Check out this cool how-to video on creating a twitterbot without any programming. It was put together by frinkey.com and I'm proud to say, inspired in part by my code-less NPRbackstory hack.

If you're familiar with NPRbackstory and want to know how it was put together, you can't do better than with this online tutorial.

1. Applicants don't have to meet obscure grant requirements, jump through hoops, or even be held accountable for the money they receive. This means that if someone is inspired by a particular idea, they don't need to compromise that idea to meet some seemingly irrelevant application criteria or foundation obligation. This ability to follow one's own muse results in a high variability in submissions, a diversity of applicants, and a sense of freedom that can be inspirational.
2. The Awesome Foundation is the only philanthropy that enables people to form their own philanthropy. There is something about the idea of the Awesome Foundation that is contagious. Its openness, lack of formal structure and small consensus-oriented team size allow micro-foundations to be easily replicated. This deeper sense of individual ownership over the giving process could be a powerful motivator towards larger-scale social good.
3. The focus is on funding individuals to get things started that they wouldn't otherwise start. There is latent awesome idea potential in all of us - the snag appears to be getting off our ass and executing on it. So the Awesome Foundation's mission is to help you introduce awesome into the world. Not the continuation of mediocre stuff. More awesome.
4. There is no hard and fast definition of what is awesome. Each micro-trustee brings a different definition and evaluation criteria, and this diversity of opinion permits surprise and delight inside each friendly monthly debate
5. Awesomeness is, well, awesome. Most of the world is structured to encourage the creation of lowest common-denominator crap. Crap results from ideas being evaluated on their broad appeal, practicality, proven track record, or predictability of outcome. Awesomeness instead is about novelty, surprise, excellence, uniqueness, and wild and risky ideas. If we're going to fix the world's really big problems, we are going to need more wild and risky ideas.

At PopTech last week, I was fortunate to hear author Anthony Doerr reading his essay Butterflies on a wheel. Below is the recording. If you enjoy this, I encourage you to check out his website, read this piece and learn more about his writings.

The Awesome Foundation is a simple idea. We support people doing awesome things in the world. Every month we give out a $1,000 of our money to an idea we think is awesome and should be released upon the world.

Yes, but what do you think is awesome?
Awesomeness is more the product of a creator’s passion than the prospect of audience or profit. Awesome creations are novel and non-obvious, evoking surprise and delight. Invariably, something about them perfectly reflects the essence of the medium, moment, or method of creation. Awesome things inspire and attract.

Here's how we support more awesome:

1. You apply by writing a few sentences about your awesome but unrealized idea. There are absolutely zero restrictions on who can apply and what sort of idea could win.
2. If we like your idea, we give you $1000. Possibly in a brown paper bag.
3. There are no strings attached or hoops you have to jump through. Of course, we hope you'll execute on your idea, but, you know, whatever.

Lots of people have been asking to find out more about the Awesome Foundation. Here's some background.

• Apply
• Awesome Foundation Blog (read about past winners)
• Interview with Maximumfun.org
• Read the press
• Learn about the founding of the Awesome Foundation.

Every day brings an avalanche of new ideas and novel creations to the web, from witty t-shirts and viral videos to innovative methods of collaboration and powerful new software. The creation of unique and interesting things is not new, but the current surge in individual creative activity and its subsequent high visibility on the web is unprecedented.

The most compelling of these creative products I have been referring to as The New Awesome, and they represent a tiny portion of the total creative output. Historically, the word "awesome" might have been used to describe the power of a tornado or the grandness of a majestic vista. Today, the word is more often used to qualify the ingenious or impressive products of personal creativity, such as using hairspray to launch a potato 200 yards, hosting a talk show in Halo 2, or mocking the Kansas school board’s ruling with an ingenious take on religion.

