One-Minute Q&A: What Is The Greatest Attribute Needed To Be A Designer?

I was recently interviewed for Propeller Inspires a new online resource for Irish design students. The interviewer was Joe Coll, who is heading up this new initiative. The whole experience was a lot of fun and we covered a range of topics including brand identity, brand strategy and running a design studio. My aim was to give him thoughtful and comprehensive answers. Hopefully, it is something that design students may find useful. Here is the first one-minute teaser excerpt of the interview.


While the Propeller Inspires site is not live yet, you can view some of Joe’s other one-minute Q&A videos with my peers and esteemed competitors on Joe’s Vimeo page.

Humility and Metacognition

Seth Godin and Tom Peters riffing on blogs and blogging.

Ambient Intimacy

An interesting take on the status update.


Status updates explained from quub.com on Vimeo.

O’Reilly Webcast: Twitter For Business

An hour-long webcast running over the opportunities for businesses using Twitter.

Evan Williams at TED 2009

Evan Williams gave this presentation at this year’s TED conference. As before, while his presentation style leaves a lot to be desired, his content is interesting and his supporting slides help to get his message across effectively. Of most interest to my research is his discussion about how the real-time search aspect of Twitter has definitely expanded the potential use-cases of the service. This presentation video runs to about seven minutes.

Microblogging for Marketers

This is an early interview with Peter Kim of Forrester on the possibilities for businesses of using Twitter and micro-blogging in marketing, from December 2007.

Twitter in Plain English

This video is a companion piece to the explanatory blogging presentation video I linked to earlier today.

Blogs in Plain English

This video is very much the ‘Beginners Guide to What Blogging Is’, but it is still worth a look. It is particularly good for sharing with anyone you know who is new to blogging and the blogosphere.

It Is Very Simple, although Not Obvious

There are a number of worthwhile statements in Charlie Rose’s interview with Evan Williams, founder of Twitter Inc, from Friday 27 February 2009. These are worth noting in this blog for future reference. Williams is the second of two interviewees in this excerpted highlight version and his segment begins at 04:15. You can watch the complete interview here, but be aware that Williams is not the best verbal communicator.

Speaking from his previous experience as the founder of Blogger, he notes that it took time (culturally) for blogging to become normalised, and now that practice and having a MySpace or Facebook presence are seen as things that normal people do. Twitter is not yet at that point and people still wonder why others would “put themselves out there like that”.

Relevant quotes about Twitter:

“It is very simple, although not obvious.”

“It is something we did not know we needed (until we had it).”

“Living more publicly, more transparently can have powerful and positive effects... new people and new opportunities... an authentic and open way to live your life that people enjoy and makes everyone richer.”

Zeldman on Blogging

In this video interview noted American web designer Jeffery Zeldman talks about his personal history as a blogger. He explains his own interpretation of online authority and talking straight with his clients. He discusses how having better content on your blog can engender better comments. He recommends that you think about the kind of community you want to aggregate around your blog.

The Simpsons Movie :: draft footage

This is all over the web at the moment but parts of it are pretty darn funny, particularly the baby and the monkey.

Boy Bashes Box of Beer Bottles in Ballinasloe

Presented for my mild amusement. (Not simply because Daragh had already posted some video over on his blog.) Not sure why this is appearing sideways here in TP, it is the right way around on the home PC.