Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #279

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see”.

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:

This American Life – Cars. ”A bunch of people I know told me this is the best episode of the iconic This American Life. Sell 129 cars? Bonus. Sell 128? Catastrophe. Dealerships are facing back-pressure from direct-sales models, too. If you thought Glengarry Glen Ross was a good example of sales pressure, you should probably listen to this.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Chris Draws A Cartoon – FilmCow. “An animator’s busy, so his friend offers to help him out by drawing the weekly cartoon. Rather than being nice and helpful, the animator comes up with the hardest script imaginable. What a nice friend.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Day of the Dead In Chiapas – Fusion. “Artist Isaac Cordal‘s photographs of skeleton figurines in little corners of Chiapas, on the Mexican Day of the Dead. Absurdist and moving. These really hit me… it’s interesting how some art does this to us sometimes, it feels like an only-just-perceptible conversation between your soul and some kind of ‘Understanding’, and in the best cases, you have to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it afterwards to try to make sense of it. I can’t quite get my finger on what it is about these images that affect me so. Our mortality? Our smallness? The crumbling world around us? The cycle of life? The absurdity of it all? I don’t know, but I’ll have to look at these again, and think some more.” (Hugh for Alistair).
If Everything Is So Amazing, Why’s Nobody Happy? – VQR. “Persons of the Dialogue: Plato. CK. Scene: A cafe near Hell’s Kitchen, NYC. Now, there’s a conversation I’d like to hear.” (Hugh for Mitch).
24 Pics That Prove ‘Ken M’ Is The Greatest Troll On The Internet – Smosh. “I don’t laugh that hard when I see silly memes and stuff online. I may smirk. I may chuckle. I had not heard of Ken M, but his type of ‘trolling’ is right up my alley (and totally acceptable). Wow, is this hilarious. Read it, laugh and share it. Well worth it.” (Mitch for Alistair).
What Is Art For? – The New York Times. “Seth Godin told me to check out the book The Gift by Lewis Hyde, when I was prodding him for something new, different and fascinating to read. I devoured the book. Loved it. Wound up picking up his other two books, before realizing that The Gift was written in the early 80s. Crazy how relevant it still is. More surprising, is this article. I was embarrassed that I had never heard of him prior to Seth’s mention. Now, it’s clear to me, that if you’re a creative soul, you should know his story. This is his story.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.