But there’s more to the New Awesome than merely creative flair. The most interesting and, well, awesome creative products seem to share some common characteristics:

1. It is novel and non-obvious
   Nothing like it has really quite been done before. Whether a clever approach, an unforseen bending of the rules, or just a commitment to excellence far beyond the expected, the New Awesome never fails to evoke surprise and delight.
2. It emerges from passion, without the prospect of audience or profit
   From the first encounter, it's clear that the creator felt compelled to make this. Recognition or revenue is icing on the cake.
3. It is initially under the cultural radar
   The New Awesome invariably emerges from the depths of the long tail. While the creator might be previously known for their creations, your mom has never heard of them.
4. It captures the essence of the medium, moment, or method
   For something to truly stand out in the sea of creativity, the creator needs to tap into something true and magical. Don't ask me to define it, because I can't. In the words of Justice Potter Stewart, you know it when you see it.
5. It evokes passion, community, like-minded behavior, and the insatiable desire to pass along
   The New Awesome is meme fodder. From it springs a thousand remixes, knockoffs, spinouts, and analogs. People gather around the hem of awesome.

An interesting result of this creative surge is the rising importance of effective discovery and distribution of the best creative products. In other words, when there is a rising sea of mediocrity, how do we find and highlight the very best? Alas, this will have to be the subject of a future post.

I recently launched a fun project as a bit of a small-scale experiment at the clever site kickstarter.com.

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and endeavors through online collective support. Individuals get rewards in exchange for backing a project, and no one is committed unless a project gets all the support it needs.

The Open Business Cards experiment uses Kickstarter to help fund the creation of 100 Creative Commons licensed background images for anyone to use for free. As part of the project, up to 10 packs of mini business cards will be created using the images and distributed as part of an exclusive run.

The idea was inspired in part by MOO MiniCards, which let you put custom photos on the back of high quality mini business cards. Since MiniCards come in packs of 100 and you can upload up to 100 custom images, I thought it would be fun to create a pack with every card you hand out being unique and open.

Before initiating this project, I had begun to create a library of textural background images from my iPhone. This was inspired by the discovery that if you power off your iPhone with the camera app running, you'll get an impromptu close-up shot when you next turn it on. This is usually a shot of a table surface, the ground, your shoes - many of which provide interesting textural backgrounds.

I have shot 53 photos so far (as of this post). I will open up the licensing of this photo set once I have shot 99 acceptable background photos.

At the VRM West Coast Workshop on May 15, I briefly presented The Six Key Traits of the proposed VRM ListenLog project. Each trait distinguishes the technology from a straightforward, local log file. Each differentiator is critical in highlighting what makes the ListenLog concept so powerful.

Listen to the bad audio while you click through the two slides. What could be a more informative way to spend six minutes?

My NPRbackstory experiment got some press this week when Josh Benton from Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab published an in-depth piece on the utility. Josh and I had discussed the project last fall, right before I started working for NPR (the utility was cooked up as a homegrown effort to play with the API and is not officially endorsed by NPR). More recently, he saw an interesting backstory piece pop up on the Kentucky Derby and plumbed his own archives. I'm particularly excited by his focus on how the tool extracts value from existing news archives.

The piece ended up getting attention from Techmeme, Waxy.org, Christian Science Monitor, Journalism.co.uk, Poynter Online, and others.

And of course I'm grateful for all the positive mentions on twitter... and for my employer not pulling my API key when they found out what I had done ;-)

Update (June 7, 2009): Great coverage of NPR's forward thinking digital strategy highlighting NPRbackstory from Mashable and CBS News (Monday Note).

I enjoy the Podcasts from SXSW, but on the current 2009 SXSW website, you can't actually subscribe to a podcast feed and have them automatically download in iTunes.

In order to fix this problem, I created a Yahoo! Pipe that finds the mp3 file under each item and then reconstructs a feed that includes the audio file as a podcast enclosure.

You can subscribe to the feed using the options below.

 Subscribe to SXSW Podcasts in a reader

...or subscribe via iTunes.

Here are the latest three entries in the feed:

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I recently had an enormous amount of fun working with Jesse Thorn from The Sound of Young America radio program putting together a panel for this year's Public Media Conference. Truth be told, he did all the hard work. I mostly adjusted microphones and fetched sandwiches. I can, however, take credit for helping come up with the original idea...

Most entrenched broadcasters are so good at doing what they do, they would never consider alternatives. Unfortunately, their methods attract a lackluster online audience because the traditional short-head approach aims to mostly please most everyone. To make things worse, they manage to tote along the baggage of bloated cost structures, plodding time-to-market, and a complete detachment from audience involvement.

This might have gone unnoticed if it weren't for several highly creative individuals who have figured out how to do things differently. They are using low cost tools, rapid-fire release schedules, free internet distribution, and an army of enthusiastic followers. Their creative products look nothing like what hits the mainstream - and this is often what makes them so compelling.

