Last week Saturday, I made my way down to the DIA to see the Van Gogh exhibit. While the Van Gogh exhibit was nice, it was not the highlight of my day nor did it inspire the colorfulness I’ve sought from the world after leaving the museum. I’ve been meaning to write this post everyday since, so bare with me if I fail to connect or articulate how empowered I felt after leaving the DIA.

My day’s surprise came when I walked onto the main floor and saw the Shirin Neshat exhibit. Her abundance of creativity was on full display through her videos, photography and poems. I was really taken back by her work. 

I was specifically taken back by a poem or passage from her video; which I’ve tried hard to find during my sitting writing this post but was unable to. So forgive me but I did write my interpretation after reading it and experiencing the remainder of the exhibit. If you know the origin of it, please let me know. I assume it came from her work of Rebellious Silence. 

Rebellious

In life, we’re all oppressed by society, until we find our way in society.

I didn’t stop there, as her work channeled my inner poet.

Art Sale-Person

Artist are the best sales people. They have to convince people their work is art and beautiful and a lot of times it is done without words.

Art is Subjective

Art is anything that you can describe through expression.

My writing didn’t stop after leaving the DIA. After a few stops (favorite coffeeshop & growing on me burger joint), I made my way to Eastern Market to the X Games to the Detroit event. I’ve to admit that I stereotyped the event’s crowd before going but again was taken back but this time by the diversity. There were all ages and cultures in attendance to watch Skateboarders, Rollerbladers, BMX Riders show off their art by performing tricks, grinding poles and being fearless on a Half-Pipe. The event was centered around a group’s effort to convince ESPN to bring the X Games to Detroit. A centerpiece of the event was the trailer that the group submitted to ESPN. The video did nothing short of embrace the hidden beauty in Detroit, while allowing these extreme sport artist to show off their work. 

X Games Detroit TRAILER from XGamesDetroit on Vimeo.

A great video by the folks at The Work.

The diversity in this crowd only made me think about how many were missing out of this opportunity. I wondered are businesses aware of the diversity in this community. Here are just some one liners I jotted down during my time at the event. — A Day in Art

Find your community, they exist and are meeting up right now.

Your community is more diverse than you think.

If you will not participate, you fail to innovate.

About to dive into some jQuery & JS and then work on the designs of an app idea that brewing in my head for a week now

idonethis:

The popular depiction of the CEO is the titan of industry who rules with an iron fist. The CEO’s will is the employees’ command.

Not so at Supercell, a remarkable Finnish company that’s making $2.5 million dollars every day and described as “the fastest growing company ever.” Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, calls himself “the world’s least powerful CEO”, and that’s not the surprising part. What’s incredible is that Paananen made himself a weak CEO by design:

As its name implies, Supercell is organized as a collection of small, independent teams called cells tasked with developing new games or building new deep features for existing games. Cells are given complete autonomy in terms of how they organize themselves, prioritize ideas, distribute work and determine what they ultimately produce.  Describing himself as the “world’s least powerful CEO”, Ilkka encourages cells to exercise extreme independence and prides himself on having no creative control over them once they are constituted. The company as a whole is merely an aggregation of these cells; a Supercell.

The only thing to say is that it’s working. Their organization and philosophy is letting this team of 100 take on the behemoths at Zynga, which has 30 employees to every 1 employee at Supercell.

The organizational and cultural design decision was purposeful: Supercell’s founders had witnessed first-hand “the downfall of too many companies that had turned into bloated, bureaucratic behemoths with many design studios in multiple time zones requiring massive management overhead and crushing hierarchies to coordinate.”

If it’s hard to fathom how an economic miracle could result under the leadership of a weak boss, consider another organization that designed its CEO to be powerless: the United States. The founders of America purposely set up the government to have a weak CEO, compared with Europe’s monarchs.

Having experienced misguided local tax policy decreed by a head of state thousands of miles away, the founders pushed decision-making authority out to a federated constellation of state governments, local governments, small groups of people, and individuals. That structure set the stage for the American economic miracle.

I love Grantland.com for articles like this; which is a must read to get context to this post.

The Evolution of King James — How LeBron James Transformed Game to Become Highly Efficient Scoring Machine.

I was just talking with my friends, on how it seems like LeBron realized that he can be unstoppable; which in reality and from this article, means he’s more efficient. When you’re efficient at anything, it always looks like you’re dominate and at times unstoppable. Take Apple for example: During 2007 - 2011, they were on a run where we all thought the world would be iEverything.

