"I think luck is the sense to recognize an opportunity and the ability to take advantage of it. Every one has bad breaks, but every one also has opportunities. The man who can smile at his breaks and grab his chances gets on." Samuel Goldwyn

"I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern." Thomas Jefferson

"Why and how are words so important that they cannot be too often used." Napoleon

BBC Essex is celebrating pirate radio. The golden days of off shore wireless remembered. A flashback worth the bandwidth. Listen live to Pirate BBC Essex.

Casey McKinnon writes Give us credit in the Guardian...
"Now that the excitement over reality TV is dying down, a new budget-saving television revolution is upon us: internet video reruns. Later this year, many stations across America will be launching shows featuring some of the most popular web videos you've already seen. They'll also be screwing the producers of those videos – people like me - out of royalties, recognition and more." The entire piece here.

Bonus: Speaking of video, here's a performance vid wherein Kate gets all Derrida. She makes reference to The Truth in Painting by Jacques Derrida an excellent text on art, history and context.

The new Gibson is a fine read. Highly recommended. Amazon info here.

Making the plan

From What and Why to How

When your one-on-one meetings are done the homework begins. Review your meeting notes and search for patterns. Key words, concepts, ideas, attitudes, history, complaints, reservations, suggestions, perceptions, values, beliefs. A careful study of your notes will provide a summary of insights. The approach is to take notes on your notes, create an outline, key here is immersion in the detail - study, reflect, distill.

The process works. Years ago my research mentor Jim Yergin suggested data immersion as one beginning to understanding. He taught us to start with the Arbitron book, a calculator, a yellow legal pad and a pencil. The task was to study every page of the book. When we finished we would write a summary, an abstract, top line findings.

WHY

The question we would ask about each finding was why. What was going on here? Using multiple data points (three or more books of the same quarter - i.e., Spring books) we were able to test a finding, recognize patterns by noting replication. By the end of the exercise we had a feeling for the data, we were able to see through the numbers and come to some deeper practical understanding. At this point we were able to create a working hypothesis, make informed judgments. This is the start of creating a solution set. Listen, watch, observe, think, reflect, constantly ask why?

Homework complete it's time to set a group meeting.

More next time. Have a great weekend.