writing" - posted June 2011

- "Wanting to Do Something Not Being Done - Writing as a Career" - posted June 2011

- "Writers Write... And Not Always Well" - posted September 2010

- "How We Value Things & Entertain Ourselves - Roger Ebert on Huck Finn vs a Great Video Game" - posted July 2010

- "Words Written Down - The School Days" posted July 2010

- "Permanence of Words" - posted June 2010

Lots of great stuff from others and lots of personal ramblings that I enjoyed writing.

Writing & Writing Process Pieces by Clay Travis, Family Business, @Bigsportswriter, Chris Jones, Jennifer Khan and Jen A. Miller

With the topic of Writing and it's production being one of the content areas I've posted on, I've come across a slew of interesting web pages lately that cover this fabled idea of getting words on a page.

Three of the pieces group together for me as being fascinating takes on the state of online writing today, particularly sports writing on the web. Clay Travis provided "Outkick the Coverage Reaches One Year Old: Thanks to all of you" and it features a lot of great content around the monetization of good writing on the web... and how the people actually producing the writing fare at getting those dollars. Additionally, two other pieces go heavily into the state of written discourse and what actually gets attention in writing, again, particularly sports and particularly on the Internet. "The Aughts Internet Is Over" from the Tumblr blog Family Business and "@BIGSPORTSWRITER On the State of Sports Discussion: 'The Great Ones Are Weary of Those Who Read Them'" posted on Brandon Sneed's blog both feature really good topics to ruminate on.

Three additional pieces (or posts on a site in one case) that stood out to me lately cover a different area on the subject of writing. There's a "Q&A with Chris Jones on his writing" published by Jonah Weiner on his website, "The Science (Not Art) of the Magazine Pitch" from Stanford Journalism Professor Jennifer Khan and finally the blog on freelance writer Jen A. Miller's website.

Great content in all six of these pieces/sources and it may be a generalization to say, but the first few seemed to stand out more as having interesting philosophical takes on writing and the latter had more nuts and bolts content around writing.

Esquire writing - Junod on Obama, Jones on Renner & pieces on the stock market & OLED TVs

The August 2012 issue of Esquire had some excellent content... with one feature in the brilliant writing category and then three additional pieces that stood out as interesting.




The brilliant writing category piece was "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama" by Tom Junod and it's, well... brilliant. I can't say that I'm in any way outraged by the drone killing strategy, but it is a fascinating and important topic that Junod lays out for the reader exceptionally well and with an interesting approach.

The pieces that didn't necessarily reach the same level of prose (which isn't disparaging at all), but still covered some interesting topics were by Chris Jones, Ken Kurson and Peter Martin. Jones did a celebrity profile of Jeremy Renner and "Each Time Slightly Bigger, Slightly Braver" provided a different than expected view of the action star as a home flipper extraordinaire.

Two short and just plain interesting (yet again, that word) pieces from this issue were "But, Soft! What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?" with Kurson's expectation of a post-election stock market rise come November (regardless of who wins) and "The TV That Lets You See Everything" by Martin on the OLED follow-up to High Definition TVs.

Esquire an excellent magazine and lots of good stuff in this recent issue.

Time Magazine Cover Story on Military Suicides

Very profound cover story in the latest issue of Time Magazine that brought to mind other pieces from Time on the same subject.



The recent feature by Nancy Gibbs & Mark Thompson was titled "The War On Suicide?" and details the epidemic of suicides among current and former U.S. military personnel. The authors cite current statistics of one active duty suicide a day and one every 80 minutes among all veterans, but go beyond the horrifying numbers to detail the personal stories of several recent suicides by active duty servicemen. Just painful reading the depiction from a surviving spouse of mental health help that was sought in vain within the military.

Along these lines, the piece very much brought to mind some past Time features I've noted and linked to by the same writers. Mark Thompson penned in April 2009 "Why Are Army Recruiters Killing Themselves?" and in December of the same year I did this blog post on the Nancy Gibbs Time cover story "Terrified or Terrorist?" about Fort Hood shooter Nadal Hasan. Both works very much shared with the recent cover story a commonality of showing an active duty military culture of pushing forward and not showing weakness or a need for help.

On the same subject, but with actually a positive take-away was the December 2010 piece "Bringing Dogs to Heal: Care for Veterans with PTSD" by Mark Thompson and then in November 2011, I wrote a blog post featuring another Thompson Time cover story "The Other 1%" about the all too frequent disconnect between non military personnel and those who serve or have served.

It's an extremely difficult problem with no easy solution, but Gibbs and Thompson have done excellent work shedding light on the situation and need for greater efforts by the military at helping it's own.

