Mark Ramskill - Feeds I Read

Seth's Blog

• What should I do on your birthday? On July 4, birthday of the USA, we're supposed to blow off fireworks, eat hot dogs and buy a Chevrolet. On Columbus Day, birthday of an early imperialist, we're supposed to shop and march in a parade. On Martin Luther...
• What to do with special requests The bike shop is busy in June. If you bring your bike in for a tune up, it will cost $39 and take a week. A week! What if someone says, I have a bike trip coming up in three...
• The purpose of a book cover (and I think it works for lots of products) Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe what's in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum impact? The third. It's...
• The risk/reward confusion It's easy to to adopt the policy of avoiding risk at all costs, that whenever possible, the products you launch or the engagements you have should be flawless and without downside. Here's the problem: in most endeavors, a small increase...
• Malcolm is wrong I've never written those three words before, but he's never disagreed with Chris Anderson before, so there you go. Free is the name of Chris's new book, and it's going to be wildly misunderstood and widely argued about. The first...
• There's always room for Jello This is one of the great cultural touchstone slogans of our era. A culture where there's so much to eat we need to try to find a food that we can eat even if we're stuffed. Often, we'll decide that...
• How to be a packager For fifteen years, I was a book packager. It has nothing to do with packaging and a bit more to do with books, but it's a great gig and there are useful lessons, because there are dozens of industries just...
• The paradox of the middle of the market The middle of the market is the juicy part, where profit meets scale. The paradox is that it's almost impossible to make a product or service for this segment, because they want the tried, the true and the boring. A...
• Fast in, fast out Mark points us to this study of fads and trends. It turns out that a fast-growing trend is also likely to become a fast-fading trend. My analysis: the people who jump on a fast-moving trend are fickle early adopters. This...
• Can summer camp change your life? I think it can. It did for me. I went to the best summer camp in the world (the pictures to the right are by the now-famous but then teenaged Jill Greenberg). Most of what I know, I learned there....