Saturday March 22, 2025; 10:03 AM EDT
A funny thing. A few months back someone told me that I had been gone from the podcast world for too long for anyone to listen to me. I thought how weird, I didn't go anywhere at all, I stayed exactly where I was, all the time. Virtually every day. If people cared to know what I think they could have found out pretty quickly because I am of course an NBB. I talk about what I think all the time. (And besides, why do you care where you get ideas from, I don't.)#- Anyway, the idea was about a feature for podcasting that would open up doors for influencers and ad hoc networks of podcasts, instead of a few dozen weak (imho) attempts to build synergy, I trust that invisible hand Darwinian ecosystem builds better networks, because they are real, not contrived. #
- Give the people the tools and see what happens. #
- Users and developers party together.#
- That's the opposite of the "move fast and break things" approach to technology, instead it's "paving the cowpaths," the process that has always fascinated me and been the method to my madness. Make the tools, give them to the people and sit back and hope something happens. When it doesn't try to show the way. And try out lots of these kinds of ideas. #
- This method really works, and it isn't destructive, it's totally constructive. (Actually it does destroy what was there before, but in a merciful way, they get a chance to jump on the train, even if they rarely do, but NPR got on early with podcasting, and the NYT with RSS.)#
- PS: I did not invent "paving cowpaths" -- it's been around for a long time, like mythical man-month and the like. It's pretty much the same thing as bootstrapping, which I also advocate.#