It is nice to see something else than the collapse of Greece, ISIS in Tunisia or one or two other things that have covered the front page in the last few days. Although the abuse I got from my statement “Greece is no longer for billionaires, many multi-millionaires can now afford to buy that country” has been hilarious. You see, it is all about vision. I foresaw some of the issues now in play months ago, I can also see the events as some of the status quo players are panicking as they need a solution, or lose a lot more than they bargained for. All that is almost a given. The media is looking at ‘sexy’ articles from economists on how austerity is wrong, but none of them are looking at the accountability a nation has, whilst not keeping its budgets in order is equally hilarious.
You see, the status quo people are all about continuation of THEIR needs.
This all links to the article ‘Twitter to co-founder Jack Dorsey: ‘We don’t want you’‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/twitter-dont-want-jack-dorsey), it is a week old now, but for some reason it had escaped my view. It is a decent article by Alex Hern, not just because of the way he wrote it, but the consideration given in there gives us another view that is the consequence of ‘lack of vision’.
In the article we get the quote “The Committee will only consider candidates for recommendation to the full Board who are in a position to make a full-time commitment to Twitter”. This is an interesting quote to have from a board, especially as Jack Dorsey is one of the co-founders of Twitter. The wiki quote “The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber” gives us another insight. Jack boy was at the heart of the birth of Twitter and this board is now stating that they rather have a full time commitment person. So as Jack is not the person they want, let’s take a look at the vision that Jack build.
Because of an issue one of Jacks friends had, he came up with another idea in 2008, it founded a company called Square. Even though Square is not doing too well, I personally think that this could be turned around. In my personal view competitors of Square have been having a go at this, because of the threat they feel. Square is a sound idea, I reckon it has a decent future if someone with international Gravitas (read: massive brass balls/boobs) gets involved. Even though Business insider has been a little too kind on Jack Dorsey (comparing him to Steve Jobs is a little bit of a stretch), it is clear that this man has vision.
In my view the quote “According to Nick Bilton, author of Hatching Twitter, that first ouster came because he didn’t spend enough time in the office, leaving work “around 6pm for drawing classes, hot yoga sessions and a course at a local fashion school”. “You can either be a dressmaker or the CEO of Twitter,” the company’s co-founder and Dorsey’s successor as chief executive, Evan Williams, reportedly told him, “but you can’t be both.””
On one side there is the idea that the speaker has a point, the other part is that the speaker needs to be a civil servant and not much more. This would reflect on Peter Currie, the chair of the committee, it seems that he was, or he knows where that quote came from, whilst he is identifying a permanent CEO, he seems to be missing the point. Being a 60 hours a week workaholic does not make the quality of work better. It just gives you grey hairs a lot faster, without the benefit of yummy moments whilst they changed colour.
You see, Jack Dorsey is one of those people who needs the additional things like hot yoga and additional fashion lessons because his next idea could be just one course away. One simple conversation, an interaction with for example a nurse trying to fathom the hammock for her little girl and jack could suddenly get that next golden idea, which is likely to benefit both Square and Twitter. For those board members (read: Evan Williams), let’s not forget that some people get their golden idea’s in other ways. It seems to me that from what I have seen, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams are opposites to a larger extent. If Jack Dorsey is seen as another Steve Jobs, than Evan Williams should be seen as the next Bill Gates. They are totally opposite and whilst the board is trying to figure out which alpha designer they should side with, it might not be a bad idea to find a way to make it work with both. Having two visionaries in your flock is beyond extremely rare. I personally side with the Jack Dorsey’s. I have no business pattern no set discipline, other than my dedication to get the job done. Beyond that my mind wanders on other venues, trying to solve that next puzzle. In that view I saw that hiring specific people for Square could solve their customer service part. Consider the quote from Gigaom (at https://gigaom.com/2009/12/01/jack-dorsey-on-square-why-it-is-disruptive/) “My view is that Square (or something like Square) is going to disrupt the businesses of companies such as VeriFone and Symbol, a division of Motorola that makes point-of-sale devices. Verifone makes a $900 wireless credit card terminal vs. Square, which runs on a $299 iPod touch“. Yes, this 2009 quote is industrious in shape, size and concern. Whilst places like Verifone are sitting on a business model that does work, Square revolutionised the idea overnight, basically, small business owners would have a tread stone of growth whilst avoiding all kinds of initial investments. Square is that golden idea the interaction of technology and innovation. That is at the heart of vision, how to make it all work differently!
What will be the next vision?