Listen in while Jesse talks with 43folders.com writer and podcaster Merlin Mann, Homestar Runner creators Mike and Matt Chapman (aka The Bros. Chaps), and Jeff Olsen, creative director for adultswim.com about the Internet, creativity, and, well, stuff.

Download this TSOYA episode (mp3)

I have written about the VRM ListenLog before, so I won't recount the basics.

One of the panels I sat on for the 2009 Public Media Conference was the mobile tech day panel along with folks from APM, PRX, NPR, and the Berkman Center. Here's the audio overview of my brief ListenLog presentation:

Check out the Public Radio Tuner project I talk about in the audio.

Internet solutions appear wherever finding, connecting, and sharing information with others is expensive or difficult. This is especially noticeable when individuals with similar interests but insufficient proximity are finally able to connect. Unsurprisingly, there are now sites bringing together global interest in speaking Klingon, knitting food, and collecting cookie fortunes.

But what about deploying internet technologies for people who are near one another? Certainly this technology isn’t just about bringing together far-flung hobbyists – there should be unresolved information needs that exist at a local level, as suggested by the buzz around hyperlocal news.

In determining these information needs, we must resist the temptation to focus on what media organizations proscribe or what is currently vanishing from existing news outlets. Instead, we should look at routine communication barriers that can be dismantled by internet-based solutions. This is surprisingly difficult to do, since we often don't see the barriers we face or recognize them as unnecessary. In order to determine where technology might be best deployed to address local needs, we must find situations where individual members of local communities are actively trying to find, connect, and share information with one another. Then we can look more closely at the difficulties, delays, and expenses that might be eliminated or reduced through more tailored use of online technology.

Looked at in this way, it becomes clear that finding and connecting with others nearby to exchange our stuff (craigslist.org), meet around shared interests (meetup.com), and initiate relationships (match.com) have all been remarkably successful. But what about sharing local news? Success with local news has been less pervasive and straightforward. Arguably, this is because existing solutions have not yet fully uncovered the true needs and barriers to sharing local news.

Another method for determining what these needs and barriers might be is to monitor online tools that excel at supporting a breadth of communications. Within these tools, we might find clusters of people who share geographic proximity and are actively communicating. Identifying patterns in communications or locations here will reveal which local needs may be benefiting most from the reduced friction of online communication.

Interestingly, most social networking tools provide little of this local communication. Both Linkedin and Facebook, for example, seem to excel at connecting out of touch and geographically disparate individuals. Things have started to shift, however, with the introduction of the short messaging system, Twitter. With Twitter, people are starting to connect with one another simply because they are nearby. Twitter seems different in this regard, and understanding how Twitter is different might just be the key to understanding where frictionless local communication holds the most promise.

Twitter saw its first big explosion in usage during the 2007 SXSW festival in Austin, TX. This was in large part due to the attendee’s unresolved need to connect with others at the conference. Ironic as this may seem, as you move around an event such as a conference, you become a mostly passive recipient of information, cut off from explicitly sharing the experience with others. Communication needs at large events like this range from broadcast heckles to simple queries around where your friends are, what events are attendance-worthy, and who to get to know. In my own experience, this proximity-effect of Twitter carries over into day-to-day situations as well - it becomes valuable to follow someone simply because they live near you. But why?

I believe one answer lies in the immediacy of the information that is shared. Specifically, it is surprisingly difficult to share information about what's going on right now amongst people near one other. As with SXSW, local twitter messages (tweets) are most valuable when they contain information about what is happening right now – often something that might affect me because of our relative proximity. For example, I might monitor the tweets from those I follow locally to know where they are or where they’re going so that I can (presumably) join them. It’s valuable to find out about something as it happens. I can always visit a traditional news source if I need to seek out a specific piece of information or learn of important happenings after the fact, but who’s going to let me know of something important going on right now? It's this active nature of twitter, filtered by real people, providing immediately sourced, proximal information that makes it so valuable. Nothing seems to match twitter for a real-time assessment of what I need to know about that’s going on near me.

Perhaps Twitter points to only one unresolved need – the need for immediate, proximal information, but I believe this need will blossom into a more significant source of local news and take different forms as it more seamlessly encourages useful sharing.

