Van Halen = Productivity Hackers

You know the famous story about Van Halen demanding all the brown M&Ms be removed from their pre-show food at concerts? Turns out not only is it true, but rather than rockstar diva behavior it was a productivity hack to figure out who read the full contract. From Fast Company:

Van Halen did dozens of shows every year, and at each venue, the band would show up with nine 18-wheelers full of gear. Because of the technical complexity, the band's standard contract with venues was thick and convoluted -- Roth, in his inimitable way, said in his autobiography that it read "like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages." A typical "article" in the contract might say, "There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes."

Van Halen buried a special clause in the middle of the contract. It was called Article 126. It read, "There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation." So when Roth would arrive at a new venue, he'd walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he'd demand a line check of the entire production. "Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error," he wrote. "They didn't read the contract.... Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show."

In other words, Roth was no diva. He was an operations expert. He couldn't spend hours every night checking the amperage of each socket. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention -- whether they had read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. In Roth's world, a brown M&M was the canary in the coal mine.

The Streamys: Can't We Just All Get Along

Thoughts after attending the second annual Streamy awards for web tv/online video. (mine only, not representing YouTube)

1. Congratulations to all the nominees, winners and organizers for pulling off the event. Amazing group of creators gathered together to celebrate what is still a very new medium. There was some chuckling at the technical difficulties of the evening, but you learn and i'm sure next year will be an even  better production.

2. Fine line between self-deprecation and self-abuse. Surprised at how many times folks went for the easy laugh of putting down the industry. The storylines of "slumming celebrity doing a web series" and "hot chicks get views" and "the web is a weird place" are all kinda worn out. You can take pride in yourself w/o being self-righteous. You can acknowledge some of the public perceptions without self-flagellating.

If you don't treat yourself with respect, no one else will either. So lose the cock and balls jokes too. Here's a rule of thumb: if a video of the event would get flagged on YouTube for nudity, graphic language, etc, it's probably not the best way to represent an industry which is trying to gain credibility with sponsors. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. Someone who stumbled upon the live stream wouldn't have come away thinking this was the future of media.

3. There's really a caste system already for online video? Really guys? Surprised at the extent to which these two groups slagged on each other (general stereotypes):

Vloggers: We've got millions of views. We love the unwashed masses. F' the pros.

"professional" content creators: we've got the right type of viewers. We want to get into The Industry. Vloggers are giving us a bad name.

Um guys, you shouldn't be dissing each other - you should be working together to define the medium, improve the craft, figure out what audiences want, etc. Even the most successful creators have only a few million fans -- your issue isn't one another, it's the fact 99% of the world has no idea who you are. Put the energy into working together. We're excited to have ALL of you on YouTube no matter what your backgrounds, goals or focus.

Chad Hurley's Visionary award (and thumb)

[as i was writing this saw a post from iJustine which sums this all up even better than i could]

On the Internet, Data Will Verify You're a Dog

Behold the dawn of a web where you are not whatever you say you are, but rather what data verifies you are. The amount of verifiable data on who we are and what we do is increasing pretty quickly. Where you've been, how far you jogged, what you purchased, etc. All of this combines into a contrail of proof floating behind one's existence. The death of self-declaration!

Picture a kid today just entering grade school. Her entire life will be published, documented and aggregated online or at least networked. She will be the sum total of her tweets, posts, purchases -- anything that can be explicitly or implicitly measured and tied to an ID.

The most exciting results will come in the shift from HOT AIR to VERIFIED DATA. "Hot Air" is what you claim. "Verified Data" is the truth. Here are some examples of the decreasing value of Hot Air.

Your resume. Could anything be more archaic? A purely first person account of your own skills and career history lovingly massaged to present you in the best light. I don't want to read a bullet point that you are a python expert, i want to see the aggregate rating of your posts to python communities across the web and peer scoring of your code. The resume is going to be replaced by review of actual work product and social network references. I don't want to see your rolodex -- i want to see the number of emails and response time from key people in your contact list. I don't want to hear about a project -- i want to read the tweets from your users and see the change in your business' performance. Summary views of your previous professional activity can replace personal claims.

Health insurance discounts. Check off a box that says how often your exercise? How about you give me a premium discount connected to my fitbit performance or 10% off my premium so long as i run 20 miles/week as monitored by NikeID shoes?

The claim "i'm an expert on..." Look at Quora - simple way for your friends to suggest and endorse topics where you have expertise. Foolproof? No. Better than a self-declared statement of authority? Yes.

The claim "i'm a huge fan of " Really? Prove it. You say you're a big MGMT fan? How many people have you directed to their YouTube videos? What has been the total number of FB friends who have "liked" your comments about their new songs? We're going to see game mechanics + analytics create whole new types of relationships between individuals and objects/entities/etc.

The claim "you can trust me..." eBay's biggest missed opportunity was not opening up their reputation system. Combining buyer/seller ratings w/ PayPal could have resulted in a near unassailable position in commerce. They decided to stay a walled garden instead of building a system which could have given them 2% of every transaction on the web. Others have tried to build generalized reputation systems but it's challenging because no one wants to sit there and just rate other people (although Unvarnished is the latest start-up to try and solve this puzzle). Also see Travis Kalanick's blog post on reputation.

So the product opportunities here are around shifting HOT AIR to VERIFIED DATA in B2C & B2B environments where the cost of poor decisions is high, sales conversions can be driven higher/marketing ROI increased or where 3rd party sourced data transparency results in better product experiences.

What are other areas which will shift from self-declared to verified data?