More Than This » Video

My Talk From Ignite Lean Startup: Replacing Requirements with Hypotheses

Josh — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:10:53 +0000

Here is a video of my 5-minute Ignite talk, delivered last month at Ignite: Lean Startup II.

Thanks to the event organizers, especially Ryan MacCarrigan and the NYC Lean Startup Meetup for having me and for hosting such a great event.

And by the way, if you’ve never been to an Ignite event, you should go. The format is a blast–5 minutes, 20 slides, slides advance automatically every 15 seconds. Lots of nerve-wracking fun. And at Ryan’s events anyway, lots of booze to lubricate the crowd.

Check out the other talks here…

Earle Stanton Olsen 1926-2011

Josh — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:25:03 +0000

My wonderful father-in-law, who painted in full passion until nearly his last day.

LeanUX Panel at Startup Lessons Learned 2011

Josh — Tue, 24 May 2011 21:49:41 +0000

I was lucky to share a stage with Janice Fraser, Tim McCoy, Jeff Gothelf, and Zach Larson at Startup Lessons Learned yesterday, the conference organized by Eric Reis to evangelize the concept of Lean Startup.

Watch live video from Startup Lessons Learned on Justin.tv
Our panel, called “Design + Lean Startup = Lean UX,” was a lot of fun: the goal was to talk about how design works within a Lean Startup context, and to talk about the subset of traditional design techniques that work well in this context. If you’re an entrepreneur who is not familiar with the wider design world, take a look–I’d love to hear your thoughts on the content presented and how (or if) you think it’s relevent to your work.

Of course, the notion of “Lean UX” has some folks in the design communty grumbling. We both love and hate the growth of these new terms. Design Misanthrope (courageously anonymous as ever) tweeted during the talk, “Glad to see the #leanUX crowd admitting it’s basically same shit in different bottles.” Maybe. But good shit in good bottles? I call that good business. Personally, I’m glad to have a chance to talk to a receptive community of entrepreneurs about the value of design. As I said in the talk, designers who collaborate are the ones who win, and part of collaboration is developing a shared language. (The flipside of this is true as well, and we took pains to call this out during the panel. As @kylec tweeted during the talk, “A lot of the Lean Startup talk is the same stuff that designers having been calling UX research for years.”)

As far as the rest of the conference went, there were lots of worthwhile presentations. Two that were personal highlights were Brad Smith (CEO of Intuit) talking about how Intuit manages innovation at a huge, successful software company, and Mitch Kapor’s discussion of failure, an object lesson in humility, self-awareness, and life-long learning. (Watch every presentation from the conference here.)

Thanks to Eric for having me, to Janice for organizing the panel, and to my fellow panelists for raising the bar for me. And kudos to conference organizers Charles Hudson and David Sachs, who not only ran a flawless show, but arranged to simulcast the conference to over 100 locations worldwide and to make available recorded video as soon as each talk was done.

Finally, in the video, I tell the story of a product development effort that happened during my tenure at Liquidnet. (The story starts at about the 37:00 mark in the video above.) In my rush to get my story in under 5 minutes (fail) I didn’t remember to credit the designers while onstage, but the brilliant design team that worked on this was Jeanine Harriman and Eric Wright. Their work on that project embodies what great designers can do.

Not your average bike race

Josh — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 22:20:29 +0000

Made my heart pound just sitting at my desk. Thanks to my friend Jaime for pointing this one out.

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

People are strange and wonderful

Josh — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:22:50 +0000

Sometimes, we do things just because we can.

Casteller from Mike Randolph on Vimeo.

This video made me smile after a long, serious day. I’m grateful for that.

Annotation: Roll Um Easy

Josh — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:06:25 +0000

Here’s an older video that I found recently in my archives. I made this one about Little Feat’s wonderful Roll Um Easy. Annotation: Roll Um Easy

Snowy evening

Josh — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:19:26 +0000

I just found this set of images from the winter of 2008-2009. Snowy nights have become so rare in NY. It’s special now when we get a night like this one.

Click here to watch.

Remembering Bo

Josh — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:23:37 +0000

I was sad to hear yesterday that Bo died. Bo, the wonderful cocker-pit who belonged to my friend Jamie was one of a kind.

On Memorial Day weekend in 2006 (I think), we met Jamie and his future wife Anja at a Friendly’s near Turner’s Falls Mass. As Bo sat outside, we watched everyone walk past our window and check her out. Here’s a video of the procession.

Memorial Day at Friendly’s with Bo from Joshua Seiden on Vimeo.

In Dan’s Barn

Josh — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:02:33 +0000

Here’s one that I forgot to post. I made it just about a year ago, after visiting my brother in Vermont.

What I did on my summer vacation

Josh — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:49:01 +0000

Watching the sun go down from Indian Neck in Wellfleet, Mass.