Following a recent post and discussion on hyperlocal news, WBUR was kind enough to let me initiate an open discussion on the topic during their monthly meetup at the station.

Around 15 people participated in this discussion, including Lisa Williams from Placeblogger, Ben Terris from Boston.com's Your Town, Adam Weiss of Boston Behind the Scenes, Persephone Miel from Internews Network, and Doc Searls from Harvard's Berkman Center. You can hear the conversation here:

The conversation covers a wide range of topics, including:

• Trends and directions of hyperlocal news. Where the emerging opportunities might be.
• What the user demand might be around hyperlocal news - where the current gaps are in addressing user needs.
• The rising importance of immediacy and speed of hyperlocal solution deployment
• The problem of scale and searchability around hyperlocal sites
• How hyperlocal sites and the online-offline proximity connection might address the human need for social cohesion

On the evening of Thursday, February 5th, WBUR in Boston will be hosing their sixth (seventh?) monthly informal gathering at the station. WBUR regularly convenes the Boston social media community for the purpose of facilitating discussion around social technology and its growing role and impact on local community, news, and public media. All are invited to attend this free and open event. Details here.

At this event, WBUR has agreed to let me lead a discussion on hyperlocal news - in part due to the good discussion that's stemmed from this hyperlocal blog post and my interest in doing a follow-up on hyperlocal's future potential. Won't you join us?

Keep an eye on this blog for a follow-up from the event.

The term "Hyperlocal" generally refers to community-oriented news content typically not found in mainstream media outlets and covering a geographic region too small for a print or broadcast market to address profitably. The information is often produced or aggregated by online, non-traditional (amateur) sources.

Hyperlocal news is conceptually attractive because of its perceived potential to rescue struggling traditional media organizations. Most attempts at hyperlocal news websites have not proven to be entirely successful. Hyperlocal appears attractive to traditional media organizations for the following reasons:

1. There is a perceived demand for news at the neighborhood/community level. The costs of print production and distribution have historically made providing this unprofitable, but the lower cost of web distribution could be used to serve this need.
2. In an online world, regional media outlets are no longer the gatekeeper of news content and therefore must rely on their geographic relevance to provide unique value. Hyperlocal news leverages geographic relevance.
3. The rise of citizen journalism and Web 2.0 seems to suggest that users could provide the majority of local content, thereby reducing or eliminating staffing costs.
4. Local online advertising seems like a promising and not yet fully tapped revenue source.

History & Approaches
Hyperlocal seems to have emerged as a popular concept in 2005, even while regional news websites and blogs were already becoming common¹. In 2006-2007, the first significantly funded hyperlocal sites and platforms were launched. There were high-profile failures, most notably Backfence.com (2007) and LoudounExtra.com (from Washington Post in 2008). Many early efforts took the form of online newspaper websites, employing local reporters (or sometimes bloggers), and attempting to source user-generated content by inviting individual submissions or incorporating user discussion functionality. There was much speculation on why this approach often failed. Regardless of the specifics, their universal unprofitability suggests that producing a local newspaper-like presence simply doesn’t create enough demand (online readership) to justify the costs (local staff). Of note are a few surviving examples like the Chicago Tribune’s Triblocal project that create and distribute hyperlocal print editions from their online content, and many hyperlocal blogs which operate on less auspicious budgets.

Around the same time, a slightly more promising wave of information-heavy regional news sites (such as pegasusnews.com) emerged. These sites were inspired by the success of regional review sites such as yelp.com and Yahoo! Local and in response to the high costs of local content production. These new efforts focused on incorporating dynamic regional data, such as crime stats, permit applications, real estate listings, and business directories in lieu of an emphasis on hand-crafted local reporting.

A third and perhaps most promising wave of local news sites emphasized the aggregation of third-party content. These include platforms such as outside.in, topix.com, and everyblock.com – all of which are framework approaches - aggregating content, mostly through RSS feeds, for many geographic locations (in some cases thousands) in order to build enough accumulated traffic to make a local business model work. Some slightly different takes on this model have individuals in specific locations acting as editors and republishing aggregated content (universalhub.com) or aggregator sites focusing on particular types of content (Placeblogger.com).

