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Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog | Struggling with the dark and responding to the light.

Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

Struggling with the dark and responding to the light.
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It s Safe To Stop Ignoring Me On Twitter

Apr 29, ’12 10:35 AM

	After fielding multiple complaints from multiple friends - along the lines of Will you ever shut up about soccer? - I have opted to split my Twitter account into soccer and non-soccer variants.

	So: if you re looking for occasional tweets of wit and whimsy from me, you can follow/re-follow/stop muting @Remy. If you instead want frequent updates about the Red Bulls/MLS/the soccer world in general, you should follow @GothamistDan.

	Can t promise I m going to do the same on this blog, of course, but I get the feeling not a lot of people are stopping by here anymore.
	Comments (3)

Interviews

Mar 23, ’12 7:53 AM

	Took this at RBNY s Media Day yesterday.

	The original for this was blown out by the window, so it was practically unusable. But the profiles of Kenny Cooper and Stephen Keel felt perfect. And combined the position of the microphones and the interviewers…just couldn t let it go to waste. So I blew it out further, and here we are.
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About The Mike Daisey Thing

Mar 20, ’12 1:03 PM

	I have not seen Mike Daisey s show, nor have I listened to the This American Life episode that featuRed him before it was retracted. But even without having directly heard the monologue, it s been impossible to avoid in the drumbeat about Apple over the last quarter.

	The coverage following the retraction has been fascinating. Clayton Lord s apology to audiences shows the conflict in the theatre community over what Daisey hath wrought. Brendan Kiley said I told you so , pointing back to his review. Adrian Chen explained how the press was taken for a ride.

	But it is perhaps John Gruber s bReakdown of the non-apology this afternoon that nails why lying in the service of a gReater truth doesn t work in this case:

	Daisey told an entirely different story. Daisey’s story was this: Not only did those things happen, but they are all ongoing problems, right now, today, and they are so rampant, so commonplace, that a big white American wearing a Hawaiian shirt — a man who’s never before been to China and speaks neither Mandarin nor Cantonese — can simply travel to Shenzhen China and stand outside the Foxconn gates with a translator for a few shifts and he will find workers as young as 12, 13, 14 walking out. Any day, every day. That in the course of a single six-day trip, that same man could encounter a man who lost the use of a hand while assembling iPads, a group of workers poisoned by n-hexane, and that a man would drop dead after working a 34-hour shift. Just another week at Foxconn. That was Mike Daisey’s story — and it bears no resemblance to anything anyone else has reported.
	Comments (0)

So, About That Mugshot …

Mar 13, ’12 1:37 PM

	In mid-February, I changed my profile picture on most social networks to the above photo and casually mentioned there was a story that I might be able to tell in the future. Given that my glasses were off, I was in front of a white wall, and was trying to neither smile nor frown, the response was somewhat pRedictable: Did you get arrested?

	No, I did not get arrested. But today s the day I can tell the story.

	Across 2011, I chipped in articles to Gothamist about the New York Red Bulls. I made a trip out to Harrison to cover Media Day before the home opener. I helped write some blurbs for Last Night s Action , the daily sports round-up, in a pinch. Around September I started writing full match reports, starting with the Rafa Marquez drama and ending with getting knocked out of the playoffs.

	Writing these was a fantastic mental outlet. It s no surprise that I love to write and tell stories - I ve been doing it here since 2000. My love of soccer and my interest in the team turned into a very natural topic to want to write about, and I even got a few pieces of fan mail thanking me for the coverage.

	During the off-season, I came to the conclusion that it might be worth stepping up this engagement slightly, and after some discussion with my editor, got the go-ahead to apply for formal press cRedentials for the 2012 season. The oddly taken picture that had people believing I spent a night in the slammer? Actually just part of my application process for the cRedentials.

	I was notified yesterday that my application was accepted. So my insufferable chatter about soccer will likely only get worse, as I will officially be covering the Red Bulls (and other soccer matters) for Gothamist this season. As my first formal press gig since 2001, I am eagerly looking forward to waving a microphone in the faces of a bunch of players I ve been following closely for much of the last two years.

