Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #350

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 (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS; chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, and ResolveTO; Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), 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:

Two views on Human Error – Johan Bergstrom – Lund University. “My friend, John Allspaw, has been campaigning hard to warn us about the risks of automation. As we have robots and algorithms making decisions for us, two things happen: Humans lose the chance to get good at the things that the machines are doing; and the machines hand control over to a human at precisely the moment when there’s a really bad problem. This is interesting, but also a public service.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Night In The Woods: The Kotaku Review – Kotaku. “My friends can’t stop talking about this game. Made by a three-person Winnipeg-based indy-game outfit over the course of three years. It may just be to video games what Watchmen was to graphic novels: A proof that the medium is a genuine form of literature. You can grab the game from the company’s website for a pittance; I’ve included a Kotaku link to a review but there are plenty more from Serious News Outlets. As for subject matter, it’s a side-scrolling Hillbilly Elegy, and probably more timely than ever.” (Alistair for Mitch).
Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 Photo Contest – The Atlantic. “Look at these pretty pictures.” (Hugh for Alistair).
This site is “taking the edge off rant mode” by making readers pass a quiz before commenting – NiemanLab. “There was a time, a decade ago, when the comments were the most interesting part of web articles (aka blog posts) — a time when this new web-enabled discussion, debate, and engagement of minds seemed about to usher in a new era of enlightened intellectual interactions. Whereas today, reading comments is an exercise in masochism. Still, comments can be a powerful place for discussion. This Norwegian site is forcing commenters to answer a quiz about the content of a post before they can comment on it, meaning at the very least … you have to have read the thing before posting.” (Hugh for Mitch).
AI Is Going to Change the 80/20 Rule – Harvard Business Review. “Here’s some great thinking from the one and only Michael Schrage. It’s a smart piece on what happens when artificial intelligence is able to change the paradigm of how businesses operate. There’s a lot of stuff in here to read, re-read and think about as it applies to your business. It’s easy to dismiss AI as ‘early days’. It may, in fact, be early days for AI, but change is a-coming… and it will be faster than any of us expected… as it always is.” (Mitch for Alistair).
A Very Good List of Vital Writing Advice – Do Not Ignore! – Chuck Wendig. “Chuck Wendig is a best-selling novelist. He’s made it to the top. I’m not a big fan of fiction. I am a huge fan of Wendig when he writes about writing (which, thankfully, he does often). If you have to write anything (even a quick email), here are his rules for writing. They are raw, biting, funny and… of course… perfectly perfect. Read this. Save this. Print it out. Staple it somewhere important.” (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.