Archive for April, 2008
April 26, 2008
28 Comments
[Tablet PC sketch of what I have in mind. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
One of the things I like about Twitter is that it allows you to have instant feedback from lots of people while you’re thinking out-loud.
Case in point: If you have been following my Twitter feed recently you’ll have noticed me bandying this idea around, about doing large pieces. Namely, large, abstract paintings on canvas.
Basically, the idea is to create six-by-six foot canvas, covered with a field of my obsessive “squiggly” style. The image above, which I made digitally on a Tablet PC, should give you a pretty good idea what I mean.
So far the feedback has been tremendous. I’ve got dozens of comments, both public and private. Thanks for that.
I think being out here in Alpine, Texas, covered under a blanket of desert air and “Big Sky” brought about a wee change in me, at least in what I find interesting artistically. The “cartoons on the back of business cards” format came about in New York City, when living conditions, shall we say, were far more intense, crowded and cramped. Not to mention, I was ten years younger. Things change.
Acquiring blank business cards and a few pens is a LOT simpler and easier than making big paintings. With the latter, suddenly you have to start thinking about renting studio space and buying materials, which are not cheap. Then you have to find a buyer for the pieces, to offset the cost of making them. Then you have you have to figure out how to ship them to their new owners without them getting damaged. Plus a myriad of other pain-in-the-ass factors to consider.
Whatever. It’s all exciting stuff. I’m looking forward to finding studio space in the very near future. Though to be honest, I have no intention of ever becoming a permanent, full-time artist. Too much else going on. Too much else out there worth getting interested in. I like to juggle things around. Keeps things new and interesting. We shall see what happens.
April 24, 2008
7 Comments
April 18, 2008
8 Comments
So it looks like my friend, Steve Gillmor is working with Mike Arrington now. Jason Calacanis breaks the story, with the above cartoon on the blog post. The Gillmor Gang’s new permanent home is here.]
Jason writes:
Here’s some exclusive news: after being offline for over a year in a legal dispute (can’t get into details) the Gillmor Gang is back and is part of TechCrunch! Steve Gillmor is one of the most insightful minds in the technology space, and his “gang” is a free-form thought-fest that unpacks, repacks, and distracts memes faster than any other conversation out there.
April 17, 2008
12 Comments
[Inspired by the original “Cluetrain Fucktard” cartoon from 2005.]
April 16, 2008
10 Comments
[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
4 Comments
[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
1 Comment
[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
13 Comments
[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
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[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
4 Comments
[This cartoon was commissioned by my client, Microsoft.]
April 13, 2008
15 Comments
[Picture taken from the Marfa Plain, looking Southeast, about 15 miles West of Alpine, Texas. Cathedral Mountain in the distance.]
I’m writing this from Miami. Heading back to West Texas tomorrow. I woke up this morning looking forward to my return, so what the heck, I posted the photo above.
JP Rangaswami is in town on vacation; Jason and I met him and his lovely family two night ago for drinks [Talk about well-brought-up children. Gosh. Off the scale.].
We talked briefly about me being in Alpine. “It seems like you needed to take your foot off the accelerator,” he said. Yup. That’s about it.
Yesterday I wrote about making more limited edition prints for Stormhoek:
2. Lithographs. We had a lot of good fortune creating limited edition, fine art prints. Everything from the Blue Monster series, to the Techcrunch party poster. Basically, I want to spend a LOT OF TIME in the next year, signing limited edition lithographs and getting them in to the hands of anybody who may want one. These lithographs will hopefully become “Social Objects”, which anyone who knows me will know, I believe is the future of marketing. It is my belief that, if we can get enough of them printed, signed and out there, they’ll create enough interesting conversations which will INDIRECTLY move a lot of cases of wine . The big question is, [A] How many prints would I need to sign in order to make that happen and [B] If the answer is, “A Lot”, will I have the time, discipline and stamina to go the distance? Yes, it’s a huge challenge. Then again, so is climbing Mount Everest.
And a few days ago I wrote about landing a book deal with Penguin. “Exciting News etc.“
The needs of being a cartoonist, and the needs of being a “Web 2.0 marketing guy” are very different. Though it wasn’t an overnight decision, recently I decided to re-adjust my life to something that was more conducive to being the former, as opposed to be the latter.
