Michael Rill

Einfach machen

Author: Michael

  • Keep calm and carry on

    Keep calm and carry on

    If you haven’t spent the last 24 hours under a rock, you know by now that the UK voted to leave the European Union. Living in Australia, it was easy to follow the vote count live. At the beginning it was a nail-biter, but early in the afternoon it was clear that ‘Leave’ got the majority.

    Born and raised in Germany, the European Union was always a given for me. I can barely remember ever using my passport for inner-continental travel. My first full-time pay-check was in Euros. While I’ve never been in business, directly benefiting from EU trade reliefs, I always assumed and felt that it was a good thing. Working together across countries makes everybody better off. Even celebrations like the Eurovision Song Contest were part of bringing nations closer together creating solidarity.

    Beyond free travel, I tremendously benefited from the EU. I was raised by two loving parents, my father a policeman, my mother a nurse. We’ve never been wealthy, but there was always more than enough. Given free education in Germany, I was able to go to university and by means of an Erasmus grant I was able to study free of charge for a year in London. It was an amazing year that allowed me to live in the middle of London and immerse myself not only in the British culture, but even more in the mixed company of other Erasmus students from France, Denmark, Spain, Italy and many other countries.

    My parents were especially very grateful for this year. They’ve told me many times that in this one year I became more open to other people’s opinions and matured into a much more positive human being, more friendly and kinder.

    So, while I saw the results coming in yesterday, I became sadder and sadder. I will probably be able to let my children spend time abroad and experience foreign cultures, but I’m worried that other people might no longer be able to afford the privileges I enjoyed.

    It just seems paradoxical to me. Technology makes it easier to connect with people across borders and continents. Out of Australia I can call my parents in Germany using FaceTime virtually free of charge anytime I want to. I can send them messages and pictures and let them participate in my life. Distance and borders become less and less of an issue to stay in touch. However, at the same time in many countries, both East and West of the Atlantic, voices become louder to protect borders and national interests, to no longer work together, but rather use tactics of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I still don’t understand why.

    Yesterday, the world grew a little smaller and at some point I just had to stop reading Twitter and news sites. I’m sad for the European Union and hope that the UK’s example will be a wake up call for the rest of the EU to not take the EU’s privileges for granted, but rather nurture the idea of collaboration, openness and understanding.

    But for now, I’m going to follow the British motto to “keep calm and carry on”, still believing in the idea of the European Union that working together is better than working alone.

    Photo credit: Free Grunge Textures – www.freestock.ca via DIYlovin / CC BY

  • Writing well, often

    Writing well, often

    I very much believe in the power of good writing. As such I admire the good work of companies like Mailchimp and Slack to promote good writing that is more approachable. Hence I was delighted when Anna Pickard started publishing some of Slack’s content style guide and writing principles. They follow Mailchimp’s great work, who published their voice and tone style guide already last year.

    At work me and my team started writing a monthly newsletter. It started out as a mailing just for the broader team to help us understand what everybody else is working on. However, people enjoyed reading it and started sharing. Now we have a group of family and friends throughout the organisation that loves reading this newsletter every month. Although it might seem insignificant, it is one of the highlights of my job. It is a chance to connect with people, find out what they are working on and spread the good news. The newsletter is very different from other corporate emails, as we aim to write it in very accessible language (thank you Mailchimp and Slack for setting such good examples). We spend a good amount of time to get it right, and people appreciate it.

    When I saw Anna speak earlier this year at Webstock, it clicked with me, why it was so hard and how we can make our job easier: Each month we were trying to figure out how to write a good newsletter from scratch, based on our experience. And even worse, we all did it individually. As a result, writing the newsletter took a lot of time and effort to make it sound right with good content and a consistent voice. We needed to reflect on what people love about the newsletter, why they read it despite their own email overload and write it down. This helps February-Michael be as good as January-Michael, and James write with the same passion as Elizabeth and vice versa.

    Below are the guidelines we came up with. In fact, the whole thing became a manifesto that was fun and empowering to write in itself. It borrows heavily on Anna’s talk and if we’ve done a good job, hopefully somebody will borrow heavily from us. Maybe it provides inspiration for somebody to start sharing more of their own story through a blog or a newsletter. Believe me, it is fun and better things will happen the more open you are.

