99 Percent : Meet Jason Randal

Jason Randal has accomplish a lot in his carreer. We were having difficulty just keeping track of his resume: author, actor, songwriter, magician, musician, singer, stunt man, stunt coordinator for television and movies, sixth degree black belt in Karate, certified hypnotist, special effects pyrotechnic operator, scuba dive instructor, single and multi-engine flight instructor, and a Ph.D. in social psychology. He trained Chuck Norris, played in Pretty Woman, was a stunt coordinator on An Officer and a Gentleman.

How he did it? By overlapping schema and time. By doing so, you learn about something and it might help you learning something else afterward. And by learning several things at the same it’s like being on a fast track trampoline.

It’s about how much time you do it.

So he explain that at the end it’s how often you do it. The more you do something the more you are able to learn it. And if you learn something and you don’t use it, you will forget about it. It’s all about repetition and efficiency.

There is three critical things to be able to learn something:

• -Emotion practice
• -Power of intent
• -Use your motivation
• -Play and experiment by making it a game

• -Stretching
• -Toggling
• -Mnemonic
• -Overlapping

• -Get a coach
• -Peer Power (You are who you hang out with)

In the end, he explain that you are who you hang out with, that’s what really matters. If you get around passionate people it will rub off on you. He also said that you have to reduce everything to what you can do and what you can do right now. That way you won’t be overwhelm by the whole thing. Instead of thinking about how to do A to Z you’ll manage how to get from point A to B, and then from B to C…

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99 Percent: Meet Cheryl Dorsey

Cheryl is social entrepreneur and President of Echoing. This global nonprofit company has awarded more than $27 million in start-up capital to over 450 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

While interviewing and selecting entrepreneurs she applies the pressure test:
-Passion threshold
-Show us your battle plan
-Idealogy vs pragmatism

She also share a few skills to develop in order to be a good social agent:
-Core identity formation and aligment: meant to do it
-Focus and ability to execute with alacrity: gonna execute and build on your mission business
-Solution oriented: solving problem vs idea generation
-Ressource magnet: human capital is key
-Deep foundation of belive

Visit Echoing Green to learn more about their social work: www.echoinggreen.org

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99 Percent: Meet Seth Godin

Seth Godin, CEO of Squidoo, bestselling author & blogger was speaking as well at the 99 Percent conference. He started the conference dressed like a priest saying: “You don’t need to be more creative, all of you are too creative”. Then he started explaining that you should always be in a shipping mode in a project. If you are proud of what you deliver and you follow the schedule, you will succeed and you will enjoy doing it. You simply need to ship and not being creative. It’s all about finishing and not starting.

He also presented his concept of the Lizard brain…that little voice that talks to you all the time (the Left brain).The Lizard as species is always in a surviving mode, The Lizard brain is afraid, and wants to sabotage projects for self-preservation. “Don’t get more creative… Make your Lizard brain more quiet!” said Seth Godin. He also explained us that futher you get to the end of a project, the resistence is getting worst and worst. In order to be efficient in a project, we really need to do the maximum of thinking, planning, discussing at the beginning. That will reduce the pressure and resistence.

His presentation was very interesting but very short. Read his blog to know more about Seth Godin.

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99 Percent: Meet Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas is the Design Director of New Media behind the historic Obama Presidential campaign.

The Obama campaign, was the first to fully integrate web and print design as a whole for more consistency. The process was an ongoing work and as he explain: “We were truly making an airplane while on flight.” The website changed a lot since the first launch, but they really needed to get it up and running. It was in constant evolution. During this campaign, it was very important to deliver a clear and consice message and keep sending the message of hope. The team gave the feeling like Obama was already President.

Here are 3 rules from Scott:
-Work with people who are not like you for new ideas
-Be around people who push you and motivate you
-Write things down, do a to do list

Scott Thomas ended his presentation with following: “The Obama campaign was simply done by checking out a to do list.”

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99 Percent: Meet Robert Hammond

Robert Hammond is the co-founder and president of Friends of the High Line. His organisation brought the 1.5 mile-long disused elevated rail structure on Manhattan’s West Side, from the brink of demolition in 1999, to the start of construction in 2006, on its conversion to a public park. The first section of the new park will open in June 2009.