Consider these quotes: ‘People Want Safe Communications, Not Usable Cryptography‘ and ‘76 percent of consumers were not very satisfied with technology’s ability to make their lives simpler‘. There is a market, its consumer base is greying and they need a simpler solution that gives them access without heartburn of an instant stroke after a dozen error messages. The need for simple interface software, but with a range of options is a desire for literally the young and the old. The young because they don’t comprehend, the old because they don’t want the hassle. In all this, markets that are reason for powerful growth and Twitter is in the thick of it. Which means having both Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams is a good thing. If the G-spot of financial advisors is a growing customer base, than the revolution of both Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, could spell an age of loads of financial orgasms, so as we cater to an evolving mass of people, one cannot have too many visionaries in one building. In all this there is the hardware that changes and the software that grows, whilst the media remains hungry. In all this, vision is the key to unlocking the universe where we live in.
So when we see the quote “Project Lightning is one: the new feature sees Twitter taking an active editorial role during live events, seeking out the best content both on and off the network and embedding it in a dedicated section of the social network’s app“, with the mentioned similarity to Snapchat’s Live Stories, we have to consider that Twitter is now entering an iterative state where it follows ‘other peoples visions‘ to grow its base, in all this I state that catering to the eccentricities of both Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams might be the solution to come up with something new, making Snapchat follow the new Twitter ideas, not the other way round.
So in this we see the need for vision, not to applaud the lack of it.
This we see in the article ‘How same-sex marriage could ruin civilisation’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/jun/29/same-sex-marriage-ruin-civilisation-science), please do not worry, there is a link in all this!
Let me start saying that as a Christian, I do not care! I think any person should find the happiness that they feel they deserve, if that is in a same gender relationship, than that is just fine with me. Finding happiness is already rare enough, having it denied is just utterly counterproductive. You see, someone Facebooked Leviticus 20:13 the other day “If there is a man who lies with a male, he should be stoned“, the fact that the US legalised marijuana the same time it legalised gay marriage is just slightly hilarious when you consider Leviticus. It is all about looking differently at things.
Which is not the view the Guardian article had by the way. Now we get the quotes “Constant exposure to rainbows could mean people can’t see colours as well, and this could be disastrous. How will they know when to stop or go at a traffic light? Or which wire to cut when defusing a bomb?“, which some would call ludicrous, because we can always appreciate colours, only the colour-blind have a predicament, so they will not pass military service requirement, which means they will never defuse a bomb, as for the traffic lights, they can see when the top, the middle of the bottom light is on, which means there is no impact on that either, a science article loaded with half-baked truths and inconsequential arguments. This is how we should see some boards of directors. Their fear of requiring a status quo is now possibly hindering progress.
We need to move forward by innovation, by doing something different, because stimulating the brain is the cornerstone of innovation. For people like Evan Williams, it seems to be narrowly focussing on something related, which is fair enough, for some people that makes a difference, for people like Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey it is to get exposed to a field of events as wide as possible. It is not entirely unlikely that Jack will attend a course in Biomathematics only to come up with a new biometrics concept that will ensure data security for the next generation. All missed because a board of directors has an issue with what they called ‘dress making’.
You see, I find their stance slightly offensive, it is for that same reason I have been so harsh on Ubisoft. After it made its billion, it moved deeper into business models, which is a bad thought, I understand it from a business point of view, yet consider that video games are art. A business model will decrease the chance of failure, yet in my view it equally destroys the option of ‘exceptional’, the line between ‘genius’ and ‘murky’ is pretty thin. I listened for too long to corporate short-sightedness only to realise too late that they were clueless to begin with. People fixed on PowerPoint presentation de-evolving from ‘status quo’ to ‘getting by’.
And my evidence? Ubisoft has not produced any revolutionary game with a 90% plus rating (truly revolutionary games, not what their marketing calls revolutionary) for some time. The next evolution in games is mostly coming from the independent scene, those pushing forward on their own, remoulding a view and bringing true originality. Examples of this view is Mojang (Minecraft), Campo Santo (Firewatch), The Chinese Room (Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture) and Hello Games (No Man’s Sky), there are more, the larger players have been slacking in titles and in quality of games. They forgot to take a leap of faith, whilst relying on business models.
We see this more and more, considering that Elder Scrolls online has had massive delays, than the PS4 community gets “it’s even worse considering some cannot play on the games release date“, which is after a year delay. I came up with a sequel to Skyrim early 2014, no online, no multiplayer, just an option to make millions of gamers happy. It took me three hours to get the first idea, a few more hours to put part of this to paper. In addition, I randomly designed a new game in my head, no business model can correct for this. Is that it? No, I came up with a new concept for the game developing of RPG games. It remains in my head because I am a decent database programmer (as well as data cleaner and so on), but I am not really a programmer, which gives me a slight disadvantage. I will work it out sooner or later (likely later as I am finishing a law degree).
So I feel for Jack Dorsey and I am on his side. In the end, Jack will come up with another golden idea which will bring him millions, I hope he does that. That board of directors is another matter, these people seem to get the quorum to hold on to status quo and they will also have a person to blame when issues go south. This is at the core of my resentment of ‘the business model’ in the field of creation. It depends on what was and cannot truly value that what has not been made yet.
It is a lack of vision that drives us into extinction, not time. Because time makes us old, vision makes us wise.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 