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  • Courage

    “. . . may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.”

    – John O’Donahue

    Hat tip Swiss Miss.

  • Webstock 2016 – Celebrating the web’s values

    Webstock 2016 – Celebrating the web’s values

    Webstock turned ten last week. It is a conference that celebrates the web and its makers – the creativity, the magic, the craft and everything in between. Although Webstock is hosted in Wellington, they have an excellent reputation and attract great speakers from all over the world. It has been on my radar for a couple of years and this year I finally managed to go to Wellington. It was an amazing experience, an emotionally exhausting ride on the rollercoaster – in a good way. Hands down, the best conference I’ve ever been to. 

    Speakers typically have a tech background (web development, software engineering, UX design, long-time bloggers), but the presentations were mostly non-technical. While the Above All Human conference three weeks ago in Melbourne focused on startups and entrepreneurship, this conference focused on the web and its values and culture. You get a good idea of what Webstock is about from last year’s closing note by Natasha Lampard, where she talks about onsens, entrepreneurs and the long-game (also written up here).

    A key asset of Webstock is the diversity of its speakers regarding gender, background, race and topics. None of the talks could or should be compared with each other. Therefore, by the end of the first day I stopped trying to figure out what my favourite talk was – they all were really good. Because of this diversity in topics, it took me some time to recognise the common thread: They all talked about a shared set of values, promoting and preserving values like openness, contributing, inclusiveness, simplicity and caring deeply about your work, not your ego. It is a conference that is undeniably, beautifully, human.

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  • On writing – Where Creativity, Fear and Action go on a road trip

    On writing – Where Creativity, Fear and Action go on a road trip

    Any creative endeavour is an adventure. It takes us from here to somewhere new, hopefully somewhere exciting. That sounds simple and exciting in itself, but the devil is in the detail and once we embark on our adventure, we notice that things turn out to be trickier than previously imagined.

    Let’s take writing as an example.  Everyone knows the situation: we’ve got a wonderful idea, something to say and we want to share that idea. So we sit down and start with a blank sheet or screen. We write our first words, realise that they don’t really work so we start over again, start differently, it still doesn’t work. We get frustrated, doubt creeps in. Maybe we aimed too high and the idea was not as good as we thought it was. We really want to put ourselves out there, but worry that we are not good enough. We start checking our email, then Facebook, then Twitter, post the picture of our lunch on Instagram, then go back to email. At some point we declare defeat and leave the idea altogether.

    That’s how many writing efforts end – the adventure stops before it even really begins. And that’s sad, because the world likes adventures and needs more of them. Let’s find out why it is so challenging by borrowing from two concepts:

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  • Six great ideas from Above All Human

    Six great ideas from Above All Human

    There are some very special conferences, where the actual conference-track is embedded into a much broader community experience with very deliberate choices of venue, speakers, code of conduct and support like day-care for children. It’s a celebration of the organisers’ superb sense of taste as if they imagined a great day that happens to be a conference. With Above All Human, Susan Wu, Bronwen Clune and Scott Handsaker created such a wonderfully curated event in Melbourne:

    “Above All Human is a conference for startup founders, makers, designers and innovators who want to do great things, build innovative products, and be the most effective entrepreneurs they can be.”

    I had heard very good things about last year’s first instalment and it single-handedly surpassed those high expectations.

    Things that I really, really liked about the conference:

    • The quality and variety of speakers — a lot of people whom I’ve never heard of or whom I would not have actively sought out, but they shared such a great variety of topics and backgrounds. Who knew I’d be fascinated by the philosophical aspects of astrophysics?
    • The diversity of speakers — apparently is was no big deal to pull off 50% female speakers, but I think it was and think it should be highlighted as an example for other conferences to follow.
    • The tone of the conference — there was very little brouhaha and a lot of sincerity. As pointed out in the opening remarks, it was a heartfelt, inclusive and honest conference. Presenters talked openly about their struggles to share their hard-won learnings and present food for thought rather than half-baked solutions.
    • The venue — it easily hosted 1,000 people and never did I feel constrained, packed or uncomfortable, which is not a given for an introvert at conferences.
    • The food — plenty, good and easily available. Such a great idea to place food all over the place instead of having one central trough where everybody crams around.

