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zug’s laws of creative feedback

By On July 27, 2012 In Creativity, Teams, Tips and Tricks With 2 Comments Permanent Link to zug’s laws of creative feedbackPermalink

I’ve been doing creative work as my core livelihood since 1994, which is like 198 internet years (1 temporal year = 11 internet years, because everyone knows the internet turns things up to 11).

In doing creative work, I give and receive a ton of feedback.

Sometimes in the necessary rush of making and shipping things, it’s easy to take “it’s not there yet” feedback the wrong way – which is a very effective way to poison a project or a team.

This morning I started writing down some important touchpoints to keep in mind when having these sorts of conversations.

Without further ado, I give you a shitty first draft of…

Zug’s laws of creative feedback

1) Making things people love is hard.

2) When we work to make things together, you will hear a lot of “it’s not there yet” from me.

3) “It’s not there yet” is NOT code for “you suck + should be fired + never allowed to procreate”

4) It is not possible for me to say “it’s not there yet” out of anything other than deep gratitude – that you’ve chosen the ass kicking work of birthing “awesome” into the universe is humbling.

Embedding videos without default YouTube branding and chrome

By On December 14, 2011 In Tips and Tricks With No Comments Permanent Link to Embedding videos without default YouTube branding and chromePermalink

There are a few different ways to embed YouTube videos without the default Youtube branding on a video. These examples are taken from these articles over at ReelSEO…

Example 1:

  • No Title Bar
  • YouTube branding shows in the player, on hover only, after video has started.
  • No related videos at end

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CLelheB3h-w?hd=1&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" width="500" height="280"></iframe>

Example 2:

  • Title Bar visible
  • YouTube branding shows in the player, on hover only, after video has started.
  • No related videos at end

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CLelheB3h-w?hd=1&rel=0&autohide=1&title=" frameborder="0" width="500" height="280"></iframe>

Example 3:

  • Title Bar visible, with YouTube text in title bar, on hover only, before playing
  • No branding in the player, on hover, after video has started
  • No related videos at end

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CLelheB3h-w?modestbranding=1&rel=0&title=&autohide=1&wmode=transparent&hd=1" frameborder="0" width="500" height="280"></iframe>

Jaremy Rich (Seattle Curator, Startup Digest) at Startup BBQ 2011

By On July 29, 2011 In Events, Interviews With No Comments Permanent Link to Jaremy Rich (Seattle Curator, Startup Digest) at Startup BBQ 2011Permalink

We had a great time chatting with Jaremy Rich, Seattle Curator for Startup Digest, in this interview at the 2nd Annual Startup BBQ at Gasworks park in Seattle last Monday night.

We talk about being refugees in Seattle and the fun geek events Startup Digest is tracking.

Rebecca Lovell (Geekwire’s Chief Business Awesomer) at Startup BBQ 2011 in Seattle

By On July 27, 2011 In Events, Interviews With No Comments Permanent Link to Rebecca Lovell (Geekwire’s Chief Business Awesomer) at Startup BBQ 2011 in SeattlePermalink

We had a great time chatting with Rebecca Lovell, Geekwire’s Chief Business Awesomer, in this interview at the 2nd Annual Startup BBQ at Gasworks park in Seattle last Monday night.

We talk about the quick rise of Geekwire on the Seattle scene and the maturation of the tech community as a whole.

Marc Nager at Startup BBQ 2011 in Seattle

By On July 26, 2011 In Events, Interviews With 4 Comments Permanent Link to Marc Nager at Startup BBQ 2011 in SeattlePermalink

We made our way over to the 2nd Annual Startup BBQ at Gasworks park in Seattle last night. Here’s our first video from the night – a great interview with the chief instigator of the event, Marc Nager.

Marc is CEO of Startup Weekend here in Seattle. We’ll be posting more interviews over the next week, so stay tuned!

The Wand-repreneurs

By On July 19, 2011 In Events, Interviews With 1 Comment Permanent Link to The Wand-repreneursPermalink

While out on a date with my beautiful bride last Saturday night (we saw Super 8 – a perfect movie, but I digress), we ran across a couple of young entrepreneurs at the movie theater near Fry’s here in Seattle.

It was opening weekend of the final Harry Potter movie, and they were selling homemade Harry Potter wands near the theater entrance.

I couldn’t resist grabbing a quick video to hear their story.

Many thanks to their great dad, Gary, for inspiring these entrepreneurial minds, as well as allowing us to share their story here.

Hi There

By On July 19, 2011 In Uncategorized With No Comments Permanent Link to Hi TherePermalink

This whole thing started years ago around the rise of YouTube and the proliferation of online video.

Mostly as a networking tool, my wife Jen and I started showing up at various tech events around Seattle to capture video of the wonderful presentations folks were doing.

After years of documenting the community and accumulating various configurations of gear, it dawned on us one day that what we’d snowballed along the way was a great little multi-camera HD broadcast studio.

It’s funny when you realize that you’ve bootstrapped a facility that not too many years ago used to fill semi-trucks and cost millions of dollars.

Funny how the world changes.

Having high quality production services available to rapid prototype video content for businesses at a very low cost just seems like an interesting thing to make available to the wider community.

This is how Bootstrapper Studios was born and is an invitation to all sorts of interesting questions.

We’re setting up shop at Founder’s Co-op / TechStars headquarters in the South Lake Union (SLU) startup neighborhood of Seattle. Drop us a line if you’ve got a project in mind:

info@bootstrapperstudios.com