I recently discovered a pandemic era podcast by comedian and storyteller, Mike Birbiglia. You may know him from his Netflix specials or heard his stories on the radio show, This American Life. The podcast is called Working It Out.
The premise of the podcast is simple: Mike and his guest bring an unfinished joke or a draft story and work it out together on the podcast. So far, my favorite guests have been Ira Glass, John Mulaney, and David Sedaris.
A lot of work goes into creating that laugh out joke or that tear jerking story. Comedians and storytellers make it sound so effortless. Listening to the podcast, you can a peek at their work behind the scenes.
What do comedians have to do with software developers? Both are creative folks and the success of their craft depends on how they connect with their audience or users. I recognize several similarities in the actions to create a simple joke or story and what it takes to build a beautiful and easy to use product.
| They rearrange the story for maximum effect. Land the punchline! Bring them to tears! Call to Action! |
Start by clarifying the end goal: when done, what does success look like? Forget about the detailed requirements, what are the key acceptance criteria? What is the Job-to-be-Done (JTBD)? What is our punchline? |
| Comedians, no matter how famous, will test new work with a small audience. What works and what doesn’t work? |
Unless you are Steve Jobs, developers build their best products while working early on with users and customers. Understand the use case better. Validate assumptions. |
| They write it down and share the drafts for feedback with their peers |
They write the project charter and narrative of what they are embarking on. First of all, it will clarify their own thinking. Secondly, they get it reviewed. Capture the design and share it for feedback. |
| Comedians don’t overcomplicate the joke. They stick to one analogy. Don’t mix metaphors. Try one, adjust or throw it away if it doesn’t work |
Great design limits exposing options. Try one approach and adjust if needed. Provide the user only with options when there is a high demand for them. |
| Storytellers ask themselves often Where do we go from here?. They keep an eye out on the bigger storyline. |
Developers and architects need to understand the long term impact of product features and decisions. This is also true for development processes. |
Just as many teams have started improv classes at work, developers can learn a thing or two from the creative processes comedians and storytellers follow.
February 10, 2024
Working It Out
After listening to one episode of Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, Working It Out, I am hooked.
The premise of the podcast is simple: Mike and his guest share a half baked joke or story, and they evolve it together. It shows the work that goes into crafting something potentially wonderful.
In the first episode, Mike works it out with none other than radio royalty, Ira Glass. You get an amuse bouche of what Ira must be like in the writers and editing room of This American Life. Ira’s input is detailed and direct. And that’s what brilliant about this podcast. You rarely get to see what happens behinds the scenes.
At this point I listened to the John Mulaney and David Sedaris episodes. I have a long list of other episodes queued up.
I always thought Mike Birbiglia got discovered by accident when he contributed his sleepwalking story for This American Life. I’ve heard his story about what happened in the La Quinta Inn in Walla Walla, Washington, so many times. It keeps being great.
As I learned on the podcast, writing great stories is not something that happened to Mike by luck. He has been working it out for many years, crafting jokes, writing screenplays, telling stories, collaborating with other comedians, and doing stand up.
He just doesn’t come across as that punchline comedian. Instead he reminds me of that funny story telling neighbor from the movies, who overshares and regularly gets himself into some crazy situations. Here I was, minding my own business, when … We all have a friend or a neighbor like that.
The title of the article in The Atlantic captures it perfectly:
How Mike Birbiglia got sneaky-famous. The comedian who “invented storytelling”
PS - The podcast theme song is excellent and as raw as some of the half-baked stories.
January 20, 2024
Casey’s Case
I listened to a few opinions on the saga of why Platformer, Casey Newton’s tech newsletter business, is leaving the Substack platform, including the discussion on the Hard Fork podcast.
It is all too easy to make the jump to cancel culture, (big) tech censorship, liberal tech elites, or how to define alt-right, nazi, antifa, etc.
Om Malik reminded us that these platforms have investors and they want to see a growing business. The same is true for the content creators. They want to get more readers and subscribers.
all media — Old, New, Nouveau! Podcasts, Newsletters, and Streaming need growth. Organic growth is slow and measured. In our hair-trigger attention world, that is not an option. The platforms provide them an opportunity to grow fast.
Can a platform serve both masters? Perhaps. I realize that this is complicated and requires nuanced policies. I would start with the following elements:
- Welcome all opinions - Everybody is welcome to publish their opinion. I like to read different sides of a topic. Let’s allow information that covers the spectrum: both pro and contra vaccines, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, climate-alarmists, climate-deniers and all those in between. This gets platforms out of the direct censorship debate. So, yes, climate-change deniers can share their opinion on the platform.
- Free speech does have limits - There are limits to the content that can be published on the platform. These limitations are clearly published when you join the platform, including the process to report violations. The list of limitations is not absolute. Some will need to be reviewed and discussed when they happen. Some obvious limitations include incitement to violence including sharing information with the doxxing intent, violations to intellectual property law, etc.
