Strands of Genius: Qualia, The History of Netflix Personalization, The Most Influential Movie Scenes
Strands of Genius: Qualia, The History of Netflix Personalization, The Most Influential Movie Scenes
plus our thoughts on: Together apart
WRITING FROM | Nashville, TN
WORKING ON | Travel planning!
LOOKING AHEAD
June 14-30: Rosie Northeast; Faris TBD…
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
It’s been an action-packed few weeks & -ends, with Faris’ birthday, a wedding, Rosie’s birthday, our nibling Simon’s birthday party and various smaller but also action-packed meetings and hangs. We’ve also been busy with new business leads, proposal and procurements, and the weather just got properly sticky and intense down here in the South. Today, Rosie head’s north through NYC to visit a friend’s new place upstate and catch up with friends, Faris is heading…somewhere TBD driving from Nashville (open to ideas! hit me up) for some alone time to commune with nature and his subconscious and also play video games and generally potter* about on his own in between some remote gigs and workshops.
*[“If you potter around or potter about, you do pleasant but unimportant things, without hurrying. [British] I was perfectly happy just pottering around doing up my flat.”]
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Big Moms, Maddie&Paulie, Ashley being in town, Drew&Lena, JuJu, Wanda, Dorsey&Katie&Susie&Randy, Raya & the Last Dragon, Supergods by Grant Morrison, water bottles, Loki, Vera, Dogfish Head Sea Quench Ale, Scooter&T, and sandwiches.
S C H O O L O F S T O L E N G E N I U S >> H I G H L I G H T S
//SOSG x PITCHA KUCHA
Starts (Weds) June 23, 2021 at 12:00 PM EDT
Pitcha Kucha
Who wants to join a pitch deck Petcha Kucha? You'll have 5 minutes to share your favorite pitch or project with the group (the traditional PetchaKucha model is 20 slides with 20 seconds of commentary on each, but we won't be that formal). We want to hear about the research and insights that contributed to your creative idea, how it all came to life, and then we’ll open it up for 1-2 questions from the audience.
Enroll at http://schoolofstolengeni.us
:: THE LINKS ::
QUALIA
Excellent piece from Cory Doctorow exploring how the quantization of culture renders important qualitative considerations invisible, and has been wielded as a political club by generations of vested parties to dismantle protections like anti-trust and effective education against binge drinking. Also see The McNamara Fallacy. (Locus Mag)
A BRIEF HISTORY OF NETFLIX PERSONALIZATION
Written by the former Chief Product Officer, a “detailed history of the strategy, metrics, and experiments Netflix executes to develop a personalized experience focused on delivering its members movies they love”. Did you know that, despite great advances, most people still look at 40 things (?!?!) before deciding what to watch? (Medium)
25 MOST INFLUENTIAL MOVIE SCENES
The most iconic moments of the last 25 years of cinema, analyzed by those that there were there. These scenes have become part of the fabric of popular culture, echoing through the mediascape again and again. (Vanity Fair) HT @storythings
Strands of Genius is currently read by 12,000 subscribers. Support us by sponsoring an issue, becoming a member of The School of Stolen Genius, or encouraging friends or colleagues to subscribe.
:: WE’RE HIRING AN ADMIN EXTRAORDINAIRE ::
Our amazing Ashley has been an invaluable partner and so we promoted her to Director of Operations… And then the pandemic happened, and she took on more of a hybrid role. Now that we’re rocking and rolling, we need to find someone else brilliant to support us, and Ashley, as our new remote Admin Extraordinaire! Is that you or someone you know? More Details Here. We would so appreciate it if you shared this with anyone who could be a good fit!
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: TOGETHER APART
We - Rosie and I, for it is I, Faris - spend a great deal of time together. Pre-Pandem we lived on the road together and work together, so functionally speaking we are together 99% of the time, especially when in foreign countries. It is somewhat unusual, nowadays, we are told, to work with your partner - we often hear some version of ‘oh i couldn’t my wife/husband would kill me’ which contains some elements of gender war humor and a sliver of wisdom. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say, although there is almost always an opposite aphorism for any you might come across. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but home is where the heart is, and charity begins there, and so on.
Regardless, during the pandemic many couples suddenly had to get accustomed to each other’s presence 24/7, whilst on Zoom calls, showing our professional faces and using our professional voices. It can be jarring, seeing someone we love shift register, even though we all intuitively appreciate that our personality construct is contextually fluid. We don’t bring our whole selves to work, our employers are not our families, and that’s ok, that’s good, but it’s complicated when contexts overlap.
Not being parents and owning our own business, and thus our own time, we have a lot more flexibility than many. We have grown extremely accustomed to living half inside each other’s heads, constantly in each other’s presence. Always together, but often together alone, isolated from friends or family or community. Or isolated together, amongst community, because only Rosie really understands what it’s like living like we do. Rock bands have a similar weird in and out pattern, leaving their rock widows as they tour for half the year.
For the next two weeks Rosie will be upstate New York and I will be driving around the South West, physically apart for longer than we have been since we got married, but still of course together, as a couple, as a business, as your regular writers and publishers of Strands. Yesterday our third partner Ashely was passing through Nashville so we got to do some work, and a workshop, all together, and it is different. Remote work, hybrid offices, working from anywhere, community, teams, convenience, flexibility, cohesion - some of these things are limiting factors on each other.
People are quitting jobs all over America rather than go back to the office, but the turnover of staff hired fully remotely during the pandemic is much higher than amongst those that have spent time breathing each other’s air.
Together, apart, like a diastolic rhythm, both are necessary parts of the whole. Breathe in, breathe out, can’t have one without the other. Even fully remote companies come together a few times a year to press the flesh.
We live in an age of distraction, hyper-stimulated, constantly receiving communication. You’re never alone with a phone.
So today we’re never alone. But we might still crave solitude, or community, because the phone provides both and neither.
The cultural critic and Cassandra of Fascism Hannah Arendt wrote wonderfully on the difference between solitude, isolation and loneliness, pointing out that in totalitarian regimes being alone with one’s thoughts is almost impossible.
For now, we are both exploring being together, apart, alone but not lonely, making space for each other and ourselves because we some space and time. One of the rules we established in 8+ years traveling is hard to capture in pithy expression but essentially if you have the time, appetite and opportunity to try or do something - DO IT DO IT NOW. You won’t come back and by the time you do, well, it won’t be the same you.
MIAMI AD SCHOOL - REGISTRATION OPEN
We’re looking forward to working alongside the amazing folk at Miami Ad School for their Strategist 2.0 Bootcamp in July.
Classes are taught using the learn, do, and share the method to help you grasp information.
Furthermore, you will present a Portfolio of Learnings to your Strategy department at the end of the Bootcamp.30 hours of virtual-live class time with classmates and instructors. A combination of lectures, workshops, and assignments with pitch and feedback sessions.
A digital Diploma is included for this Bootcamp.
Dates: July 18th to July 24th // Tuition: US$1,500
You can check out the speakers here and sign up here. Today is the last day to get 10% off. We hope to see you there.
:: AND NOW… WHAT’S NEW? ::
“The way to deal with ‘what’s new’, as well as what’s old and enduring, is mostly by being widely informed and thinking straight” - Theodore Levitt, The Marketing Imagination
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed
Know someone who could use some inspiration in their inbox? Send ‘em our way!
It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)