Jeff De Luca

Jeff De Luca

I'm a published author, inventor, conference keynote speaker, I.T. executive, father, and husband. I'm also a former professional musician. This is my personal space on the web.

Tags: animals art collingwood design fdd film foodguitar life music tech

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“Ageism in the entrepreneurial community is a fairly recent development. Vivek Wadhwa points out that Ben Franklin discovered electricity at 46 and invented bifocals after age 70, Sam Walton built Walmart in his mid-40s and Ray Kroc built McDonald’s in his early 50s. Wadhwa finds it ironic Silicon Valley may scorn boomers, while its very icon of innovation, Steve Jobs, introduced the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone and iPad all after age 45. “When he was young, he got kicked out of Apple,” and some of his greatest innovations came “with age and maturity,” Wadhwa says.”
Boomers Who Start Businesses: The Next Great Generation Of Entrepreneurs (via courtenaybird)

(via courtenaybird)
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While You Were Gone: On Latin Words

This is a classy piece; done with sensitivity and sensibility to others. Kudos to the author. It would have been very easy to be blunt and sarcastic.

whileyouweregone:

Brent Simmons recently published a critique of the words used in the tab labels of Twitter’s new iPhone app. It’s a fine piece, but one part of it doesn’t ring true.

In a section titled “What we know about people and words”, Simmons writes, “English speakers respond best to non-Latinate words.”…

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How to Accomplish More by Doing Less - Tony Schwartz - Harvard Business Review

No more than a 20 minute walkthrough followed by “model and present” of no more than 90 minutes (often less). Breaks in between of varying lengths. Recognize when you’re tired.

That will be very familiar to FDD people. Here’s a different take on the same truths.

shaneguiter:

During my 30s and 40s, I wrote three books. I sat at my desk each day from 7 am to 7 pm, struggling to stay focused. Each book took me at least a year to write. For my most recent books, I wrote in a schedule that matched the great violinists — three 90 minute sessions with a renewal break in between each one.

I wrote both those books in six months — investing less than half the number of hours I had for each of my first three books. When I was working, I was truly working. When I was recharging — whether by getting something to eat, or meditating, or taking a run — I was truly refueling.

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The Future of Self-Improvement, Part II: The Dilemma of Coaching Yourself :: The 99 Percent

shaneguiter:

Foer identified four principles that he saw the experts using to remain alert and to keep learning:

1. Experts tend to operate outside their comfort zone and study themselves failing.

2. Experts will try to walk in the shoes of someone who’s more competent than them.

3. Experts crave and thrive on immediate and constant feedback.

4. Experts treat what they do like a science. They collect data, they analyze data, they create theories, and they test them.
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What I Learned From Steve Jobs -Guy Kawasaki- MyVenturePad

Some good advice from Guy. 

shaneguiter:

Many people have explained what one can learn from Steve Jobs. But few, if any, of these people have been inside the tent and experienced first hand what it was like to work with him. I don’t want any lessons to be lost or forgotten, so here is my list of the top twelve lessons that I learned from Steve Jobs.

  1. Experts are clueless.

  2. Customers cannot tell you what they need.

  3. Jump to the next curve.

  4. The biggest challenges beget best work.

  5. Design counts.

  6. You can’t go wrong with big graphics and big fonts.

  7. Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence.

  8. “Value” is different from “price.”

  9. A players hire A+ players.

  10. Real CEOs demo.

  11. Real CEOs ship.

  12. Marketing boils down to providing unique value.

Bonus: Some things need to be believed to be seen.

Click through to see the examples for each. 

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The Failure of Empathy

There’s a scene early on in the movie Avatar where one of the scientists walks across the lab carrying the “mobile computer slab of the future.” We’ve seen one of these in almost every sci-fi movie of the last 50 years… Except this time, one month later, my 12 year old son turns to me and whispers “Look Dad, it’s an iPad.”

…

As an industry, we need to understand that not wanting root access doesn’t make you stupid. It simply means you do not want root access. Failing to comprehend this is not only a failure of empathy, but a failure of service.

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“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (via nevver)

(via davidsze)
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Here Be Excellence

This is just one example of thousands of why Apple products are great, and many others are not. Is it more work to do this? Yes it is. But without it you have ugliness. And not just the ugliness of a bad user interface, but also the ugliness of the organization behind it. An organization that accepts laziness and does not pursue excellence.

Make insanely great products. Receive insanely great success.

How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

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“In other words - and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws”
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