From SXSW: Oh That Sounds Like Yojimbo

So this morning I was walking the halls of SXSW and I bumped into Guy Kawasaki. We don't know each other, but back in the day when I was doing DayMaker, he had a PIM suite called TouchBase/Datebook. So I decided to say hello.

Anyway, we chatted for a second and he asked what I was doing now. I gave him a 20 second description. Since I am not here making any announcements, I wont repeat what I said. But once I was done he said, "you mean like Evernote."

I said, well there is a little bit of overlap, but not much. I then said, well its for storing everything that you have, and he said "there is a product from Bare Bones Software called Yojimbo that does that."

Of course I was pretty sure that was not true, but after we said goodbye, I sat down, pulled out my laptop and went to Bare Bones site. And of course, there is almost no comparison in terms of design, purpose, concept or execution between Kloudshare, and Yojimo.

The purpose of this is not to criticize Guy, or Bare Bones. But it does highlight what I have found to be an interesting challenge. All of us as human beings need to be able to understand things in the context of things we are already familiar with. We want to understand our movies by categorizing them. For example "Its Animal House meets Phantom of the Opera."

Of course that makes no sense. It is in a sense, a "shorthand" we tell people to help them understand what we are doing without really telling them, because that shorthand is what they need to help them understand. Now sometimes that shorthand is accurate. And sometimes its not at all. But it really doesn't matter. The idea is to help people to be interested, even if what you are telling them implies something that is entirely untrue. People need to be engaged enough to let you tell them more of your story. And of course the more jaded the recipient, the more short your shorthand needs to be.

Guy is an example of someone who needs a 10 second shorthand that is compelling. Because he is hearing these things all day, and I would imagine one's attention span gets short.

And so the challenge when you are doing something really big is to create the 5, 10, 30, and 60 second shorthand of what you your thing is. The 5 - 15 second versions, if they are good, are probably pretty inaccurate if they are effective. We still havent totally nailed ours but the story line is getting better. I would imagine Twitter had a similar problem since I have to admit it was *months* after they launched before I understood it at all. In any case, every one of these conversations is an excellent exercise in refining our presentation, and lots fun.