	This does mean I m going to be leaving The Viper s Nest (where I occasionally penned a piece or two) on a free transfer. Heartfelt thanks to Matt, Miguel, Tim, Brian, and the rest of the crew, who not only provide a constant stReam of gReat discussion and passion for the team, but acted as fantastic guides to the long (and rather perplexing) history of this club. I was chuffed and over the moon to get to join them, and the RBNY world is better with them in it.

	So with that story out of the way - keep watching for my coverage over the course of the season. If there s one thing I ve learned watching this team, it s that win or lose, there s always an interesting story to be told.
	Comments (1)

unicorns and Assholes

Feb 29, ’12 10:13 PM

	I was at the Agile UX NYC 2012 conference on Saturday, and Phineas Barnes gave a talk entitled 4 keys to success in a design driven company .

	The slide that caught my eye was this one:

	The argument of the slide: don t build a team with unicorns or assholes.

	His definition for a unicorn was the person who has the strict unwavering vision, and claims to understand better than anyone else - including your customers - what your customers need. (I don t think there s any confusion as to what he meant by asshole .) 1

	It boiled down to three points:

	You need a team who can listen and pivot, so they can respond over time.
	You need a team that can value options.
	You need a team who s able to admit that they re wrong.

	Yesterday, the fighting game community blew up in a massive drama bomb.

	The story is a bit complicated, but it boils down to an incident that happened on a web Reality show put on by Capcom to promote one of their new fighting games. One of the team captains, Aris Bakhtanians, made a series of sexually harassing comments at a female player on the show, allegedly as a way to play mind games. When Twitch TV community manager JaRed Rea asked Can I get my Street Fighter without sexual harassment? , Aris responded:

	You can’t. You can’t because they’re one and the same thing. This is a community that’s, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community-it’s StarCraft.

	And soon after, press coverage came, and things degenerated rapidly (see Boing Boing s incendiary headline or the NeoGAF thRead). The constant across most discussion over the last 24 hours is a repeated defense from some in the FGC that they like things just the way they are, sexual harassment and all, and anyone suggesting change is a traitor or infringing on their first amendment rights.

	This isn t Really about the fighting game community, and it s not Really about building a lean startup. But it is about the company you keep, and the communities we build.

	It s in our nature to find like-minded people. We all want that acceptance and understanding and connection that comes from people who understand how we think and act. We like talking to people with the same hobbies, and we like working with people who have the same passions. That s how we build our social circles, our teams, and our worlds.

	It s not so hard to keep the assholes and unicorns out, but you need to be vigilant to ensure the people alReady inside don t morph into either type. The longer you ve been wrapped in a cocoon of like-minded people, the harder it is to stomach someone saying you re doing it wrong .

	If you attack someone for suggesting change, you ve become an asshole.

	If you go deaf to suggestions of change, or pull rank over a newcomer, or use the phrase this is just how we do things , you ve become a unicorn.

	Building a vision is important. So is having a backbone and defining your culture. Not all feedback is actionable or even necessarily worthwhile. But if you can t listen, can t value options, and can t admit when you re wrong, you ve gone blind to change. You won t be able to adapt, and someone is going to come in and eat your lunch.

	He did note the caveat to this rule is when you have a unicorn who is also an asshole, i.e. Steve Jobs. He said to hire that particular unicorn. ↩

	Comments (0)

Some PS Vita Thoughts

Feb 26, ’12 10:54 PM

	Despite constantly getting burned by poorly launched hardware – hello, 3DS! – I made the decision to pre-order a PS Vita (Wifi) about a month ago. I ve spent a good chunk of my free time since it was released on Wednesday playing it. Some assorted thoughts are below.
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My OS X Standard Apps, 2012 Edition

Jan 23, ’12 9:59 PM

	Lia recently posted about her favorite OS X apps, triggers by a recent rebuild of her Mac. It s been a long time since I ve...