Writing from latest Sports Illustrated issue - by Gary Smith, David Epstein and Lee Jenkins

There was some really solid writing on remarkable people in the latest "Where Are They Now?" issue of Sports Illustrated.

Longest piece was a feature by Gary Smith titled "Why Don't More Athletes Take A Stand?" on a University of Virginia walk-on football player taking part in a hunger strike to protest the low wages of many University service employees. It's the same type of eloquent writing Smith known for and tells the story of Wonman Joseph Williams while addressing some much larger questions about athletes and contribution to a cause.

From the "Where Are They Now?" section of the issue came two additional pieces of note... both well written and one on an interesting subject, the other on a truly remarkable one. In the interesting subject category was the Lee Jenkins piece "Life's Roses (and Sausages)" on former University of Texas and Houston Oilers running back Earl Campbell. The former Heisman Trophy winner has certainly been through a lot and it's pretty compelling reading on him.

The other piece from this edition of SI that stood out was "The Strength To Carry On" by David Epstein. Just an amazing piece on Nazi death camp survivor Ben Helfgott. After liberation from a concentration camp at 15, Helfgott became one of 732 Jewish orphans brought to group homes in England. They became known as The Boys and through their lives have accomplished quite a bit together in terms of philanthropy and sharing their stories of success... with the 1996 Martin Gilbert book The Boys as a record of it. Well written stuff from Epstein in this SI piece and again, an amazing story.

Time Magazine Pieces - on Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts / Elon Musk / Howard Schultz

There's been a few tremendously interesting pieces of writing from Time Magazine lately to note here.

Cover story from the most recent issue was "Roberts Rules: What the Health Care Decision Means for the Country" by the always solid David Von Drehle. About the deciding vote cast and rationale behind it from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, it's informative writing on what seems to be an extremely measured decision.

Two feature pieces from the past month or two that also stood out as well written pieces on interesting topics were about business efforts from Elon Musk and Howard Schultz respectively. Jeffrey Kluger wrote "Rocket Man" on the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX who has had big months at each company he leads and Bill Saporito provided "Starbucks' Big Mug" on efforts to both grow the business and aid the economy overall.

Interesting writing in each piece on big steps taken by both company leaders.

"The Startup of You" by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha

Following on the heels of recent good books with career guidance I've seen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman co-wrote with Ben Casnocha The Startup of You. It's a solid read with quite a bit around people being solely responsible for their career... regardless of whether they're entrepreneurs or an employee.



There's a lot that could be gleamed from the book with the principle ideas I took away from each chapter noted below...

Chapter 1: All humans are entrepreneurs
To the idea behind the chapter title, point is made in the book that the business strategies of successful startup companies often mirror strategies employed by successful people in a career.

Chapter 2: Develop a competitive advantage
Hoffman and Casnocha write about how one's career strategy should be a combination of (A) their assets, (B) aspirations and (C) market realities. Additionally, they cover the importance of someone developing a competitive career advantage (and being able to describe it)... with it oftentimes best to have that advantage or focus area as narrow as possible (an idea I've seen written about previously).

Chapter 3 - Plan to adapt
An idea put forth in the book is people should start to do the things they find interesting and see where it goes, but do so within a framework. To this point, Hoffman & Casnocha describe "ABZ planning"... with A as what someone is doing now, B what they pivot to, and Z their fallback career option. Its also noted that this Z planning can mean the worst case scenario to a career move often isn't that terrible (another idea I've previously noted others writing on).

Chapter 4 - It takes a network
Casnocha and of course Hoffman believe in the idea of LinkedIn as a facilitation tool towards a larger principle of network building and usage... with a focus on genuine networks built around helping rather than simply a focus on what can be gained from a relationship. They note that this network strengthening can come from simply putting oneself out there through regular sharing on social networks. In terms of benefit that might eventually result from this network building and helping others, the authors note how its often not first, but second or third level connections (as shown on LinkedIn) that get people jobs.

Chapter 5 - Pursue breakout opportunities
Two ideas out of this chapter are to look for networks of interesting people and to budget time for personal improvement... or network/relationship development.

Chapter 6 - Take intelligent risks
Interesting concept from this chapter was around developing a strategy of small risk taking to help prevent big risks from occurring or feeling so large... i.e. small fires prevent the large burn.

Chapter 7 - Who you know is what you know
Last chapter before the Conclusion contains the idea that it's the management of information that really counts (with LinkedIn Signal as a tool to use). Additionally noted is the value of being a go to person in a particular area... which brings to mind the aforementioned idea of going narrow in focus / competitive advantage development.

Overall it was an excellent read and the website Startup of You has an additional resources section which includes an executive summary of the book as well as PDF of LinkedIn usage tips.

