Stephen Fishman News & Articles

"Change Agent" is so overused lately it has come to mean anyone willing to change out the toner cartridge in the printer. Half the resumes I come across all have the same claim; "Change agent with a track record of success". Less than ten percent of those resumes have any examples of real change they have created and led (and by the way, if you were so successful leading change, why are you sending out resumes? Just sayin'...)

"Attending these non-stop meetings, doing these status reports and using that awful time tracking system is killing my ability to do my job. Why is it that talking about doing my job is more important than actually doing my job?" Sound familiar? Are you the one saying these words? Are these the rantings of the team around you? Does it seem like this sort of lament is the norm no matter the company, the industry or even the size of the enterprise?

Many people from the web industry have read and loved the recent classic Drive by Daniel Pink (or at least watched the fun and inventive video below). Not as many people, however, are familiar with exactly how to put the lessons from the book into practice within their enterprise. Fear not traveller; My aim in this article is to help provide a simple model where you can transfer a crucial piece of abstract understanding from Drive into concrete action in your daily work life.

I was super happy to see my article from last week, on the crossover between UX and APIs, get such a good response (including tweets from Alan Cooper and Jared Spool). There were one or two tweets from people who were not fully familiar with the topic and wanted to learn and understand more about the space. Ask and you shall receive. Each article listed below is a bit different and will help you understand different nuances, possibilities and actual corporate strategy shifts driven by API design.

It is all clear now. I figured it out. My absolute favorite thing about SXSW is this: The pretentious people say it has jumped the shark. Do you know all those people who are so busy telling everyone “There’s nothing new at SXSW”? Yeah, they’re gone. The people who remain are the ones who are taking risks. The ones who are creating new and interesting stuff. And because the naysayers have taken their negative attitudes home, the makers are free to do even more cool stuff.

Yay! Halleluja! Huzzah! Yippee Skippee! The day I have longed for has arrived. I am no longer the only one talking about the need for design philosophy in the API space. At this time last year, Alan Cooper (the godfather of user centered design) and I were seemingly the only ones who recognized that this space is in need of designers. Although Alan empathized and heartily agreed with me I still felt alone given that nobody else was writing or speaking about the topic. Fast forward one year and there was an actual panel at SXSW and a room full of people committing to be in a workshop for more than 2 and a half hours to talk and learn about the "UX of APIs".

The crowd was wildly snapping pictures and the star of the show grabbed his camera and started snapping back. Fans who surrounded the spectacle started then taking pictures of the audience and the icon taking pictures of each other. It was like a moment from a rock concert, with the exception that instead of throwing guitar picks to the audience, the superstar was throwing HTML5 stickers and was the biggest geek (a term I use with love) in the room.

In the Avengers, when Steve Rogers said to Tony Stark: "Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?" Tony Stark replied: "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." After seeing back to back keynotes from Leap Motion and Elon Musk, I feel like I was 20 yards away from the armored avenger himself (minus the alcoholism and the raging ego).

"Imitation as Innovation: Lessons from the Shanzhai" was the most intellectually challenging topic from my first day at SXSW. This talk from Lyn Jeffery, Research Director at Institute for the Future and Kris Gale, VP of Engineering at Yammer had so many paradoxes fly about the room, it took a good minute after the presentation was completed before the audience could absorb the messages deeply enough to ask any questions.

I was very nervous when I made my plans for attending the south-by-south-west conference. I was scared that the conference was getting too big. Would the conference be dominated by the poseurs and wannabes? Would the startup crowd with dreams of grandeur make every presentation a feebly costumed marketing pitch? This fear was dispelled in my first session. 

I was recently talking to a colleague who has been tagged to lead innovation for his employer. I was taken slightly aback when he mentioned that some big name strategy consultants told him that creating a culture of innovation was intractable and that he was better off creating a team that popped innovative stuff out.

Oh Apple, you little scamp! You love it so that everyone is so confused about the in-app purchase rules. Your coy little games have everyone from Amazon to Microsoft walking on eggshells. Do you love the kerfuffles you cause in the marketplace? Your products have always made splashy entrances and the world has been hanging on your every word. The confusion and questions related to your in-app purchase rules have waxed and waned, but never fully exited the public conversation. I'm sure it is all according to plan that your dance of ambiguity stays ever alive.

"Arrrrgh! Damn you Corporate America! Why do you mock me so? You haunt me to my doom!" Although you may not be so Shakespearian in lamenting your lot in work-life, I am near certain that you have felt this sense of resignation and frustration in almost every corporate job you have held.

It has been almost a year and a half since we looked into the land of the zombie apocalypse, and the infection is spreading. At the last briefing, the focus was on the endangered species known as enterprise CMS vendors. Current events reveal that the paid software industry as a whole is experiencing an accelerating disruption causing a litany of existential questions.

My confidence in the "thought leader" blog posts at LinkedIn is waning. First, there was the ridiculous Inge Geerdens post on being reluctant to hire forty-something professionals. And last month, Ron Baker had written a "Big Idea for 2013", which to me actually seems quite small.