    So, what did I learn on Friday?

    1. JOMO — The Joy of Missing Out. Being so immersed in the moment and disconnected from everything else that you very deliberately avoid any distractions. That was not part of the conference itself, but it came up in a conversation with a stranger in-between sessions.
    2. There is still room for growth in the Australian venture capital (VC) ecosystem. $500m was invested amongst the Australian VC community in 2015 vs. $800m that were gambled just on the Melbourne Cup in one day alone. I found that an exceptional way to illustrate that the Australian VC community is way below saturation and Australia has a significantly higher tolerance towards risk that it currently admits to startups. In that same session, I liked Annie Parker’s version of know your customer intimately: “The best ideas at our refugee hackathon came from non-technical caseworkers and refugees themselves. Those ideas had little tech involved and a lot of impact.”
    3. A culture-first company (i) knows what it is willing to suffer for, (ii) builds on a promise (a brand is a promise to a customer and its culture is how it is going to deliver on that promise) and (iii) sees a world that others don’t. Didier Elzinga gave a great presentation about why culture matters and why it is not that soft and fluffy thing, but a hard-hitting tool to drive company performance. As Didier put it “moral makes the difference between whether you get on your dollar a return of 25 cents or $3.” I wish that talk had been longer with time for Q&A.
    4. Persistence come from purpose — if you have a strong purpose and can communicate it with passion, you will inevitably end up with traction with employees, customers and investors. Kate Morris of Adore Beauty told the unglamorous story of her startup and how she got to be as successful as she is now. Long story short: a lot of suffering and conviction — it’s not pretty (ironic for an online beauty business). It reminded me of the Parker’s law: “Running a startup is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood.”
    5. The total amount of kids taught coding by Code Club Australia could now fill the entire Googleplex in Mountain View. Being one of their volunteers that visual made me very proud, especially given that we target a very specific niche of kids between 9 and 11. Just imagine the potential of a whole generation being able to understand how code works, its potential and its limitations. I’m looking forward to seeing us fill another Googleplex in the next year or two.
    6. Software is the ultimate infinite game. Ali Rayl of Slack gave a good reminder that in hardware businesses like construction it is very difficult to continuously improve your creations, whereas software can improve infinitely. It’s a way more optimistic view of the world where bugs are constantly fixed, features implemented and new functionality invented.

    There were two other sessions by internet royalty at the conference, that were just too rich to put into a simple bullet of insight (fortunately, you can find their talks here and there). The first was by Mike Monteiro talking about the apprentice model and why it might be a good idea as a designer toget some experience before joining a startup (very applicable to other professions as well — you can see a version of the talk over at Vimeo). He’s a force on stage, very insightful and highly entertaining. If you haven’t seen him, I highly recommend checking out some of his presentations online.

    The closing session was by Anil Dash talking about why we should get rid of the cynical notion of “don’t read the comments on the internet” and rather start transferring our learnings from 10,000 years of building a society into the online world. In his Q&A he gave one of my favourite quotes of the day: “These companies [Google, Facebook] have all the money in the world. They shoot rockets into space, design self-driving cars and work on pro-longing life. But once you ask them to make sure that the jerks on their platforms behave for five minutes, they throw their hands in the air and declare that it’s too hard.” Anil posted earlier this week his talk Against “Don’t Read the Comments”.

    It was a great conference with very insightful talks and great people on stage. Thank you, Susan, Bronwen and Scott. You’ve done a fantastic job. I am very grateful for this conference and hope to have the chance to attend again next year.

    Image by Scott Handsaker at Vimeo.

  • Susan Kare on her history with Apple and icon design

    If you want to see an example of software with a truly long-lasting impact, go watch a talk by Susan Kare. She talks about her work at Apple where she designed “iconic” pieces like the original fonts and the original set of icons. You learn so many things like why the Apple-key’s icon is not an apple, how icons that were designed more than 30 years ago are still in use in applications like Photoshop today and the difference work ethic can make.