I think finding your efficient level is the key indicator to someone or thing looking unstoppable once in motion. Meaning, once your startup is off the ground with a business model and making money on said business model, your next step is to find the efficiency level for which you best operate on. This includes all aspects of the company, not just sales. LeBron is an efficient scorer but also an efficient passer and defensive player. It wasn’t until all things were working together and not in isolation, when people were like “WOW!!!, I think he figured it out”. So if sales and everything else are booming but you have a very inefficient product development cycle, you will not be at your peak performance level. VentureBeat had an article about Tibco; which details them about having great technology and a rocking culture but a sales missteps didn’t allow them to get to their true efficient/ peak performance level (http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/tibco/). This seems like the problem with Apple now. They don’t seem to be as dominate and unstoppable as before; which could be by design but I doubt it. The management shakeup and recent hiccups with Maps and Siri, shows that Apple is not as efficient as it once was.

I believe when your efficiency level is found, you take nothing for granted. As LeBron mentions is the reason he has transformed into the player he is now. When you work at being great and the best you can be, you find out who you are and what works the best. You also find out who you are not and what doesn’t work. You exclude what you’re not and what doesn’t work from the equation and focus on the variables that work for you. Only you can stop you, once you find your efficiency level that gets you to peak performance.

Snow Storm in Chi-Town

Yesterday the internet was set on fire after the verdict from Apple vs Samsung trial. As usual you have your fanboys on both sides arguing their case. As, I’m not an Apple fanboy, just a buyer of the best product on the market, I’ve decided to weigh in.

There are clearly a couple of things most people have an issue with in this case and all are no reason to be mad at Apple. 

1. Design - It has been stated over and over by people that Apple shouldn’t be able to patent hardware and software design; which is why these same people believe they lost their trial against Microsoft in the 90s. I believe Apple lost that trial because they waited to late and by that time; which was years in, people had a hard time believing the novelty of a computer UI was something to copy but rather a standard to implement. This is why Apple since Jobs return in 97, has made it their mission to put design first and foremost. They have built the company since 97 on design because it’s the one thing, that truly distinguishes a product upon appearance. This is why that went after Samsung early, as they didn’t want to give people time to infuse the two.

No, Apple did not win the right to have a rectangle. Clearly Palm, Blackberry and a couple other smartphone makers from earlier in the 2000s have been doing this but Apple did win because Samsung blatantly copied the look and feel of their rectangle. 

2. Innovation - If anything, this verdict will spur innovation in the smartphone space. I personally can’t wait to start seeing different UIs and hardware models. After the iPhone in 2007, everything has pretty much looked the same. It has really become boring. I applauded Microsoft for what they did with Windows Phone/Mobile from a UI perspective. It shows the possibilities when you think outside the box and try to innovate and now their Windows OS is going in the same direction. We don’t know the possibilities with hardware because no one has taken the risk to introduce something truly different or revolutionary, since 2007. 

Look what FrogDesign has done with the UI of Android, that no other OEM has even attempted to do. http://www.frogdesign.com/work/sharp-aquos.html

3. Patents - The Patent System is clearly broken and needs change; which is why there is a bill on the Senate floor right now for that. I personally don’t agree with software patents but I’m in huge favor of design and utility patents. Those are the patents that don’t stifle innovation and force companies to be creative and innovative when building their products. Companies should definitely have to license patents that infringe on these two, as these are the areas where the most and hardest work is done because these are the areas that are most transparent to the consumer. 

For all the talk and comments, I’ve seen and read from people, I’ve not heard of any more pressure put onto Congress on this issue. I’ve not heard one politician say “I’m pushing this issue because my constituents have been urging me to do something about it”. We did something about SOPA and PIPA but have done nothing about patent reform. So, I fail to really hear anyone out on this stance if they’re not actively trying to pursue a change. I’ve not seen one sign up or online petition on HN, Reddit or any of the other internet darling pushing this issue.  

Conclusion

I think people need to stop taking such an interest in this, as Apple is only doing whats best for them, within the law that we all follow and are not trying to change. We all do whats best for us. An even though we’re not companies and they’re suppose to be held to a greater accountability, I think that’s a greater reason for them to do so, as they adhere to shareholders; which are people. So if you have a problem, have it with the Shareholders Dilemma. 

(Source: Apple_vs_Samsung)

I love to see innovation in old industries and economies that have been dominated by a few players in the space or old methodologies. This is why I bought my latest pair of glasses from Classic Specs and Warby Parker, contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for Pebble, bought a Roku and contributed to Simple.TV’s Kickstarter campaign.  I really love the breakthrough in both technology and design by the guys at Ministry of Supply. That’s why I’ll have to contribute to their Kickstarter campaign. Here’s to making business look so good, has never been so easy.

(Source: ministryofsupply.com)

I’m a big fan of Tim Ferriss. His book The 4 Hour Workweek, is one of the few books that I’ve read in entirety. Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about his book The 4 Hour Body, and yesterday I decided to buy it. I’ve to say, I pretty excited to read it, as I’ve recently started a diet and workout regiment of my own. A lot of which was taken from his blog; which I’m subscribed to. 

(Source: mindset)