Was this a wise move? We’ll see. What is a Web 2.0 marketing guy, anyway? Somebody who gets paid to have “Ever-Fragmenting Conversations about Ever-Fragmenting Conversations.” Compared to tarring roofs in Texas in summer, it’s not a bad job, but… Whatever.
But one hundred years from now, I’ll be dead, and this website will be gone. Nobody will be talking about Web 2.0 anymore. But a wee voice tells me some of the cartoons will be still floating around, maybe online, maybe in books, maybe one or two of the originals will be hanging in private collections.
And God Willing, some of the jokes will still be funny…
April 11, 2008
8 Comments
After a couple of months’ silence on Stormhoek, I’m ready to start talking about it again.
[The short version:] Stormhoek basically has new owners, Origin Wines of South Africa. They bought it when Orbital Wines, Stormhoek’s main importer in London, went out of business, due to cash flow problems. Origin Wines is owned by a guy called Bernard. He and I have been talking for these last few months, trying to work out a deal. Looks like we’ve finally made one.
In an ideal world I would’ve been a bit more talkative and transparent. Was it a bad call on my part? From the average perspective of a blogger with little direct interest in the brand, I could see why they would argue that position. But in the long run, me keeping my mouth shut probably saved the brand, the deal with Bernard, my interest in a company I dedicated three years of of my life to and, not to mention, the jobs of many dozen South African vineyard workers. So fuck it. Take the hit and move on.
So what’s the new plan? What will Stormhoek 2.0 look like?
Actually, not that different from Stormhoek 1.0. Between 2005 – 2007, Jason Korman and I tried out a lot of different experiments with social media. Some worked better than others. Some of the stuff we had high hopes for, utterly failed. Some of the stuff we had very small expectations for, caused major earthquakes in the wine marketing world, and sold many tens of thousands of wine cases. Like they say in the movie business, nobody knows anything. That being said, we did learn the hard way that there’s a lot to be said for keeping things simple. Ergo:
Stormhoek 2.0 has three main prongs:
1. Getting bottles of wine into the hands of my friends and peers i.e. the bloggers and the Web 2.0 crowd. Sponsoring geek dinners, Web 2.0 parties, conferences, that kinda thing.
2. Lithographs. We had a lot of good fortune creating limited edition, fine art prints. Everything from the Blue Monster series, to the Techcrunch party poster. Basically, I want to spend a LOT OF TIME in the next year, signing limited edition lithographs and getting them in to the hands of anybody who may want one. These lithographs will hopefully become “Social Objects”, which anyone who knows me will know, I believe is the future of marketing. It is my belief that, if we can get enough of them printed, signed and out there, they’ll create enough interesting conversations which will INDIRECTLY move a lot of cases of wine . The big question is, [A] How many prints would I need to sign in order to make that happen and [B] If the answer is, “A Lot”, will I have the time, discipline and stamina to go the distance? Yes, it’s a huge challenge. Then again, so is climbing Mount Everest.
3. Blogging. Goes without saying.
Yes, Jason and I are still working on Stormhoek together. And Graham Knox, who was until recently the head of production down in South Africa, talked to Bernard this morning about keeping on working with Stormhoek as well. Go figure.
One final thought: For all the crap that went down over Orbital’s demise, I’m actually kinda glad it happened. A lot of dead wood was cleared in the process; I think Bernard will make a much better partner than some of the people, now moved on, that I’ve had to work with during the last three years. All in all, I think we’re in a much better position to carry out my “Evil Plan For World Domination” than we were a year ago, so I’m actually pretty happy and excited. Rock on.
Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have any ideas which may help the cause. Thanks.
April 10, 2008
153 Comments
[A cartoon from 2007 etc.]
It’s no big deal. I liked Twitter. But I found it too easy.
I think my time would be better spent drawing cartoons and writing books.
That’s just how I feel.
[UPDATE:] This story seems to have made it onto the front page of Techmeme. Lots of people talking about it. Wow.
[UPDATE:] An archive of my Tweets can be found here.
[UPDATE:] A couple of hundred e-mails later, I restored the Twitter account. You can read again it here.