"The Voodoo Wave" by Mark Kreidler

Written by ESPN writer and San Francisco area radio host Mark Kreidler, The Voodoo Wave was an entertaining book on Maverick's in all its forms... an extreme surf spot off the coast of Half Moon Bay, CA, collection of elite surfers who ride its waves and business venture.



Big wave surfing as a subject was very much in line with one of my favorite books from 2010, The Wave by Susan Casey, and while I thought the writing from Casey perhaps a bit more lyrical, Kreidler seems to have put in solid journalist legwork and provides a very interesting read.

The content about the surfing and surfers themselves was pretty riveting and included depictions of Maverick's surfing godfather Jeff Clark who first rode and then made known its waves, Grant Washburn and Chris Bertish. The business end of Maverick's was perhaps equally interesting with the tale of Keir Beadling, CEO of Mavericks Surf Ventures, and his efforts to create a profitable consumer brand out of the intended to be annual big wave surf contest.

While certainly not as inspiring as the surfers themselves, Beadling comes across in the book as a somewhat sympathetic character with his efforts to make a business while working with the dualities provided by the other people involved. As a direct partner with Beadling, there was Jeff Clark himself... who seemed a solid guy, but who wanted to both get paid and run things completely his way. To this end, Kreidler mentions Clark feeling a bit snubbed by the money and accolades accorded some involved in the excellent surfing documentary movie Riding Giants that he was heavily featured in. Additionally, there was the talent provided by the surfers actually competing in the contest, many of whom didn't mind the idea of making a living at it, but were focused on the love of big wave surfing and not necessarily winning (or even competing in if too corporate and not enjoyable) a big wave contest one day a year.

Definitely fascinating topics that Kreidler did a good job of covering both wide and narrow and quoted a few times in the book as someone else that's covered and published about Maverick's was San Francisco Chronicle writer Bruce Jenkins.

Writing from Across the Web - including Michael Mooney on bowler Bill Fong & Obituary of Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld

As I was posting earlier today on writing taken from Atlanta Magazine, The Daily Beast and FlipCollective, it occurred to me how many different places feature great writing.

With links provided via Twitter, stories from across the web are so much more accessible than in the past and I'm finding great work on sites such as TVFury and Noble Failures as well as those from freelance sports writer Brandon Sneed and Tampa Bay Times writer Michael Kruse.

To this concept of great writing I never would have found without Twitter, two brilliant pieces lately were from D Magazine and The Telegraph.

From the Dallas-area magazine came "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" by Michael Mooney. It's a remarkable look at recreational bowler Bill Fong and his efforts to bowl only the 22nd verified 900 series with back to back to back 300 games.

The Telegraph piece is an obituary with the synopsis "Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, who has died aged 88, escaped from Occupied France to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE); parachuted back on sabotage missions, he twice faced execution, only to escape on both occasions, once dressed as a Nazi guard." Yep, the rest of the piece is... like that.

Businessweek Pieces - on Workday, Nuance, MemSQL & Microsoft Surface Tablet

There's been several pieces of Businessweek writing that stood out lately with the largest a feature by Ashlee Vance on the Pleasanton, CA based company Workday. Titled "The Two Horsemen of the Enterprise Software Apocalypse" it's a detailed look at the fast growing company (and noted Oracle competitor) in the internal business and employee management software space.

Also from Vance recently was "Why Microsoft's Surface Tablet Shames the PC Industry" on the latest hardware entry from the technology giant and "Enterprise Technology: Revenge of the Nerdiest Nerds" on data center software company MemSQL.

Final BW piece from the last few weeks to note was the interesting "Why Nuance Is Giving It Away" by Olga Kharif. Nuance is a company I'd heard of years ago and they're now perhaps best known for providing the voice recognition software used in Siri by Apple.

Profound Writing - Cooper on Coming Out, Rehagen on New Fatherhood & Dinard on a Lifesaving Event

There's been a few different cases of excellent writing I've seen lately that all fit into the profound / important category.

Most recent was an e-mail from CNN Journalist Anderson Cooper that he allowed to be posted online. From Andrew Sullivan's news site The Daily Beast, Anderson Cooper: "The Fact Is, I'm Gay" features a very well written note from Cooper that concludes with "I still consider myself a reserved person and I hope this doesn’t mean an end to a small amount of personal space. But I do think visibility is important, more important than preserving my reporter’s shield of privacy."

On the Fatherhood topic I love to read and post on, a few days ago I came across the piece "Daddy Blues" by Tony Rehagen for Atlanta Magazine. It was very cool writing on something that can be both incredibly rewarding and difficult to deal with.

Finally, a very short piece with heft to it was "Toiling in Obscurity" for the site FlipCollective. Tom Dinard writes in it of a stopping a large display case from falling on a toddler. It's an emotional piece that's made all the more interesting with nobody noticing the lifesaving act made.