    What makes this video great in particular is also the second half where John Gruber interviews her. (a) it’s great to see somebody like John being all giddy and excited about meeting one of his heroes and (b) it is in this part that you begin to understand how meaningful Susan Kare’s work is, because she was too humble to brag about it in the first half.

    Go, have a look. With an hour, it’s fairly long, but excellent entertainment and a lesson in modern history.

  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

    Mark Manson wrote a nice piece about what it means to take ownership and when to say no. It’s a nice long-read with good lessons for leadership. Two pieces I liked in particular.

    A quote by Eric Hoffer:

    A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.

    And his three subtleties on what it means to not giving a fuck:

     #1: Not Giving A Fuck Does Not Mean Being Indifferent; It Means Being Comfortable With Being Different

    #2: To Not Give A Fuck About Adversity, You Must First Give A Fuck About Something More Important Than Adversity

    #3: We All Have A Limited Number Of Fucks To Give; Pay Attention To Where And Who You Give Them To

    It’s well worth the read even if it’s just for the images and this wonderful pearls of wisdom: “Fucks don’t grow on trees”. It fits quite well with a story on Obama from last November:

    President Obama genuinely gives no fucks at this point. He is fuck devoid. Fuck deficient. Fuck deprived. Fuck destitute. His cupboard of fucks is barren; his tank of fucks has been depleted. You know how, on cloudy nights, you might look up into the vast and endless sky and not find any stars? The same thing would happen if you looked at Obama and searched for fucks.

  • The creative power of no

    Over at Medium is Kevin Ashton wrote about Creative People Say No. It’s a great reminder of the trade-off everybody needs to make when doing others a favour. It’s coming more from a time management perspective.

    Saying “no” has more creative power than ideas, insights and talent combined. No guards time, the thread from which we weave our creations. The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know. We are not taught to say “no.” We are taught not to say “no.” “No” is rude. “No” is a rebuff, a rebuttal, a minor act of verbal violence. “No” is for drugs and strangers with candy.

    It’s a pretty extreme position. In the end, as with so many things in life, it’s about getting the balance right.

    In that context, there is always the Apple clip from a few years ago about their product strategy: there are a thousand no’s for every yes.

  • Writing good copy

    Writing good copy

    I write a monthly newsletter at work. Our team is distributed across three continents and too many timezones. From time to time things slip through the cracks and you hear the inevitable “I wish I had known that earlier”.  The newsletter tries to close the space between the cracks and helps people know what’s going on. It is also a welcome place to highlight the great work that people contribute to the team.

    I very much enjoy writing it. It’s a highlight of my month, because I can channel the best person I want to be: fun, enthusiastic, empathetic, helpful, … My objective is to write in the tone that I would like to have a good conversation in. As a German, I’m a non-native speaker in Australia and tend to overthink and over-structure my sentences when I speak. I choose words deliberately and it’s common to hear me talk in numbered lists. The newsletter is an opportunity for me to freshen it up. And it works: people enjoy reading the newsletter, they forward it – even our CEO reads it. Not bad for a 30 people team in a company of 40,000.

    My big secret is that I copy the newsletter. Not the content, that would be obscure. But I try to channel my inner Slack. They have such a wonderful tone all their copy, be it tweets, quirky messages when you open their app or even release notes for software updates. Anna Pickard is Editorial Director at Slack helped create that tone:

    It is sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes just plain and informative, but throughout, it should feel like nothing more than a person, talking to another person. Human to human […] making sure we’re treating people with respect, empathy and courtesy all the way through. […]We want people to like using Slack, and to want to share the experience. 

    Slack’s Editorial Soul: Anna Pickard
    on Writing the Brand Experience

    And the best thing: they got their inspiration from Mailchimp, who have been kind enough to publish a Style Guide for Content. I’ve only dipped my toe into it for now, but it looks like a wonderfully written guide on how to write well, especially the section on Voice and Tone. Mailchimp rules and I love them for doing this.

    Once you manage to have good topics and write them up well, you have a winning formula to make a lot of people’s lives easier and happier.

    Photo credit: Martin uit Utrecht / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA