Public thinking

The world of tech is messy and noisy. Trends come so fast and disappear so quickly that it’s hard to understand what’s really going on, which trends matter (and why), and most importantly, what will happen next.

Benedict Evans does the hard work for us. He digs deep so we don’t have to and explains his findings in a weekly newsletter which goes out to more than 170,000 subscribers.

Although the newsletter is basically like a mini magazine, his marketing couldn’t be more different from magazines. No flashy ads and no espresso machine for subscribing. Evans markets by making his thinking public.

On Twitter and in his blog, he tells true stories about what he’s currently thinking about. People know exactly what they subscribe to. Which is precisely what makes them subscribe. Evans trusts them with that decision.

This makes him a role model for the Leaders Light the Path approach. Here’s the manifesto if you want to become one, too.

Remote speaking takeaways

After a strange 2020 and lots of remote speaking, here are a few takeaways:

  • It’s still story first. A great story with low tech beats high tech with a poor story every single time.
  • Relevance wins. If you don’t manage to proove the relevance of your thoughts early on, people will just switch to YouTube or any other activity.
  • Audio beats video. Get a good microphone.
  • Lighting is key to good images. Get a decent light setup and even mediocre cameras will provide good image quality.
  • iPhones have exceptional video quality, especially the newest models.
  • Don’t let slides steal the show. Slides have never been the star of the show. But online, it’s much more dangerous because the default setting is that the slides take center stage. Either use a separate display that stands beneath you or put your image inside your slides using a green screen and software such as mmhmm, ecamm or OSB.
  • If you do the latter right and become part of the slides and interact with the content you can do much cooler things online than offline.

Excited to see how you’re going to make a difference in 2021.

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Dr. Michael Gerharz