Over the years I’ve bought into the idea that innovation is the most important thing a company can have. That’s why you need to know why manhole covers are round to get a job at Microsoft. I for one had to build a catapult out of common office supplies at Electronic Arts. We are told as programmers and designers that if we don’t have a constant flow of ideas rushing through our heads, we might as well be serving fries for a living.
Luckily, I’m overstocked with ideas. Every time I get a brainstorm, I’d corner my wife to tell her all about how I’m going to CHANGE THE INDUSTRY with this idea I came up with 5 seconds ago. Recently after suffering through another one of my Doc Brown-like neural spazzes, Sara reminded me of all the projects I haven’t been able to get through because of all these ideas I’ve been having. There was the screencast series, the local theatre ticketing system, and scores of novels and plays that just never got finished. She said they were great ideas, but I needed to follow through some of them first.
When she was going through PDP (BC’s teacher training program) one of her advisors told her that not all of her lessons needed to be completely original. Teachers work every night to plan their next day. Most will strive to find the most creative way to teach the material, but sometimes you have to take a lesson out of an activity book or adapt a worksheet from the internet, otherwise you’ll burn out. The important thing is that the lesson is there for the kids that morning, not that you’ve reinvented the wheel.
Nowhere is this advice more important than in the tech industry. We are so concerned with creating the next big thing that we forget that execution is important too. We call the leaders of our industry “innovators”, but we’re really praising them for a proper recital of yesterdays ideas.

SEO marketers, Mortgage brokers, and business people everywhere! Lend me your ears, for I come to tell you how NOT to market on the internet.

There are so many blogs on how to market online, how to find your spirit, how to “crush it” these days.There’s no way that all of these techniques could work all of the time. There are ways not to market on the internet. Why else would there be an extension called adblock?  It all sounds too good to be true. If it was all true, we wouldn’t be hovering around 12 percent unemployment right now. You could just put your resume on google adsense and some giant conglomerate would take care of your career needs for all time.

So let’s think about this. Can you think of a time whenever you’ve been sold something while surfing and have been completely disengaged? I can think of a few. Some banner ads have been pure eye cancer for me. If I ever receive a facebook message that starts with “Dear Friend,” I know somebody wants to talk to me about my mortgage, which I already bought and am making payments quite regularly, thank you very much. Those especially get on my nerves.

I don’t my being sold stuff on Facebook, especially from my friends, but would it kill anybody to leverage all this personal information I’ve got out there? If you want to get at my money, it would help to look me in the eye first. Business is about finding pain and alleviating it for money. How about finding my pain instead of causing it?

So in summation: Mass Facebook messages = How not to Market on the internet. Does anyone else know any bad online marketing ideas?

Submitted for your approval: 54 vintage breakfast cereals.

I remember eating so many bowls of these things, or at least watching so many of their commercials. Sugar breakfast cereals were kind of a tradition in my family growing up. Not an every day occurrence, of course. A sugar cereal was always a special treat. Every time we’d head down to the cabin at Birch Bay we’d head over to the grocery store in Blaine. My brother, my sister and I each got to pick one sugar cereal we’d be able to eat for the rest of the vacation. Even now that I’m grown up I’ll still pick up a box of Captain Crunch while I’m staying at the cabin.

Still, the line-up of cereals has gotten so sparse now. General Mills is pretty much the only maker of branded cereals these days since Ralston sold their brands to them in 1994. A lot of the sweeter cereals were discontinued. The rest of the cereal aisle is taken up by generic look-a-likes with razor thin profit margins like “Fruit rings” or “Fortune Marshmallows”. Blech.

Why does breakfast have to be this way?

What if we took some of those generic look-a-likes and branded them like the cereals of yore? I’m not talking about a large scale operation. These would be limited run cereals, with box art and characters that people will drive for miles and pay a premium for them. Who wouldn’t want to take a bite of a Penny Arcade cereal or Carl Sagan’s “Astronomo’s”? You might be able to find people who would pay for the privilege of eating their own custom cereal from a box of their own design.

The time has come for a cafepress of food. The cost of food processing must be so cheap these days. Custom shapes would be nice, but I’m not thinking of something complicated like a 3D food printer (as awesome as that would be). That one star shape was used by WWF, GI joe, and the Swedish Chef. You could just give people a range of shapes to start off with. Customization is the very soul of the internet age. Why should breakfast be any exception?