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The Renaissance, Thanksgiving, and Startups

My new article on entrepreneursunpluggd.com . I talk about how businesses can benefit from using a theme to sharpen their focus. Give a read and let me know what you think.

Make Love To Pirates And Fans.

Over the years we have watched Hollywood and the music industry go after the throats of people for falling in love with their products. It has been bloody and senseless. Instead of love, people have come to resent Hollywood and the music industry (especially) as that predator that will wring every penny from a fan that got their product ” illegally”. Hell hath no fury like a maltreated fan. Such behaviour encourages more piracy. I’ll propose pretty simple suggestions that might curtail piracy and perhaps make hollywood and the music industry look like humans.

Make Content Universally Available: Grant access to these products so people can access them. People outside the U.S dread the message ” This content is restricted and may not be viewed in your area” or ” the content provider has blocked viewing in your area”. Lower the prices to an affordable level. People will watch a terrible cam than wait a month. That’s how bad they want to see the movie Let’s do the math, if an original DVD sells for $150 and some bootlegger sells the same movie of about the same quality for $5 where do you think the individual with a lower income will go? This is the case in my country.

Appeal To People With The Stars: Get the stars to go around appealing to the good nature people. People aren’t that difficult once a star can see the world through their eyes. Let them hold ordinary gatherings with fans. Even if you charge the fans a buck, they won’t mind as long as they get to speak to the stars for a few hours.

Let the DVDs Play Content Immediately: That infernal DVD menu, get rid of it. Only if the DVD has 2 movies above, we don’t want the bloody menu. When we push play, we want it to play.

Region Coding: A friend went to the United States and got a bunch of DVDs without knowing anything about region coding. These were rare DVDs according to him. He couldn’t watch them. He had a region 2 player and the DVDs were region 1. Disappointing. Don’t make us think we want it to just work. Take regional coding out.

Digital Rights Management: Here’s the argument “I bought this album for this amount, can’t I do whatever the hell I want with it?”. The answer, “why the hell not?”. When fans put up those songs on Youtube doing their best bit of a cover then it means the song / artist is loved. Take down notices are infuriating. Stop them. For an industry that mostly gets most of its acts from folks who cover other songs it seems like a contradictory move.

Get the Artist To Release Their Songs In Bits: People are impatient. The old way of releasing albums is OLD. No one wants to wait until a certain release date. Get the songs out. Sell them those songs. Let people rock them. Then you can sell an album later with something special. Makes it feel like a collection and makes owning it feel like a privilege.

Cinema And Online Simultaneously: Please don’t make me walk to the cinema. My couch/ bed is better. I can eat whatever I want plus I don’t have to hold my urine in cause I don’t want to miss a bit of the film. Cinema is torture. A place rife with any kind of distraction. From the dude who keeps farting to the couple doing unspeakable things right beside you. I use my computer most of the time. A week after the movie is released is fine. Then I still can make time to watch it instead of going ” Fuck this!! The bloody movie is probably not worth it!”. This way the movie remains fresh in the minds of people and hollywood will make more money when everyone can watch it. Don’t make me wait a bloody month or two.

Let Fans Become Involved In Production: From the ideas for the script to poster designs to every bit of marketing within a controlled environment of course. People spend their time coming up with parodies or fan made films for a reason. Some of them are really good. The best part is people will do it for free.People are bloody creative when it comes to something they love. Embrace the opportunity. The directors, producers,artistes, e.t.c should leave their ego at the door and listen. People defend stuff they help create.

Make Love NOT War: Play nice. Quit the SOPA or whatever agenda you have up your sleeves. Stop lobbying congress. Look human (at least pretend). When you maltreat people they’ll often put you in your place.

There Will Always Be Bad Eggs: Some people are naturally repellent to good behaviour. Let them be the good outnumber the evil. Focus on the good and the evil might just convert. Use the good ones as your evangelists.

Learn from Steam: Gamers love Steam (Valve)  for a darn good reason and hate E.A for a good reason too.

Game Based Movies Hurt Our Feelings: They suck!! No offence to the artist who slave over them but they suck. Take your time, plan out a game, make it and while you’re at it change the story. I think a lot of studios would be happy to pen a great story and come up with terrific game mechanics if they’re just given the time. Arkham Asylum / Arkham City make fan boys gush.

Make Fantastic Movies and Music: These days if you watch the trailer of a movie then you’ve probably seen the best bit of the movie. These days the music industry suffers from ” samesoundness”. If you hear this album then you’ve probably heard the other. Double down on creating great music and films. Originals are a killer. Leave the sequels and prequels alone. You could hurt an already healthy franchise. While we’re at it, not every book, video game, comic, or cartoon is motion picture adaptable. Let them be.

In Praise of Laziness

Before I get punched in the nuts for supporting laziness, try to see this from from a different scope. My definition of laziness is not inclusive of that lad in bed surrounded by an army of beer cans or the dude sitting on a couch wolfing a subway sandwich and finds reaching for the remote excruciating. I’m talking about laziness that leads to creativity. The laziness that sparks innovation. Despite its negative press, it has thrived over the centuries for one reason. We need it. Lazy people tend to ask themselves “how” and “why” so much they come up with solutions that are so obvious the rest of us look past them. They see no reason why an essay should be thousands of words long when a few hundreds can tell the story. They see no reason why you’d have so many buttons when one can do the trick. They see no reason why people have to have to log books around when you can have it in an electronic form factor. They see no reason why you have to disrupt your schedule so they set up a system ship stuff to you.  Laziness encompasses one’s ability to say “NO!”. The ability to make that hard decision of not cramming your products with features that will be used. The ability to help other people reach their goals without clutter. Every form of complication in the world has been brought about by a hard work. Created by someone who thinks there should be a lot more processes to accomplish a simple task.

There were failed attempts at the wonderful things we enjoy now. Laziness stepped in and forced the people who created these things to take a break to ask ” WHY” and “HOW”. Continuous labour would have resulted in more frustrations. Larry Page and Serge Brin didn’t want to spend long hours parsing the internet. They created Google. Email was slow and very painful. Paul Bucheit created Gmail. They wanted nice pictures without all the post editing Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger gave us instagram. Ole Kirk Christiansen wanted toys kids could put together with no fuss, we got LEGO. The easiest things are the hardest to spot. Laziness helps in that regard. Though a lot of creative people will never be seen with laziness in public, their best works have been a fruit of it. Laziness forces reevaluation. Laziness is amazing. Laziness is that flash of inspiration. Laziness is that problem solved.