- Promotion and amplification is about values - It is up to the platform to decide what they value. The Fox News platform and MSNBC have clearly different values. Make the values clear. “We don’t promote Nazi propaganda.” “We encourage a debate on climate change.” The implication here is that amplification algorithms are not fair and have rules defined by the owners of the platform. Also, it means that the platform may take down duplicate or similar posts.
- Provide cross polination controls - For the content that is promoted and amplified, provide controls to the user and publisher. “I am a gear head and I don’t want to read about electric vehicles” or “Don’t promote my opinion to the Elon-fan club. I can miss the online harassment that naturally ensues at the inkling of any criticism of their leader.”
So what would change in the Platformer-Substack debate?
- Substack doesn’t have to take down some of the controversial newsletters. If there isn’t any obvious free speech reason to not allow the content, keep it. And yes, Substack would still make money from those newsletters, although limited as it doesn’t amplify them.
- Substack clarifies their promotion and amplification approach. It would be clear that Nazi content would stay in a corner. Casey can then decide where he stands on them. Given what I read, he would likely move his business elsewhere anyway.
- Platformer doesn’t have to be middle person and convey the reader’s sentiments (“I hate it that I see articles about Elon next to Platformer”). The reader has some control.
I realize this write up makes it all too simple. The many folks at YouTube, Facebook, pre-X Twitter who worked on content moderation can surely chime in with the next level of nuance or complexity that comes with the field. For now, I would be happy to understand clearly the four points above from all platforms.
January 14, 2024
These Weeks in the World of Artificial Intelligence
I finally caught up with a number of AI-related newsletters. Here are a few things I learned.
One key take-away: presentations are going to be much funnier in the coming year.
- Midjourney version 6 is looking mightily amazing. I may subscribe just to liven up my presentations. Adios iStock. Hello crazy presentations.
- Lawyers are sharpening their pencils to figure out how to comply with the EU’s AI Act. Even for our simple bot, we’ll need to understand this better.
- The UK Supreme Court already settled that AI cannot be named a patent ‘Inventor’.
- AI shines when you have to remember lots of information, such as case law and medical diagnoses. Enter Nabla, a French startup, whose product lurks in the background of the doctor’s office to help the doctor. Google and Microsoft have both released models trained on medical data: MedPaLM-2 and Medprompt.
- Google NotebookLM seems interesting, especially if it could pin newsletters and websites. It would be ideal if paired with getmatter.com.
- AnyText may be the answer to eliminate the gibberish text from generated images.
- Aragon.ai is another headshot generator. However, that’s small potatoes compared to Google’s VideoPoet. ModiFy provided a flashback to the blinking websites from the early internet.
- AI will surely drive the push for more capable consumer electronics. E.g., The exciting drawww.app doesn’t run on my iPad Air as it requires more powerful Apple silicon.
- I spent this weekend understanding the options on a new Volvo sedan: Volvo S60 {B5 , T8 Recharge} {Core, Plus, Ultimate} {Dark, Black Edition}. That was easy compared to keeping track of all the LLM models: GPT 3.5, 4 or 4.5, GPT 3.5 or 4 Turbo, Gemini, Gemini Pro, DeciLM 6b and 7B, 13B, 8x7B, etc.
- New lingo: Chain of Thought (CoT) and Tree of Thought (ToT)
The Sources
January 7, 2024
Who Killed JFK?
Rob Reinier and Soledad O’Brien’s podcast has hijacked my commute for the past few days with their reporting on Who Killed JFK.
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With the film JFK, Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner originally stoked my curiosity into what happened in Dallas on November 22 in 1963. In this podcast, we dig a little deeper. A lot deeper.
It is amazing how many errors were made during the two government investigations into what happened. The podcast does a great job going through some key issues, in 30 minutes increments (my favorite podcast length).
- Arlen Specter’s single or magic bullet theory is clearly a complete fabrication.
- The investigations were deliberately botched with key people not interviewed, reports altered, and testimonies tweaked to fit a narrative.
- Lee Harvey Oswald was, as he said himself, a patsy. He was clearly a double agent sent as a fake defector to Russia. His interest in Marx was the perfect pretext into the false flag operation detailed in Operation Northwoods.
So who did it and why? I am not going to spoil it here. Let’s just say that it started with some men in suits drinking Cuba Libres at a hotel in Miami run by some Italian fellas.
January 4, 2024
Here’s a list of tools I have been using this year to get stuff done.
- Todo lists and Tasks
- The basic interface, capabilities, and Siri integration make Apple Reminders work well for my personal todo list. Most often I think of things to do while in the car, cycling, or even in the pool. Voice integration on Apple devices is the killer feature.
- I use Obsidian for lots of things at work, including a todo file for every month. Since my Obsidian Vault is stored in Dropbox, I can access it from any device and using many different text editing tools.
