Thank you everyone for your support over this past year. It has been a year and a month since I started mondaydots and really appreciate all the support and comments. We hit 50,000 views on YouTube!
I am finally starting to kick the sleep deprivation from my new son and I have some new posts brewing. The one I am really excited about is on "fundamental attribution error". Stay tuned!
Thanks again! Here's to another year!
- jeff
I was in the panic and excitement of the delivery room and accidentally fired off a couple of posts to the mondaydots blog when they should have gone to family blog to update our family members around the world. I apologize for the inconvenience.
I am a proud, first time parent of a big baby boy!
Kai Jeffrey Monday was born at 12:07 pm PDT today! He is 9 pounds 7 ounces and 22 1/2" long. Hopefully I have a little dot prodigy on my hands!
I have had quite a number of requests for these files from viewers and one of the core reasons I started the blog was to help people improve their presentations.
I hope these files help, and if you make something incredible - please be sure to share it with me and I will repost it (with your permission) so everyone can learn from it too!
gamble model: download "the gamble model" file
why dots?: download "why dots?" Keynote file
cuts! panic! value?: download "cuts! panic! value?" Keynote file
goals and alignment: download "goals and alignment" Keynote file
disruptive innovation: download "disruptive innovation" Keynote file
mind the information gap: download "mind the information" gap Keynote file
I can't post them all, as some include images I purchased from iStockphoto.com. Posting them would violate my license agreement.
I would like to start posting these Keynote files with every post. This will encourage me to use my own images or draw my own for future posts (be very afraid!).Thanks for reading and I look forward to your feedback.
In reading "Driven" and "Made to Stick" I stumbled across an incredibly interesting idea. It's called Information Gap Theory. Dr. George Lowenstien wrote a paper about it in 1994 and it works like this: when we come across something new that is not explained by our previous knowledge or experiences, an information gap is formed. If you are a designer, creator or communicator, understanding how to use this gap will have great rewards.
Before I tell you how to put it to use, let's explore the gap with a story. Let's say you're a pentagon, and your entire world, all your of your previous experiences, everything you know, everything you think about, is pentagons. Then one day you come across a hexagon. A hexagon is not very different from anything you've previously experienced, so a small gap in your information is formed. This gap is easily rectified by explaining the hexagon as a pentagon with six sides. You quickly close the information gap and move on.
Next you come across a polygon. This polygon is so unlike anything you've ever seen before that it creates a huge information gap, and a problem occurs: when the information gap becomes this large it creates fear and people, I mean pentagons, loose the desire to close the gap and don't engage with the new product or service, I mean polygon. They either ignore it or run in the opposite direction as fast as possible.
Then you encounter a dot. It's like a pentagon but has a beautiful, continuous, smooth curve and no harsh angles. It is similar but also different from anything you have previously experienced and it creates a medium sized information gap. The power in medium sized information gaps is that they inspire curiosity. They are small enough to be crossed but large enough to create interest and this is the key to putting Lowenstein's Information Gap Theory to work for you: When you are building your next new product, service, or ad campaign, aim to create medium sized information gaps.
It amazes me how many new product developers, marketers, and advertisers create the wrong sized gap. They either create a "me too" product or service which creates an information gap that is too small and uninteresting. Or they let their engineers and creatives add wild, bloated, and unnecessary "features", and create a huge information gap that inspires fear over the size of the gap and size of the of the learning curve.
Each of us has an inherent desire to learn and explore, to the degree that you can create medium sized information gaps with your audience, with your new website, widget, and or marketing campaign, you will be successful! Thanks for watching and I look forward to your feedback!
Shirin over at ColoAdvisor.com/ recently created his first mondaydots presentation explaining what his company does. It is a solid first presentation and I look forward to future ColoAdvisor presentations!
Here is the transcript:
Hi, this is Shirin with ColoAdvisor, just wanted to walk you through how our service works.
As far as colocation and hosting goes; at times working for a single company pushed is to try and place square pegs into round holes for the sale of the sale due to downward pressure to hit certain revenue targets. This is a short term strategy and is bad for both parties involved.
As far as selling as selling hosting and colocation services to companies. This didn't work for us; we realized that companies out there usually do one or two things really well but could never be everything to everyone. ColoAdvisor was formed to overcome this issue.
Here's how are model works, while taking as little time from our client as possible we gather detailed requirements using an efficient collection and capture method, we'll give you feedback and suggestions to optimize the overall solution you're seeking to purchase. From here we put together a diagram and requirements document that we review with you before sending it off to our trusted partners. This model has worked really great for a lot of our clients to date.
ColoAdvisor has relationships wit 40 hosting, colocation, cloud, CDN, messaging and enterprise application management companies. Using these 40+ providers, we narrow down the companies with the best fit to a handful for you. While working directly with our end client we'll work to select the one that fits the best from a technical, cultural and financial perspective. Our hours of consulting and research are covered by the final provider that we mutually choose. If you choose to table or put your project on hold, there's nothing to worry about, no fees are due to us at all.
We wanted to thank you for your time in watching our presentation and please do reach out to us for any hosting, colocation, CDN or cloud initiatives that you may have. Thank you very much.
Transcript:
In our last post we promised a follow up for making your contribution social media ready. We have a few basic principles that if followed can help your content avoid being ignored and capture the attention of your second and third circles.
The first of these principles is to lead with passion. Find something you are passionate about and pursue it. We see so many people using social media just for the sake of using the technology or for shameless self promotion. If you aren't passionate about your work it will show in the quality. If you want your contribution to capture attention, put your heart and time into it, there are no shortcuts.