Lessons Learned
You can’t serve online users the same way as newspapers or broadcasters serve regional audiences. The news and information demands are wildly different. It is not enough to reduce printing and distribution costs or put content into "bite-sized" pieces. The user-consumer is trying to solve radically different problems from a unique perspective around their online information needs.

Giving participatory tools to users does not make them publishers. Users do not produce material that looks anything like mass media content. Users have an expectation of being involved, and their efforts (such as sharing) can be helpful or even necessary in some contexts. However, assumptions about traditional publishers shifting effort "to the crowd" are misguided. Users are also notoriously fickle in their socially-driven motivations. Our understanding around what motivates people to participate online and in what context is limited.

Manually producing local content is expensive. This isn’t a surprise. What shocked people is that there is not enough consumer demand online to justify this cost.

Aggregation is cheap, and if done effectively can create enough demand to be profitable – particularly across many locations. As more sources make their content available through RSS feeds and APIs, this is only going to get better.

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¹To be clear, the hyperlocal hype from traditional media organizations took fire in 2005, but local sites like Craigslist and H20Town were long-standing successes by this point, thereby playing their part in fueling the excitement.

The world of podcasting is markedly different from that of broadcast radio. Below is a top ten list that highlights what works well in this medium and how podcasting can be different than straight-ahead broadcast. To this end, I have avoided listing downloadable versions of broadcast radio shows, although this eliminates a third or more of the most popular podcasts. The following descriptions focus on what makes each approach noteworthy. If you want to learn more about the podcast itself, I encourage you to give it a listen.

1. The Moth Podcast

Recorded spoken performances such as stand-up comedy and conference presentations have long been a popular podcast format. The Moth Podcast is arguably the granddaddy of them all. A popular and long-running podcast, these short storytelling segments are recorded in front of a live audience without notes.

2. The Sound of Young America

While most episodes of this show are in fact broadcast, the majority of the fan base seems to listen exclusively to the podcast. TSOYA uses the popular podcast format of single-host / single-guest talk show. This podcast attracts a strong following in part due to its focus on popular and entertaining guests who are otherwise below the cultural radar. The show further focuses by frequently selecting guests who are comedians, media professionals, or musicians.

3. iTunes Weekly Rewind [iTunes Link]

This Apple-produced music review is a unique take on music podcasting, highlighting songs discovered over the course of the week on TV, online, and in the movies. This is a markedly different approach from focusing on new releases, who's on tour, what's popular, or the traditional, curated music show. This is also an Apple Enhanced Podcast, providing users the ability to move back and forth through visually-enhanced song chapters.

4. EconTalk

A hybrid instructional / talk show format, EconTalk is a surprisingly popular podcast that presents often complex economic concepts for non-expert audiences. Most guests are academic experts. The magic here seems to lie in the host of the program directing and clarifying the guests as they attempt to explain and explore complex ideas and opinions. Instructional / explanatory podcasts seem to be rising in popularity, although this specific format for presenting complex ideas is somewhat atypical.

5. Diggnation

This weekly podcast reviews top stories from digg.com and incorporates several characteristics found in many podcasts. For example, the hosts are conversational but often off-topic with plenty of snarky, insider commentary, and they discuss timely events surrounding an existing, popular website or web community.

6. Mugglecast

Popular and unique, this podcast highlights several growing trends. Hosts are remotely connected via phone conferencing or skype through which the podcast is recorded – often live. The conversation is unscripted and uses many rotating participants, most of whom seem to be under 20 and have likely never met in person. All participants are part of a popular online Harry Potter community. In fact, the participants, listeners, and podcast content are an extension of what is already happening in and around existing vibrant online interaction.

7. You Look Nice Today

The "BS amongst friends" format is perhaps the most popular approach to creating a podcast. There are hundreds if not thousands of podcasts that are purely conversational, using 2-4 hosts who are often friends. Some are themed, many contain explicit content, some deploy more traditional radio show techniques using guests, call-ins, regular bits, drop-ins, etc. YLNT is noteworthy in that it breaks from typical radio morning show tactics (e.g. political leanings, wacky antics, etc.), and is professionally edited down before release.

8. Grammar Girl

It's true - there's a podcast on grammar that's wildly popular. It's short, practical, and handy for bloggers. Unlike much out there, the host seems to be perfectly normal. This is one of the first instructional podcasts to land the big numbers, in part thanks to Oprah.