Excellent Investigative Writing - Harden on North Korean Prison, Friel on Unsolved Murders & Keefe on Drug Cartels

Three fairly recent pieces of writing I've seen share the commonality of being extremely well done work on painful topics. Stories were published in The New York Times, Outside Magazine and The Guardian... with that from The Guardian being a book excerpt since removed from the website.

The New York Times piece was by Patrick Radden Keefe and titled "Cocaine Incorporated" with the subtitle "How A Mexican Cartel Makes it's Billions". Keefe is noted as being a former policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and he wrote an incredibly detailed look at the drug trade and specifically Joaquín Guzmán, C.E.O. of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

Story from the July issue of Outside Magazine was also a thorough look at a difficult topic, but with the subject likely more chilling than Mexican drug cartels (less removed from most people's lives). "The Vanishing" by Bob Friel is about the large numbers of women who have been murdered or simply vanished over four decades in a remote area of British Columbia. It's captivating writing from the the author of The Barefoot Bandit: The True Tale of Colton Harris-Moore, New American Outlaw.

Final piece to note was a book except published in the British newspaper The Guardian (and since removed from the site due to copyright expiration). Written by Blaine Harden, the excerpt showed Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West to have remarkable writing in the sense that it showed the complete lack of humanity in a North Korean political prison camp. To use the same word as applied to the Friel story... just chilling content, and which is also written about in a Washington Post review of Harden's book.

"The $100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau

I recently finished reading The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau and thought it an excellent book about starting a business.



This is the second book I’ve read by Gillebeau with my finishing (and reviewing here) The Art of Non-Conformity a couple weeks ago. He comes across as a fascinating guy who seems to have a very solid personal approach (writes quite a bit of giving back) along with significant experience in world travel and small business (and product offer) creating.

The $100 Startup came out of an online workshop series that Guillebeau did called Empire Building Kit and the book a combination case study chronicle of people who built small businesses (with from one to five employees) that provide a living and Guillebeau’s thoughts on how to go about it.

A lot of additional content is available at Guillebeau’s $100 Startup website (or his overall site) but the concepts that struck me are below…

Initial business idea

Guillebeau writes about the book as being about freedom and value, with value coming from the idea of convergence... which he defines as the overlap between your passion and what others care about and will pay for. The import of consumer perception is hit repeatedly throughout the book as the intent is to offer a product or service that helps, but also something that people both view as needed and will pay for.

To the idea of need identification, Guillebeau writes about critical thinking on the part of the business owner as if someone thinks a need or gap exists, others probably do as well.

Offer availability

There's a lot of advice provided in the book, but some of the simplest and probably most important is to get your product or service out there and give people a way to pay for it. On the topic of offer creation, Guillebeau writes of the need to go specific and narrow (which is a theme I've written about others noting) and that you can't spend too much time trying to perfect the offer, have to just launch it. That launch (or offer availability) can be as simple as setting up a website (with WordPress being one way) and putting a PayPal account widget on it.

Also covered in the book is how the description of the offer should focus on core benefits (emotional) rather than technical features and that cost should come from consumer value provided, not time spent creating or providing the service. The offer and pricing models can include one off products, fixed period offers and recurring subscription business models... with it noted that there's a lot to the idea of creating something with an ongoing revenue stream from existing customers. All this said, Guillebeau repeatedly notes the basic idea of just getting starting... get that first sale and then go from there.

Examples & my take aways

It's both written by Guillebeau and obvious to a reader that a ton of research went into all the business examples provided (some briefly, some as longer case-study type profiles) and the ones that struck me as most interesting were in the area of information publishing (a good fit for someone like Guillebeau who travels as the business can by run from anywhere). Two were Brett Kelly and his Evernote Essentials book and Benny Lewis and his language hacking guides. Both businesses are portrayed as doing well, what I find myself most fascinated by is the idea of each guy simply selling through his respective website rather than something like Amazon. It could well be that they've done the research and just going through a created site by far the best way to go, it's just an interesting question to me.

All in all, it was an excellent book and has me both interested in learning more about Guillebeau's writing (both offers and otherwise) on his websites and continuing to think critically about writing I've done and the path I've taken to create it. To this point, I've viewed for a while now the book I've written as a being less of a final product and more something on a continuum... with there still being room for take aways from the writing (as well as writing process) and then something new out of it all.

Writing on Fathers - by Tommy Tomlinson & Baxter Holmes

Today being Father's Day, it seems only right that I've seen two great pieces of writing by sons about their fathers.

The first was from Charlotte based writer Tommy Tomlinson with "Father’s Day" on his dad who passed away 20 some years ago and the second "My Dad" from Baxter Holmes (who noted this essay helping him get hired at the L.A. Times).

