One things we come back to time and time again is a small, oft chance meeting in 02011 at a NewsFoo session.
We were lucky enough to be invited to a few NewsFoo events over the years. Hosted in Phoenix Arizona at the Walter Cronkite school of journalism, this was a few days of workshops, sessions, talks and brainstorming on the topic of the future of news and technology. Hosted by Google, O’Reilly, Knight Foundation and (maybe others?), about 100 or so people gathered to learn from each other.
One session we attended has stuck firmly in our heads ever since. David Carr, a New York Times journalist was hosting a session call Wide-screen Ambition. Amongst the many things discussed, we talked about his early attempts at video blogging, or vlogging. The NYT wasn’t setup for this sort of journalistic output (yet), but he could see where things were heading and was giving it a try. He created something he called a “whisper room”, a makeshift closet recording studio at the office. That enabled him to record audio or video in a semi-private and semi-quiet space. He was certainly figuring it all out as he was going along, and that’s what struct us.
To put things in context, YouTube started in 02005 (only 6 years earlier), instagram started in 02010 (less than a year before), Vine started in 02012 (a year later) and TikTok didn’t exist until 02016 (5 years later). Video content on the web wasn’t easy, nor was it as ubiquitous as it is today!
He openly admitted his content was crap, but he wasn’t pretending or apologetic. He thought of these experiments like flexing a muscle. That first time you go to the gym, it is intimidating and you won’t be good. So most people avoid it, but if you can get over that first hurdle, you’ll improve. The first attempts at video blogging were just like anyone’s first gym visit: a horrible train-wreck of an experience. If you keep going back and working those muscles, soon you see an improvement.
The only way to improve is to keep at it. We’ve kept this in mind over the last 10 years. There are plenty of things we’re not good at (yet) that we do. Rather than thinking of it as a failure, we think of it as flexing our muscles to get better. Everyday, we go to the “gym” and fail, so we can improve.
That has helped us to write and talk about the company and ideas publicly. We’re always improving and getting feed back, honing the idea or message. Sure, there have been some duds and places where we could improve, but at the time, that was the best we could do. Your standards of “quality” are always shifting with our abilities.
“Working the muscles” has also humbled us. Now, when we see other people work and it isn’t that good, or missed the mark, rather than dismissing the work, we think twice and wonder if this is just an early example of a “gym session”. With enough time and practice, will this person/project be go somewhere?
Do be afraid to get started, and don’t be afraid of publishing. Everything you do is another trip to the gym to flex those muscles. With time and hard work, it can only improve.
BERG London Muscle flexes
Everything is clear in hindsight. BERG London morphed into BERG Cloud, then sadly shutdown. Along that journey, when looking back, you can see them flexing their muscles (and many times they did without making it public!). One of the first products they created was the Here & There Map, which is now in the MoMA’s permenant collection. During a BERG Weeknote, they mentioned how much they learnt about handling cardboard tubes and how bad the dust was for you. This was them going to the gym and learning about production, warehousing, fullfillment and more. Later they produced a comic book style story called SVK. Again, a trip to the gym to learn more about production, fullfillment, marketting and more. This time they needed to replace any of the non-working UV Flashlights they provided – so learning more about customer service, recalls, replacements and repairs. All this muscle flexing was helping them get the infrastruture in place for their move to create Little Printer and BERG Cloud.
Looking back, it was obvious that you don’t just start with trying to create, manufacture and sell a complicated project. Ideally, you take it in small steps learning along the way. Sometimes that’s more out in the open than anyone recognizes.