April 8, 2008
49 Comments
On Page 122 of this month’s Wired Magazine, I’m given a brief mention in the first paragraph of an article, “Open Source Software Made Developers Cool; Now It Can Make Them Rich”, all to do with monetization of Open Source software. Here’s the online version.
Last spring, marketer and blogger Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? His audience wasn’t amused. Open source software relies on a community of volunteer developers who tinker on, write for, or amend a program, then give it away free. MacLeod’s site filled up with complaints that even to look for billionaires violated the spirit of the open source movement. “There have to be rewards,” one commenter wrote, “but they don’t have to be financial.” Another simply recommended that MacLeod “shut the fuck up,” adding: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I would agree with this charming “shut the fuck up” fellow that I know very little about software. I have never claimed to be that interested in it. What gets me working for Microsoft is that I’ve always been very interested in something else, namely, how people make a living. This is true for large companies, small companies, billionaires and “humble tradesmen” alike. This is why I can work with a large software company like Microsoft, or a small tailoring firm like English Cut, and find them both utterly fascinating. Everybody needs to get paid; that is the great constant in business.
Last summer, at a dinner party in London, I had the great pleasure of meeting Simon Phipps, the Head of Open Source at Sun Microsystems. What a great guy. Insanely smart. Enjoyed his company immensely. A lot of the conversation was off the record, but one of my main take-outs was that Simon passionately believes that “The Future Is Open Source”.
Simon may be right, he may be wrong, he may be a little bit of both. The future always has a way of surprising us all. But for sake of argument, assuming that “The Future of Software is Open Source” is proved correct in time, perhaps this would be a good time for my client, Microsoft to ask the question: How does a software company make money, if all software is free?
The answer, of course, was hinted at in the aforementioned Wired article. With Open Source, people don’t pay for the software per se; but they DO pay for the peripherals.
How can you build a business by giving away the store? The money comes from selling add-ons, service contracts, and hardware to go with the software.
It took me a while to figure this out, but what applies to Open Source, also applies to Microsoft.
When you buy a Microsoft product, you’re not just getting ones and zeros. There’s also a form of “social contract” implicit in the commercial transaction. You gave them money, this entitles you to certain expectations.
A few weeks ago, I met a young developer who worked in an IT department of a large insurance company. I asked him what kind of software did he use. Answer: About 75% Microsoft, 25% Open Source. I asked him why did he not use more Open Source? I thought IT people loved Open Source?
“If something goes wrong with Microsoft, I can phone Microsoft up and have it fixed. With Open Source, I have to rely on the community.“
And the community, as much as we may love it, is unpredictable. It might care about your problem and want to fix it, then again, it may not. Anyone who has ever witnessed something online go “viral”, good or bad, will know what I’m talking about.
The reason Microsoft is able to charge the money it does IS NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE SOFTWARE. Like Open Source, the social contract can often matter far more than the ones and zeros.
[UPDATE:] After reading the comments below, a friend of mine sent me the following e-mail:
OMG open source people are funny. Is it always that easy to make them dance? 
What strikes me as particularly entertaining is that, if their
product/service offerings ARE comparable or better than Big Business
offerings, perhaps if they turned their passion outwards instead of just
ranting and gushing to each other and at you, more of the world might know
about it and they might get more market traction and be greater catalysts
for competition and change within their industries.
Dear Open Source Community: It would appear that you suck at marketing.
Which makes it positively comedy gold that you are bitching at Hugh MacLeod
about the challenges and misconceptions you face… due to sucking at marketing.
Love,
XXXXX
My friend’s snarky attitude notwithstanding, I’m wondering what marketing problems Open Source DOES have. I know techies like to consider themselves relatively immune to “All that marketing crap”, however…
April 7, 2008
87 Comments
[UPDATE: My first book, “Ignore Everybody”, will be coming out in hardback on June 11th, 2009. Read below to find out more, and you can also order from the book sellers listed below. Thanks!]
Barnes & Noble.
Borders.
800-CEO-READ. (great for bulk buys)
IndieBound. [to find an independent store]
1. Exciting News etc.
Four years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts, which went on to become “How To Be Creative”. Since then, it’s been downloaded well over a million times. The PDF version alone has been downloaded over ninety thousand times, and is the number one most downloaded manifesto on ChangeThis.com.