Great pieces both... and which reminded me of some of the writing linked to a post "Writing on Fathers & Sons - from Thompson, Jones and McCann" I did a few months ago.

Businessweek writing - Ashlee Vance on TechShop, Brad Stone on Amazon & other pieces of note

It's been close to a month since I last posted on Businessweek writing and there's since been one feature and a number of smaller pieces that stood out as interesting.

The feature was by Ashlee Vance from the May 28 issue with "TechShop: Paradise for Tinkerers". I've been seeing a number of stories lately on manufacturing innovation and this definitely fit into the category with it being on the facility chain where members have access to expensive equipment to build things from plastic, wood, metal or other materials. Seems a compelling offering if someone (whether they be a hobbyist or entrepreneur) would get enough use to justify the $100/month membership cost.

It took a little bit of rooting around on the Businessweek site to find both the Vance story and other pieces as BW changed its site design, but eventually I came across the search by cover page and then tracked down the pieces below...

- "HP Innovation, One Pricey Giant Screen at a Time" on high-end product offerings (powered by Photon Engine software) in the area of large immersive displays. Interesting technology in a space sure to grow.

- "Apple, the Other Cult in Hollywood" about technology equipment and its product placement in television and film. Struck me as pretty remarkable that Apple "says it never pays for its products to appear on television or in movies."

- "Disney Bets on 'The Avengers' After 'John Carter'" on the various marketing efforts around The Avengers prior to opening day. Interesting both how important a movie's opening weekend is to its success and how much of a role Social Media plays in advance promotion.

- "Amazon vs. Publishers: The Book Battle Continues" is a longer piece than the prior three and looks at the concept of print on demand for book titles. It's solid writing from Brad Stone and is a fascinating topic as I've had excellent firsthand experience with the CreateSpace print on demand division of Amazon.

- "Hard Drives That Stretch to Infinity" on the huge and growing Cloud Computing market and offerings from large companies like Apple, Amazon and Google to smaller more established in Cloud storage market firms like Box and Dropbox.

Excellent ESPN Writing: by Saslow, Jones, Thompson, Friend & Wickersham

There's been a few pieces from ESPN over the past month that stood out as excellent writing on interesting topics.

The June 11 issue of ESPN The Magazine had two stories of particular note to me... one a feature by Eli Saslow and the other the Chris Jones back-page column. The Saslow piece was "One light will not go out" on freestyle skier Sarah Burke who passed away as a result of head trauma suffered Jan 10 while training in Utah. Burke's story is a pretty remarkable one and Saslow tells it extremely well. The Jones piece "Best Day Ever" is much shorter in being an 800 word column and tells of a day he spent with the Stanley Cup. Very cool stuff about the impact of the experience on both the writer and people he shared the Cup with in his small Ontario town.

Another recent ESPN piece that struck me as extremely well written was by Wright Thompson for the website. "A slow walk back to normal" was posted not long after it announced that the horse I'll Have Another wouldn't race in the Belmont Stakes. The piece is about the horse's trainer Doug O'Neil and is captivating in its expression of the disappointment he felt having his horse get so close to the Triple Crown (winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont), but then getting injured just prior.

Finally, the ESPN The Magazine NFL Draft Preview issue from a month ago had two solid features on compelling athletes. Tom Friend wrote "Third and gold" on ex Baylor and now Washington Redskins QB Robert Griffin III and "The Stanford predicament" was by Seth Wickersham about the #1 draft pick Andrew Luck and the also extremely talented linemen that protected him at Stanford last year. Excellent writing in both pieces on some seemingly grounded and ready to succeed football players.

"The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guillebeau

After learning about it from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (which I enjoyed quite a bit), recently finished reading The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau.



Really solid book by Guillebeau that has some excellent stuff around living and working and some of the things that stood out to me (which I may be restating for my own use) are the following:

The often harmful idea of working to live

Concept from Guillebeau is that too many people view work as a have-to-endure slog to achieve some distant future goal of then enjoying life. The opposing view he trumpets is that life short and someone should think of how they want to live and start doing that.

The often excellent idea of taking a different tack

Direction given in the book prologue is to "think for yourself instead of following the crowd" and follow on idea that it ok to dream of unrealistic things... even if they don't come to pass (and they could), usually no harm done. To this point, Guillebeau writes about the concept of worst case scenario planning and whether said worst case really enough to not do something considered (with this same idea in the Ferriss book).

Approaches to a work

Guillebeau notes that regardless of whether someone works for a boss or is self-employed, their best job security is own competence. As someone who has done well with self-employment, he describes it as self-reliance and notes that many businesses can be started very cheaply (and may not make someone rich, but perhaps enough to make a living)... an idea which almost certainly led to Guillebeau's recently released The $100 Startup book. In relation to working for others, he writes about someone hiring a boss rather than being hired by a company. Even if not taken as far as in the book example, there's still something of heft there around someone targeting the type of work desired to do.

