Ira Glass on Storytelling
Somebody posted these links to one of the myriad mailing lists I subscribe to. I thought I’d share. It’s Ira Glass giving tips to aspiring storytellers. How great is that?
Throw out everything they taught you in high school. Here’s how it’s done. (Finally something worth watching on YouTube.)
- Part 1 Telling a story vs. writing a story
- Part 2 Finding the story is as hard as crafting the story
- Part 3 You have great taste, so you know your early stuff stinks. Don’t quit.
- Part 4 Be yourself. Take it from a guy who obviously practices what he preaches.
The other side of entrepreneurship
A friend of mine was talking to her father on the phone the other day when representatives from the bank arrived at the door. This is not a good thing. Any communication from the bank that doesn’t come in a white envelope with bulk rate postage is never good.
Business was tough. It had been tough before, but a little paid-in capital from the owner always saw it through to better times. This time was different. His customers weren’t paying their bills, and the worst kind of trickle down economics was in effect.
The story of that business is not over. I don’t know how it will turn out, but just the same, it got me thinking. Almost every entrepreneur in the video business faces lean times. We all go into our ventures vowing never to let them threaten our mortgage payments or our kids’ educations. Yet when it hits the fan, how many of us will keep that promise?
With great reward, comes great risk. We know that going in, but we deny the worst could ever happen to us. Like death, we block it out and go on as if it can only happen to the other guy. We know better.
When I heard what happened to my friend’s dad I couldn’t help but think of all the people who benefited from his risk taking. All the people who bought houses on the income his business generated, the students who made tuition because of the summer jobs the business created, and the vendors who profited from his business (Kingpin among them).
The real world’s not like It’s a Wonderful Life. No one’s going to take up a collection to make the loan payments. He’ll either do it on his own, or he’ll throw in the towel. I don’t know how this story will end.
America’s a great place. The child of a third world immigrant can make a six-figure income. It’s not easy, but it can be done here. Where else on this planet can that happen with any regularity? But there’s a downside, and I was reminded of it this week. There’s no safety net for the American entrepreneur. So if praying’s your thing, consider offering one up for those middle class heroes. They are the ones who built America. It takes a lot of guts to do what they do.
Hats off to the likes of Wes Plate, Jim Tierney, Philip Hodgetts, Terry Curren, Jim Feeley, Michael Buday, and the scores we know like them who could make a mint punching the clock for the man but have decided to roll the dice for something better.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
ProMax Digital Café
One of the premier NAB events
Come join the party and see the latest and greatest in video, storage, and storage area network technology all in a relaxed environment away from the show floor. You can learn more in one evening at the Café than after a whole day on the massive show floor. Drinks, food, music, good company, and a new look are all a part of making the event a memorable highlight of NAB for all those who attend. Oh yeah, we alsogive away some pretty cool stuff at the end…
To register and for more details: promax.com/cafe
Wondering why posts on the Weasel have been sporadic? Word coming soon.
Font fun with OS X 10.4.9
Installed the OS X 10.4.9 update. System took forever to get past the Spotlight icon upon reboot and every subsequent restart. Microsoft Office 2004 applications spent about 40 seconds “optimizing font menu.” What gives?
Turns out OS X 10.4.9 activates every font Font Book has access to. You have been warned.
H.264 rumor
Cringley writes that he’s fairly certain Apple will begin including hardware-based H.264 decoding and encoding to every Mac sold. That would be a sweet NAB stocking stuffer for the industry’s annual Christmas-in-April bash. Before getting all warm and fuzzy about Apple showing us video pros the love, realize it’s not our encoding Apple cares about. It’s about making Mac Minis ass kicking DVRs.
This will change everything. Soon even the lowliest Mac will be able to effortlessly record in background one or more video signals while the user runs TurboTax on the screen. Macs will become superb DVR machines with TiVo-like functionality yet smaller file sizes than any TiVo box could ever produce. In a YouTube world, the new Macs will be a boon to user-produced video, which will, in turn, promote the H.264 standard. By being able to encode in real time, the new Macs will have that American Idol clip up and running faster than could be done on almost any other machine. Add in Slingbox-like capability to throw your home cable signal around the world and it gets even better. Add faster video performance to the already best-of-league iChat audio/video chat client, and every new Mac becomes a webcam or a video phone.
The thing I love about Cringley rumors is that whether or not they come to fruition, they usually should. ThinkSecret rumors don’t have such a track record. Think Final Cut Extreme.