I am happy to report that I have just signed a book contract with Portfolio Books [a Penguin imprint] to develop it into a book. Portfolio, by the way, is the same imprint that publishes Seth Godin’s books. We even have the same editor, and I’m told the book will have the same graphic designer that designed Seth’s “Purple Cow”.
Of course I’m excited and happy. Not only do I have a book deal, I have a book deal with a second-to-none, blue chip publisher. Big thanks and kudos to Seth for introducing me to them.
2. West Texas
This deal might help better explain why I recently ensconced myself in Alpine, Texas. The move was not completely random. I needed to write more. Needed to be somewhere with lots of peace and quiet. At least until the final manuscript is signed off.
3. Change Is Good.
Yeah, it’s a terrific opportunity. But like it says in HTBC, “Keep your day job”. The book may become a bestseller, it may only shift a few copies. I have no idea. Nobody does. Some people dream of one day becoming a full-time book author. I feel fortunate to have never been smitten with the bug. I’m going to continue doing exactly what I’ve been doing for these last four years– drawing cartoons, blogging, writing, consulting etc etc.
4. “The Title Is Ironic, Stupid”.
Telling people “how to be creative” is a bit silly, when you think about it. Generally, people either are or they aren’t. When I wrote HTBC, I certainly wasn’t trying to slip into some sort of New-Age, “Unleash-The-Fire-Within-You-Creativity-Guru” schtick. All I was thinking about was a short, practical, real-world list of advice that would come in handy to somebody say, 10 – 20 years younger than me, somebody with the same “creative bug” I had when I was just starting out in the world. I was just trying pass along some valuable, pain-saving lessons to the next generation that I had learned along the way. No more, no less.
5. “Damn, I’m Old.“
It’s been over ten years since I came up with the “back of business card” cartoon format. It’s been nearly twenty years since I came up with my “squiggly” drawing style. Damn, if I new it would take THIS LONG to get the work “out there”, would I have bothered in the first place? Actually, yeah, I probably would’ve. Plus ca change…
6. What have I learned about “Being Creative” since 2004?
Very little, if truth be told. The first round of HTBC had 26 chapters, 10,000 words and took 6 weeks to write. Since then, I’ve added another 10 chapters– about 3,000 extra words. I’ve not had a lot to add to the original list, it seems. The good news is, there’s nothing in the original 2004 version that I’ve had to take out completely or hugely modify. Most of the stuff seems to have stood the test of time pretty well, which I take as a favorable sign.
If I had to condense the entire work into a single line, it would read something like, “Work Hard. Keep at it. Live simply and quietly. Remain humble. Stay positive. Be nice. Be polite.“
7. Early 2009.
I have to get the final manuscript finished by August. We’re guessing early 2009 for its release date. I can’t wait!
8. Thanks, Everybody!
Loic Le Meur and I were having this conversation recently. The basic tenet of the conversation was, “The best thing about being a blogger is the people you get to meet.” I have found this to be true and self-evident. When I was younger, the people who inspired me the most professionally were famous, dead, or both. Since I become a blogger the people who inspired me the most became good friends of mine. We hung out. We drunk beer. We ate pizza. It wasn’t a big deal, it was just… lovely. Back in 2004, my blogging buddies and I knew we were onto a good thing. Something powerful and creative and earth-changing. But that’s not the main reason we liked it. We liked it because we enjoyed it, because it was interesting, because of the smart, passionate, fun people we were starting to hang out with.
A decade from now, maybe blogs as we know them won’t even exist. Maybe they’ll call them something else. Do I care? Not really. What matters, like Loic and I talked about, is the people you get to meet. That’s where the magic lies. Ten years from now, these people will still be around, geeking out on the internet at the latest WHATEVER that’s coming down the pike. They’re not going anywhere, and Thank God for that.
So Big Thanks to Everybody for reading gapingvoid over the years. I could not have done it without you, without a constant stream of bloggers and readers to make me think and to make me feel inspired. From the very bottom of my heart, Thanks Again. You guys rock.
April 5, 2008
4 Comments
April 3, 2008
1 Comment
No Comments
[Cartoon property of John Biehler.]