Recommendations of additional resources to check out

People, books and websites noted by Guillebeau include the Anne Lamott book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, the Seth Godin blog (or his website), the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, Zen Habits by Leo Babauta, and Guillebeau's own Art of Non-Conformity website (which includes his "A Brief Guide to World Domination" document that led to the book).

Really a solid book overall from Guillebeau and an interesting life he's created for himself with his writing, speaking and teaching... all stemming from an unconventional approach towards his work and time. A final thing I found of interest was an anecdote told in the book Postscript about someone unsubscribing from Guillebeau's blog and leaving a "thanks for everything, but I need to go it alone now" note. Interesting story that to me hits on a point about how-to and self-help type books... just ruminating on them is good and well, but the import of action and forward movement (even if the destination not known) can't be overstated.

Esquire & GQ features: by Chris Jones, Jonathan Segura & Drew Magary

There were a few feature stories in the latest issues of GQ & Esquire that stood out as particularly interesting and worth remembering.

For Esquire, Chris Jones wrote "The Strange Thing About Bruce Jenner" on the 1976 Summer Olympic Decathlon Champion, known to a younger generation as the dad on the reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Best word to describe the piece and Jenner by extension is interesting... it's just interesting to read of someone who reached the pinnacle in an endeavour and has now completely pushed that aside to play a backseat role in what appears (at least in my mind) an illusory public life. Where the real interesting comes into play for me is how Jenner feels about it all. Because the Kardashian public life seems fleeting and vapid doesn't necessarily mean that actual life he leads is, so I can't help but read the piece and wonder whether Jenner satisfied and happy with what he's carved out for himself. He very well may be, just seems an interesting question...

The two GQ pieces of note from the recent issue different greatly from one another in the subjects covered, but both struck me as excellent writing in their own way. Higher on the profundity scale was "The Game of His Life" by Jonathan Segura about his now deceased neighbor, and passed along fandom of Manchester United football. Very heartfelt writing that works in the areas of relationships people can have both with one another and their team affiliation.

Also from this issue of GQ was a piece of writing from Drew Magary that stood out as a different than expected approach. "Man Up, Bieber" is a celebrity profile that reveals the bizarro world of Justin Bieber by detailing Magary trying to write an interesting profile of him. Someone could still like, dislike or have no particular opinion of Bieber as a person after reading the piece, but the overarching thing I took from Magary is what a strange, cloistered and contradictory (with control and impetuousness both at play) world an uber-famous 18 year old pop star lives in.

"Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon

Started and finished (about an hour cover to cover) yesterday the tremendously interesting book Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon.



Kleon appears to traffic somewhere in between being a writer and artist... with his website (which also links to Kleon's Tumblr page) containing the descriptions below:

"I’m a writer who draws." & "I’m a writer, artist, author, and speaker obsessed with the art of communicating with pictures and words on the web."

In terms of the book itself, Steal Like An Artist contains great ideas written down along with visuals to emphasize the points. Kleon in the beginning writes his view that all advice is autobiographical (usually intended for a younger self) and then gives 10 pieces of wisdom that are expanded upon throughout...



Kleon's 10 points are ones I've thought of, but which are fully formed within the book... and I particularly liked and have kicked around in my head the first two: "Don't wait until you know who you are to get started." & "Write the book you want to read."

Very cool stuff in the book that makes me interested in Kleon's other book Newspaper Blackout and learning more about him... like for instance through the article "Steal Like an Artist, A Night with Austin Kleon" on the blog The Contextual Life by Gabrielle Gantz.

"One Shot at Forever" by Chris Ballard

Finished yesterday reading One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season by Chris Ballard and found it an engaging and well written book.

I met Ballard at a book signing a few weeks ago and just prior to that came across his Sports Illustrated column "Memories that last forever" about the book (which is based on an SI feature from a few years ago) and one its main characters. Granted, I wanted to enjoy One Shot at Forever as I liked Ballard and knew so much about the book going in, but it really was an enjoyable read.

I'm always fascinated by the idea of writing that combines the elements of lyrical prose and solid reporting (hopefully on a topic of interest) and Ballard really brings these together in the book. The prologue and first chapter of the book were posted on Byliner and I was initially struck by the landscape description from Ballard in the very first words. After this, the book proceeds to spin an interesting tale that flows really well and which had to have been thoroughly reported to have the whole story. To this point, the combination of Ballard talking during the book signing about getting quotes used and his notes in the book show just how much work (including hours and hours of audiotape generated) he put into the whole process.