In his presentation, he told us that giving credit to other help accomplish the project. Politician who never really cared about the projects suddenly were really happy to be seen at the inaugural shovel of soil. Hammond doesn’t really mind to be kept in the shadow as long as the project is undergoing.

The project is really astonishing and be sure to check out the photos by visiting the Website:
http://www.thehighline.org/design/designslideshow.htm

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99 Percent: Meet The Threadless Guys

Over the years, Threadless has become a multi-million dollars T-shirt business. Meet Jake and Jeffrey, the Threadless guys. Jake Nickell started skinnyCorp about 9 years ago in his appartment like most entrepreneur do and soon his friend Jeffrey Kalmikoff joined him. At the begining, Threadless was one of their personal project and they never thought it would become what it is today : Threadless sell about 100 000 T-shirt per month and has over 900 000 registrered users.

At the conference they gave us their best practices:
-If you don’t know how to do it, work it out
-Be 100% reactive: Listen to your customers or your online community
-Get proactive
-K.I.S. & D.I.Y. (Keep it simple and do it yourself)
-Get realistic, but stay scrappy
-Brutal prioritization, maniacal focus
-You have to take the first step in action

For more on Threadless, here’s an article from 2005 but with a lot more info.
http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2005/09/skinnycorp_6_qu.php

Check out this video, it’s another conference they spoke to in 2007 that talk more about the company

And here’s a guided tour of Threadless

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99 Percent of Authenticity

In our goody bag of the 99 Percent conference, we received an interesting poster:

This poster seem like a normal poster, yes it’s a nice design, but the story behind put tears to my eyes. Have a look at this video that present the work behind it:

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99 Percent: Meet Michael Bierut

Michael Bierut is a partner at Pentagram, one of the biggest branding and design agency. He has won hundreds of design awards and also his work is presented at the MOMA and Cooper-Hewitt. Here are his secrets:

-Write everything down
-Listen first, then design
-Don’t avoid the obvious
-The problem contains the solution
-Indulge your obsessions
-Love is the answer
-Always remember who you do it for

Consult his blog: www.designobserver.com

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99 Percent: Meet Jill Greenberg

Jill Greenberg is a famous and controversial photographer who lives in New York. She is very known for her Times Magazine’s cover and specially the Atlantic Magazine cover. She utilized uncomfortable images to provoke discussion and initiate debates. And it works!

The series of crying babies was controversal but the John Mc Cain did more noise…See by yourself!

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99 Percent: Meet Scott Belsky

During the 99% conference, Scott Belsky (CEO & Founder of Behance) shared with us the Best Practices of his firm.

Here are their best practices :

-Leaders talk last (Silence is visionary)

-Develop others through appreciations

-Reduce your amount of insecurity work

-Value the Team’s immune system (strengths and weakness)

-Seek restraints (without direction it’s hard to focus)

-Stop focusing on the visionaries (Stop focussing only on the early adopters, think more of the mass)

-Judge based on initiative not on experience (e.g.: Obama’s campaign)

-Value chemistry over people

-Unique is opportune (Nothing extraordinary is ever achieved trough ordinary means)

-Share ideas liberally

-Share ownership of ideas

-Seek competition (it push you to get things done)

-Fight your way to breakthroughs - Develop a culture of fighthing and debating

-Don’t become burdened by consensus

-Present yourself (overcome stigma of self-marketing)

-Generate ideas in moderation

-Don’t let today always trump tomorow

-Creativity X Organization = Impact

-Organize with a bias to action

-Mesure a meeting in action steps

-Don’t meet because it’s Monday

-Create backburner (project ideas for later)

-Have a culture of capturing Actions steps

-Accept Darwinian Productivity

-Capturing action everywhere (write it down) then forget about it

-Prioritize projects visually : Energy Line

There is 3 type of personalities in projects to consider: Doers, Dreamers, Incrementalists (a little of both but not at the same time)

Have a look at The Action Method From Behance, an intuitive approach to productivity: Action Steps, Backburners items, Reference items

Learn More about Behance: www.behance.com

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