9. Planet Money

This is an NPR program on the economy, money and global markets, but it qualifies for this list because it's not broadcast as a public radio show, per se. Some of what is produced makes it to air, but the NPR podcast is just that. A podcast. Well, it's also a blog. And videos. And links. OK, it's pretty undefinable, but it's entertaining and instructional and timely and edited to whatever length it is. I suspect "programs" will look a lot more like this in the future.

10. Podrunner

Here's an odd one. A podcast where each episode is defined and titled by its tempo (BPM), tailored specifically for your workout. Sound weird? Well, it's the #1 music podcast in iTunes right now. Behold the power of the untapped niche.

The following is a basic description for a proposed approach to integrating VRM into an existing software application. I welcome your input on this emerging idea in the comments section here or follow the evolution on the Project VRM Wiki.

Update (5/19) - Audio slideshow and presentation video on ListenLog now posted.

The VRM ListenLog is a proposed method for integrating simple user-driven functionality into an online audio player device or application. The ListenLog concept was devised in part for the Public Radio Tuner iPhone project, where it will likely be first introduced. The ListenLog is a consolidated and documented history of an individual's online listening activity. It is simply a recorded activity log, in a standard and open format, documenting an individual's listening actions through one (or more) online devices. The ListenLog is unique in that its aim is to give the user complete control over what to do with their listener activity data, including where the data lives, who to share it with, and how it can be used.

While tracking listener behavior is not a new concept, the ListenLog is a novel user-driven approach to deploying early VRM functionality. While a simple activity log might not be the killer app, it succeeds by putting in place a small piece of user-driven infrastructure into a larger application - one with a promise of relatively wide distribution. Since this infrastructure component will write, store, and share listener activity in an open and standard format, we hope that such a log will become significantly more useful as other devices and tools leverage the standard to increase what an individual can do with their ListenLog data. This type of sideways approach holds the promise of planting the seeds of VRM onto lots of devices without requiring the primary application functionality (i.e. audio listening) be purely user-driven.

A user-driven activity log works well for an application that pulls together audio streams and files from a number of different sources. Of course, online audio providers (vendors in the VRM model) can already track and aggregate listening behavior data, but only for the audio they control. When the user acts as the sole point of integration, pulling together audio from multiple sources, their own consolidated log becomes unique and powerful. Only when the listener is the point of integration does such an approach yield unique value.

Here is a working document of some emerging ListenLog Specifics as we flesh them out.

Public Radio Tuner iPhone Application
A collaborative effort that launched a single, free Public Radio iPhone application to support radio streams and on-demand public radio program content from all public radio networks (NPR, PRI, APM, and PRX). The application builds upon APM's Public Radio Tuner application, and the 1.1 release available on 1/6/2009 incorporates over 200 public radio station streams from around the US, a GPS-enabled local stream finder, and station search functionality. We hope to have ListenLog functionality incorporated in V 2.x.

The standard to-do list¹, whether created online or scrawled on the back of an envelope, performs three basic functions: storing tasks, recalling tasks, and organizing tasks. Each of these functions, however, cause problems. If like me you are the type of person that relies heavily on to-do lists, these problems can ultimately poison your productivity.

Storing Tasks – The Benefits

To-do lists are a great way to squirrel away all the things we must remember to do - stowing tasks so that they can safely be forgotten. This frees you up to concentrate on other things. Aggressive organizers leverage this aspect ruthlessly. We take comfort in knowing that our task is safely saved, to be retrieved when it is ready for reconsideration. Without storage, our worrying nature is invoked, keeping us on edge, mentally juggling outstanding tasks and continually unsure of what it is we've forgotten to do.

Storing Tasks – The Problem

To-do lists are used to stow away tasks indiscriminately. If the task is non-urgent enough to make it to the to-do list, it's fair game. A task might be critically tied to life happiness or it might be picking up milk at the store – doesn't matter, both have now been safely stowed away. Worse yet, since the forget-factor is deployed to alleviate worry, it works much better on big, scary, and potentially more important tasks. This results in to-do lists becoming the miscellanea drawer for our life's most important goals. Just jam them in and forget about them. They'll be safe where we don't have to actually do them.

Recalling Tasks – The Benefits

Time to do some stuff? Just pull out the handy to-do list! No need to search my memory for what to rub some elbow grease on – it's all right there in the list, right?

