The Mario Blog

An image I like

Getty Images / John Paczkowski

If the purpose of an illustration is to grab our attention, awaken our curiosity and want to read more, then this one by John Paczkouski, for Getty Images, accomplished its mission.

The story: On Monday morning North Korea’s foreign minister told journalists near the United Nations that president Trump’s recent tweet about North Korea were a declaration of war against his country. Ever since Trump became a candidate, the fear of what his tweets could cause has been discussed often. The illustration makes the point quite visually.

Highlight:

Trump’s “they won’t be around much longer!” tweet and North Korea’s interpretation of it are the latest in a series of escalations between the two powers that have set the international community on high alert. Since Trump made the remark on Twitter, today’s comments from North Korea also raise the question: does a threat that leads to a declaration of war violate the company’s opaque rules for conduct and its prohibitions against harassment and incitement?

Biden curates the news

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/25/technology/joe-biden-news-briefing/index.html

The former vice president has launched a new daily podcast-like program called “Biden’s Briefing” in which he shares the articles he’s reading.

He’s partnered with a new startup called Ground Control to create the audible programs, which are between 3 to 15 minutes long. Topics range from healthcare and climate change to the economy.

Learning from Bezos

If you are like me, you like the efficiency of Amazon. I buy everything from laundry detergent to paper towels and vegetable soups from Amazon: as a resident of New York City, I do not own a car in the City (and happy about that), but I also do not wish to be carrying many bags of groceries up to my apartment thru the busy streets of New York. Amazon solves the problem, and gets me most things to my doorstep within two days.

For that I thank the genius of Jeff Bezos.

As an avid reader (and admirer) of The Washington Post, I also benefit from what I am sure is Bezos’ influence, especially with that newspaper’s constant experimentation, and scoops.

Now a piece highlights three reasons for Bezos’ success.

I particularly like one of those three reasons best: Release Ideas at 70% and Then Iterate

Highlight:

For most decisions, after a certain point, information and time provide diminishing returns.

As a general rule of thumb, the longer you take on something, the less you have to gain from taking that time, and the more you have to lose from falling behind. This doesn’t apply to every situation, but generally speaking, improvements become redundant after a while.

For example, if you’re a creator or a maker of any kind, the creation is almost never going to feel perfect. Dwelling on the minor tweaks before sharing that work will eat up way more time than the yield of the potential improvements is worth. It’s far smarter to let go before you’re ready, and then iterate and improve based on the feedback.

My take:

I have always thought that you have to launch projects short of when you feel they are at 100% completion. Whether a book, a redesign or a new idea for a television show, put it out there when it’s about 80% cooked. Works for me. In today’s digital environment of constant experimentation this makes perfect sense: do a little bit of rehearsal in public.

Apparently Bezos agrees!

And this was funny too

The Economist  never fails to surprise!

Finalists in the Digital Media contest 2017

https://mailing.wan-ifra.org/vm.php?m=4769&u=ed7c3017381fb21f96ef5cf355e244e7

Mario’s Speaking Engagements

Oct. 19, WAN IFRA Digital Media North America, New York City

Nov. 16-19, WAN IFRA Latin America, Buenos Aires, Argentina