Howard's Riffs
Founder's log: hiring, new biz, darlings, and coffee wandering
Four observations from running a small indie studio
Howard Gray
Howard's Riffs
Most writing is editing
On what an AI editor taught me about my own tics - and why I've ended up using it less, not more.
Groove Theory
Groove Theory #34 - The Guava Roll That Worked
A Michelin-starred chef opened a bakery because the neighbours kept asking to buy bread. It worked so well they stopped being able to pop in.
A.I
515 startups and the case for case studies
Training gives you capability. A case changes what you think you are allowed to ask for.
Howard's Riffs
Sounds of the Sports Hall
Back to basketball, after two decades away
Howard's Riffs
Putting your name on it
A small habit that twice came close to killing my company.
Howard's Riffs
It nearly got through mine
I didn't love it. Couldn't have told you why, though. Not enough to stop.
A.I
I built a video game about surviving my own workshop
The enemies are the room: the Skeptic, the Expert, the one on their phone. I built it to demo an AI tool, then everyone wanted to play it instead.
Creative Business
Home Games
A touring DJ plays almost every night away from home. Andy C says the hardest gigs of his career were at his own club.
Groove Theory
Groove Theory #33 - The Tour He Stopped Giving
A man bought a wreck in Spitalfields and spent twenty years taking it backwards - no electricity, no plumbing, no twentieth century. Why?
Culture & Insights
Avon & Stringer - hard enough, smart enough?
Too commercial for the artists, too weird for the suits
Learning Innovation
Teaching to Learn
The delivery is ten hours. The design took four people six months. Guess where the learning was.
Learning Innovation
Question Design
One subject added to every curriculum, from five-year-olds to chief executives. Mine would be questions.
Howard's Riffs
Tight But Polite
There are two people on a nightclub door and neither is on your side. Which is why the guy on the gate in Brooklyn threw me completely.
Learning Innovation
The Fortune Cookie Test
If your feedback would fit anyone, it's a fortune cookie. Six rules from a few weeks inside the research on feedback.
Creative Business
When everyone hates your best work
The people who made Walk This Way thought it was rubbish. Somebody had to be certain anyway - and outside music, that job has no name.
Groove Theory
Groove Theory #32 - The Hum They Took Out
She played every character on Argentina's Friday night comedy show. Then she left to make a record, and a very good producer took the strangest thing out of it.
Mindsets & Growth
Why Me?
When someone introduces me to a new contact, I ask them why they thought of me. The answers are rarely what I'd have guessed.
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