In terms of the story itself, the point of reference to the book is going to be the movie Hoosiers with its back in the day tale of small town high school sports, but there was a couple of additional things in the book (which might or might not make it into a more compressed view movies usually entail) I found of particular note.

One was the whole picture view that Ballard provided... with the lead-up to this particular season in question and also the 40 years later lookback for those involved. From one player wrapped up in the results to another remembering back every year on the way to MLB Spring Training, the people and events told of in the book certainly had a lasting impact on many.

The second and most profound thing that struck me from the book was Coach Lynn Sweet and his completely different than usual approach to the players (who he viewed as people able to make decisions) and the game's relative importance. The scene from the book that particularly showed how Sweet viewed the game of baseball and his players was him warming up the 9th grader during the game against Lane Tech of Chicago. Just a brilliant anecdote to include in the book and for me one of those cases of one segment summing up a dominant overall theme.

Really cool read and highly recommended.

Most Intriguing People on the "Time 100 Influential" List

The Time "100 Influential People in the World" issue published April 30th was of course populated with a veritable who's who list of movers, shakers and otherwise incredibly important people in the world.



Of these individuals, below are the fourteen (with the Time pieces hyperlinked) that stood out to me as particularly interesting and people I'd want to know more about (making this my sort of "Most Intriguing Within the 100 Most Influential" list)...

- Sara Blakely: founder of Spanx - According to an earlier vignette in this issue, the world's youngest self-made female billionaire at 41 ... if that's not interesting, I don't know what is.

- Christian Marclay: artist behind the 24-hour long clip film "The Clock" - Sounds to be a fascinating movie and both it and Marclay are featured in "The Hours" by Daniel Zalewski for The New Yorker.

- Salman Khan: founder of Khan Academy - Remarkable story of free education tutorial videos from a guy whose work featured in both a Businessweek profile and Fast Company Most Creative People in Business list.

- E.L. James: writer of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy books - An author having the top four spots, including a 50 Shades box set, on the current New York Times Fiction Bestseller List is nothing if not interesting.

- Louie C.K.: comedian - Known for doing things completely his own way both creatively and in business with his television show Louie and self-produced and sold online comedy specials.

- Ben Rattray: founder of change.org - The site which helps enable social change became much more well-known earlier this year with its petition asking for prosecution of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin.

- Ann Patchett: author / bookstore owner - It I'm sure helps her cause to be a best-selling author, but was a cool story of Patchett seeing her hometown of Nashville, TN being without an independent bookseller and as a result, opening Parnassus Books.

- Barbara Van Dahlen: Runs the nonprofit organization Give An Hour devoted to assisting with the mental health of veterans and their families. Seems a great mission and reminds me of the Joe Klein cover story "The New Greatest Generation" for Time.

- Hans Rosling: Became known for a 2006 TED talk on worldwide socio-economic development told through statistical models... now with 4 millions views on the TED site.

- Walter Isaacson: Biographer who wrote both the bestselling Steve Jobs (which I reviewed here) and similarly acclaimed works on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.

- Erik Martin: 33 year old general manager of the site Reddit, which I first heard about a Jason Fagone piece for Wired written about in this blog post.

- Cecile Richards: The leader of Planned Parenthood and responsible for providing health care and advocating rights for many women in need nationwide.

- Virginia Rometty: IBM CEO who has helped the company to its current position of financial strength and (as the Time piece on her states) she's someone known for pushing the company in the area of corporate responsibility.

- Hillary Clinton: Someone who has obviously lived many lifetimes in terms of her influence and has by almost all accounts done an exemplary job as U.S. Secretary of State.

Business Topics of Interest (& Companies) Written On So Far

Since self-publishing a few months ago my blog compilation book, I've been thinking about its content... basically ruminating on what exactly I've been writing about for these last four-odd years.

The book was segmented into six segment areas (1. Writing 2. Work 3. Sports 4. Business 5. Everything else & 6. Book reviews) and of these, Business in particular can be segmented down further into sub-segments. To this whole "identifying business topics posted on idea", I've actually done it previously... with posts (hyperlinked below) on the following areas:

1. Workplace culture (which at least for me includes the area of customer service)

2. Touch-screen technology

3. Social media

4. Business concepts of "special" & "simplicity"

5. Cloud computing (linked here is the tag search result)

Well, it's been a few years and few hundred blog posts since many of these business topic area posts, so it's probably high time to look again at interesting (you know, to me) business topics posted on. All of the above areas still hold true to me as important and interesting and there's a few new concepts I've posted on that seem to carry a bit of heft:

6. Business tools (particularly data analytics) – There's a lot of fascinating work being done in the areas of big data as well as business tools with some of the companies involved that I've written on here including Tableau Software, Palantir, HP (through Autonomy & Vertica acquisitions), Tibco Software, Clearstory Data and Asana (less data analytics and more business productivity for Asana).

