forthelove

There's probably another reason hidden in the first sentence, which is that there's a transition from building the product (engineering) to shipping the product (marketing, customer development, sales) that requires different skill sets and experiences. Was just discussing this with a software engineer friend of mine who realizes that he "has no clue how to market my product the right ways."

Here's my vote for skateboarding. You'll never look at boring old stairs, ledges, and curbs the same.

I'm too dumb to understand any of this stuff re AI, but one thing occurred to me recently on the philosophical side of tech: When your life is closely intertwined w/ tech, you begin to almost solely view the world through the lens of progress and innovation. Progress and innovation often comes at the total expense of momentary awareness and satisfaction. Innovating becomes an expectation. It's just what comes next, that's it. That's a problem, generally speaking, IMO.

False. I was directly reacting to what the OP said (below), which said nothing of a relationship w/ customers. Personally, I'm a proponent of having devs closely involved in every step of the product, including messaging and marketing. But that's not what this post was about.

> We are the technology, we did it in the first place.

> By default, we know better than them (because we are the one who do the tech)

The tone you use here helps make my point: just because "nerds" are experts in everything tech does NOT equate to good decision making / good management for the company as a whole. Sometimes it does. Often times it does not. Things aren't usually that black and white; "I built it, so I should run it." Just had this convo with a coworker the other day. He was telling me about all the complaints from the dev team and how we should let them drive the bus. I had to remind him of all the good-tech-but-bad-business ideas several of them have offered in the past. In my experience, the rare "nerd" who also intimately understands the nuances of every day business (relationships, the board, profit margins, brand experiences, etc.) is hard to beat.

That's the problem tho, isn't it? The core value of the service was great for fans, but not for any sort of business and certainly not for the labels (without whom SC cannot exist and hope to make any money whatsoever).

For one, breathe. Before, during, after. Breathe. Settle yourself (I meditate daily as well). Personally, I think I get caught up when I try to read word for word scripts, so I always give myself a general blueprint of what I want to say but allow myself room for improv. I also tend to do my practice speeches way faster than the real ones, which I also think is the opposite of what most people experience. I pause a lot (and, again, breathe) during speeches, let things sink in for both the audience and myself. That's about it. Oh, I try to get everyone laughing early on. It settles the nerves in almost any situation.

I should note that I've had to give many, many, many presentations in many different business environments (in front of my companies, pitching investors, new biz pitches, etc.) and I learned a long time ago that confidence is crucial. Almost every time I practiced the best man speech I stuttered quite often, and almost on the same words every time. But come game time, it almost always goes smoothly. Always found that a bit odd. Maybe I just get into sort of flow states and just roll with it.

Stutterer here. Was in speech therapy for a long time as a child; my sister actually became a speech therapist b/c of that experience. It will always be a challenge (I'm 37 now), and it seems to rear its ugly head at random times not necessarily tied to stress. Two nights ago I made my first ever best man speech in front of about 150+ people and I maybe stammered once during the 5 or so minutes. Felt amazing and I had people asking me if I was a standup comic or spoke professionally. They have no clue the daily mental gymnastics I perform to master the stuttering.