- Notes and Narratives
- I’ve written by my notes system before. I continue to use Markdown with 1Writer (on iOS) and iAWriter.
- My notes are stored in two Obsidian vaults (read: notebooks). Most of my work and personal notes are in a common vault, stored in Dropbox. I can access them from any device. I also have separate vault on iCloud for notes I want to easily access on my iPhone. Although I do have a paid Obsidian license, I do not pay for their Synch capability.
- I prefer to write for work using Google Docs over Word or Confluence, primarily for its collaborative features. However, Google Docs does lack good merge capabilities.
- I journal regularly in Day One. I tried Apple Journal briefly, though still prefer the capabilities of Day One.
- Matter is my reading and read-later app. It integrates well with Obsidian to save highlights.
- Presentations
- I opt for Google Slides over PowerPoint. I gravitate to iA Presenter for impromptu presentations and presentations that I like to thinker with often.
- After trying other iOS podcasting apps, I keep going back to Apple Podcast. Combined with Apple Music and Apple Classical, there is a common interface between them.
- There are new AI-powered tools released almost weekly. I try many of them so long as a metered free version is available. I see myself go to Google Bard more often than using OpenAI ChatGPT. I also enabled the AI-capabilities in Gmail and the other Google App Suite. I tried image generation tools like Dall-E, but I don’t use them often. The initial results were less than stellar.
- There are several fitness and health related apps I use regularly: Cronometer for tracking my food, Strava and Garmin Connect for my cycling trips, runs, swims and other workouts. Apple Health aggregates a lot of the data. I am on the fence to switch from the Apple Watch to a Garmin Watch.
I am a big fan of WonderTools to learn about new capabilities and tools.
December 31, 2023
Tank, my 2005 white Volvo V70 station wagon, is nearing 200,000 miles. It is still a great car to drive to work or to load my bicycle in the trunk on the way to the group ride. There is no need to disassemble the bicycle. Open trunk, slide in the full bicycle with room to spare.
Yet, I’ve been slowly looking for a new car. I need something that I can reliably drive to Lake Tahoe or even across the Santa Cruz mountains to Half Moon Bay. In other words, “I am in the market”.
Yet, when I visit the car dealers, my experience has been the opposite of somebody looking to buy a car.
A month ago, I pulled my aging Volvo into the Audi dealership at the Fremont Automall. I figured an old car may gave the impression that its greying driver may be in for an upgrade to a new car. I was completely ignored by the sales team. Nobody came to even see us when we were checking out the Audi A4 station wagon in the showroom or when we walked the lot outside. It was a very odd experience.
At Mercedes, it was clear we were not their clientele. We lacked the bling. I wasn’t offended. It was more a badge of honor to be ignored by Mercedes.
Yesterday, at AutoNation Volvo in San Jose, AT VOLVO (!), with my entire family in tow, nobody batted an eye for us. I appreciate allowing the customer to meander. Yet, after 10 minutes, or upon entering the showroom, one expects a friendly “How are you doing today” or “Can I help you with anything?”
My theory at Audi was that few folks buy a car without their wife present. So a smart salesperson may just skip the dad and his son ogling cars. That theory didn’t hold water after our visit to Volvo with my wife and kids.
Is the car business this good these days that one can ignore the customer?
December 30, 2023
Guns in America
In a six-part Revisionist History podcast series, Canadian Malcom Gladwell, dives into the gun debate.
The way America deals with guns is absolutely bonkers
No kidding. I’ve had plenty of long discussions with my NRA card carrying and gun enthusiast neighbor. I love those conversations as they are always cordial. However, our discussions often end with “That doesn’t make any sense”.
Fourteenth century Bristol merchant John Knight is one of main characters in episode one. Right away, Gladwell lives up to the name of his podcast: history is not what you think it was. Episode one also covers one of my favorite topics, the Supreme Court, in a case New York Rifle and Pistol (the Bruen case). A double whammy.
I wont’ spoil the broth here. It is fair to say that the ending won’t surprise the regular listener of Revisionist History.
Episode 2 gets into the topic of assault weapon regulation. Also here, there is a major surprise.
The assault rifle is not the most lethal weapon in mass shootings. Sarani’s group found that more people were shot by rifles than handguns, but those differences did not translate into a higher percentage of people killed. The people most likely to die were the ones hit by handguns.
And therefor,
There shouldn’t be separate laws for rifles than for handguns. We think there should be just common laws that apply to both types of weapons.
Convictions, incarceration, and survival rates depend a lot on how far you are from a trauma center. Further, trauma centers aren’t built in poor areas as they are expensive to run and few carry insurance to pay for the services. So crime-ridden poor areas both see more gun-related crimes and are further from trauma centers. The odds are stacked against folks here. Bonkers, but no surprise.
I am glad that in season 8, Malcolm Gladwell, is back to his usual detective self. It makes for great podcasts, and surely a new book soon.
December 27, 2023