7. Information availability and dissemination – This to me is the step beyond Social Media to more purposeful information sharing (yea, just social is still sharing, but I'm thinking about more productive purposes (and including education in the mix). Organizations I've posted on that come to mind first are Twitter (allows for instant feedback and sharing of opinion), LinkedIn, Amazon (customer opinion sharing), Salesforce, TED, and Khan Academy.

8. True innovation – There are some very interesting and pretty revolutionary things being done in business today with companies and concepts I've noted previously including Rearden (business incubator started by Steve Perlman that includes DIDO wireless technology... with Perlman being someone that's talked of the need for true business innovation), Augmented reality (Google glasses and Layar as examples), and Manufacturing innovation (with 3D printing, DNA fold origami and Pacific Biosciences having been written about here).

9. Written delivery of information – This business topic (with a Time cover story on it noted in this post) screams Amazon with its delivery innovation as well as gorilla in the room heft needed to push said innovation.

10. Innovation in sports – I've written about and linked to a lot of solid sports writing on this blog, but what fascinates me in relation to sports business is technical innovation (with much of it designed to enhance fan experience (and consequently sell more stuff). Some of the companies I've blogged about include MLB Advanced Media, Pac-12 Conference (headquartered in San Francisco), Sportvision and its FIELDf/x system of cameras, Cisco and Red Bull (particularly through its Red Bull Media House).

11. User interface - It's a fascinating topic (and one somewhat linked to that of "special" noted above), this idea of how a product or service is built to be used by consumers. Along these lines, there's companies I find that do exceptionally well in some areas of business that seem to falter when it comes to user interface. Examples of this include Amazon (how their Kindle for iPhone app doesn't seem to allow searching through the Amazon catalog), Twitter (feels like it offer better options around retweeting and sorting feeds) and Netflix (with it's insistence on pretending a title simply doesn't exist if not currently available in the streaming catalog). Again, all good companies and services... but, ones who could have better user interfaces (and corresponding user experiences).

12. Interesting products - It's a bit of a catch-all category to be sure, but I've tried to write about here companies creating products or services that have a new approach towards existing business areas. Some companies I've previously noted here are Square, Nest (for their thermostat), Airbnb, and Kickstarter.

With all of these business areas now noted, it occurs to me that I've also written about a few interesting approaches to business...

13. Narrow market targeting and entry - The idea was written about by Evan Williams (linked to in this blog post) and focused product targeting and entry is basically a company figuring out the smallest possible problem possible (going narrow) and going after that.

14. Creating brand new markets - Concept is deciding what you would buy and creating a product from that and a front of mind example of a company creating markets that didn't exist previously is Apple. As was written about in a Businessweek piece I linked to in this post, it creates a situation of difficulty for competitors because consumers will likely stick with the company that created the market unless there's a truly revolutionary alternative product.

There's certainly much more that could be written about each of these companies and concepts, but lots of interesting things going on in business.

"I Suck at Girls" by Justin Halpern

I recently finished reading I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern and thought it a good book, not great, but pretty good.



Halpern previously wrote the hilarious Sh*t My Dad Says, an extremely fast read that's probably one part author memoir and four parts quotes from his gruff, profane and loving father. The new book has the content equation flipped with it being much more of a memoir around Halpern's adventures and failures with girls. Definitely still included is his dad, but in story rather than quote form and much more of a secondary focus than in the first book.

One thing that did strike me from this latest effort was mention at the start of the book of how just a few years ago, Halpern was a struggling screenwriter who created a twitter feed to post his dad's quotes and "within two months had more than a half a million followers, a book deal with a major publisher and a TV deal." Pretty sweet career ascendancy to be sure, but (even though Halpern couldn't have known this would occur) seemed to me that it came from him writing something interesting with commercial appeal. The idea of slaving away at a craft people couldn't possibly understand is one way a writer could view their work, but this alternate "interesting with commercial appeal" that Halpern came up with... that's the cool career move.

To this idea of writing about something that will resonate with others, Halpern's dad is no doubt entertaining, but (as mentioned earlier) also someone easy to like. He comes across as a loving father who allows his kids plenty of room to become their own people. Not to over-mythologize, but Halpern's father bring to mind for me a "writing on raising kids" post I did last month, with included John Jeremiah Sullivan story quote...

"We don’t need to go crazy with guilt and worry about our children. We’re not responsible for them. For their upbringing, yes, but not for their existence. Destiny wants them here. It uses us to put them here."

All in all, I'd highly recommend the book Sh*t My Dad Says and if someone enjoys that, they could do much worse than reading I Suck at Girls.