Recalling Tasks – The Problem

The problem with crossing tasks off the to-do list is that we get to pick and choose which items to tackle. The easy, the quick and the convenient get the attention (oh look! I'm already at the mall!). If we manage to get past the convenient items, we inevitably get stuck at the urgent items. If you're a chronic hider like me (see point #1 above), there's sure to be plenty of items that have reached super urgent critical volcano erupting status. Soon, the to-do list becomes the urgency list and all that gets done is one urgent item after another. The most nefarious problem of all with recalling tasks from the to-do list is the avoidance of looming, big important items. Often, these haven't been carved up into bite-sized tasks, so they just float around the bottom of the list with innocent sounding names like "lose 10 pounds" or "get a better job." Figuring out how and where to get started on these items keeps us from doing them. These important (but maybe not urgent) items generally just wait until there's more time, you know, later.

Organizing Tasks – The Benefits

Organizing tasks means moving stuff around, and moving stuff around means being able to prioritize and plan. Similar items can be grouped together. Items can be ordered and sorted by urgency or inter-dependency. When we're finally ready to roll up our sleeves and do some work, we'll have nice, clean, structured marching orders.

Organizing Tasks – The Problem

Why do any tasks at all when you can just feel good by pushing items around on the list all day? In fact, why not put "reorder list" onto the list? Organizing to-do lists doesn't naturally lead to drilling-down and rolling-up tasks. Drilling-down, or breaking tasks into sub-tasks, only makes the list longer. And rolling-up, using lists to understand how we work and what is truly important, is an abstract activity – generally not included alongside left brain list-making. Which is a shame, because the one thing a to-do list could ultimately do for us is not help us get more done, but help us figure out what's most important, so that we can, in fact, do less.

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¹ The focus here is on basic to-do lists and doesn't include more advanced planning and scheduling tools. And yes, I know about GTD.

An usual opportunity as provided by Autumn, a sixth grader, asking the following question in Yahoo! Answers:

If I am a geek, how do I survive Middle School?

I'm going into the 7th grade. Does anyone have any advice on what to expect?

My Response:

By "geek" I'm assuming that you mean you are unpopular. If you are unpopular in American secondary schools, this means you are probably smart. Keep in mind that unpopular smart kids don't seem to have any barriers to becoming rich and envied later in life (think Bill Gates was popular in Junior High?)

Smart kids are unpopular most likely because they care less about being popular than dumb kids. It's not that you wouldn't like to be popular (trust me, I know), it's just that the gargantuan amount of effort required to be popular in school is simply not worth it to you. You're smart enough to rationally consider the options - and spending every waking moment of your life trying to please dumb people just seems, well, dumb. Time could be better spent coding IRC bots, designing custom levels in Quake, hacking your neighbor's roomba, or whatever smart kids are doing these days. You see, being smart is just too darn interesting to waste all of your time trying to be popular, and unless you aspire to sell used cars for a living, I recommend you not bother.

My advice: spend your time being smart. Find other smart people. Cultivate your own sense of curiosity. Understand the world is not as cruel and boring as it probably appears from inside the walls of your school.

Frankly, I'm surprised it took so long to happen. Or maybe I just didn't notice it happening much until now. When google pioneered contextual advertising, I assumed that the rest of the world would follow in spades. We'd be getting emailed, nudged, banner-added and text messaged whenever we displayed online intention or contextual curiosity. There is a world of nuance between blatantly unsolicited email spam and "relevant online communications," and I assumed that businesses would rush in to fill this gap. But I really haven't seen it that much. Until now.
 
Enter the Twitter Hawks. Businesses that hover on top of Twitter search terms and then @ you if you mention something relevant to their business. For example, I just got an @ message from an airport shuttle service when they saw me use the name of an airport in my tweet. Obviously, they're monitoring the public feed using Twitter Search or the Search API and replying publicly to tweets that mention airport travel in their business service range. But is this spam? Well, I suppose not the traditional type, but it's definitely unwelcome when my @ stream is filled with unsolicited business messages from orgs - no matter how "well intentioned" who are hovering over my communications.
 
Like any good enabling technology, people see opportunity and rush in to explore, address, solve, and experiment. I'm not surprised that people are exploring this gap, I'm just surprised it took so long.