# Howard Gray > Howard Gray writes about how people get good at the parts of the job nobody scripted. Founder of Wavetable, creator of the Groove Theory newsletter. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### Courses URL: https://www.howardgray.net/courses/ Last updated: 2023-12-17T21:16:01.000Z You can find most of my stuff online for free, but for a more in-depth and focused approach you might want to try out my online courses: Workshop Creator, and Client Magic. --- # 1) Workshop Creator ### Build the skills to design and facilitate educational workshops, courses and programs of all flavors. Over the past six years I've led over 250 workshops and short courses for a huge range of audiences, across a wide range of topics. This - plus my work at [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- led me to refining a tried and tested approach to designing and delivering these experiences that can be utilized for any type of session. I wanted to share it with you so you can use it in your own projects. If you want to build your own business around workshops or courses, or just want to refine your skills so you can deliver better experiences for your audience, the Workshop Creator course would be perfect for you. ### Free email course Get started for free with my [7-day email course.](https://insession-ck.wavetable.net/7-day-course?ref=howardgray.net) ### Self-Paced Course - [Self-Paced Course with over 50 video lessons and 20 resources](https://wavetable.circle.so/checkout/workshop-creator-self-paced-course?ref=howardgray.net) \- $150 Learn more about the [self-paced course](../workshop-creator-online-course/). --- # 2) Client Magic - [Single payment of $495, or 3 installments of $175](https://wavetable.circle.so/checkout/client-magic-course-essentials?ref=howardgray.net) ### Under the Current: a podcast URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current/ Last updated: 2020-12-08T20:45:57.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/12/Podcast-Art-3.png) To be human in the information age is to experience deep-seated tension. We exist in a constant overdose of information. And yet, we’re starving for meaningful engagement. We experience constant pressure to iterate, ideate and innovate. Lifting the curtain on other people’s ideas, successes and ideals is one of the most compelling ways to get inspiration, reassurance and momentum for our own creative journeys. Several podcasts seek to do this, but too often they’re straight lines on the surface. We need something more to help us move through the waves. --- *Under the Current* tells the stories behind the life and work of creative people who come at things in unconventional ways. They’re globetrotting DJs and design studio owners; magazine publishers and marketing professors. Each episode goes beyond an interview. It’s a slice of life; something real, beyond the PR pitch and the box ticks. It’s a journey into the real drivers of the work: - Dealing with the unknown space between projects - The tension between creativity and commerce - The learnings and people that would have helped most on the journey - The hidden superpowers and skill combinations that drive the work forward - What changes and evolutions need to happen next in the industry And much more. ### Workshop Creator Online Course URL: https://www.howardgray.net/workshop-creator-online-course/ Last updated: 2021-08-19T15:38:39.000Z *How do you create workshops that... work?* One morning in late 2015, I was standing in an empty room, waiting for the fun to start. I’d signed up to lead a 1-day workshop, and I was excited. I’d memorised all the stuff I wanted to talk about. I had a bunch of fun, interactive activities planned. I knew there were a bunch of people signed up to attend. The sun was shining. It was going to be great. I was completely wrong. It was horrible. All those activities I thought were really cool turned out to be totally lame; people stared at me blankly or looked down at their shoes when I explained stuff; every single thing we did seemed to run late, no matter how what I did. Even the lunch was terrible. And it started raining. Somehow I made through the day in one piece, but it was a harrowing experience. I’ll never forget how I felt once everyone had left the room. I was exhausted; embarrassed; frustrated; beaten. I never wanted to have that feeling again. --- ## The journey Despite that terrible experience, I knew this interactive, hands-on approach to learning was the future. I just hadn’t figured out how to do it. I vowed to learn everything I could to make my workshops better. During my process of discovery, I found something strange. There were public speaking videos on YouTube, and expensive training courses sold to big companies, but hardly anything in between. If you wanted to run workshops to make better connections with clients, engage a team, or share your ideas and expertise, there just didn’t seem a practical way to learn *how to do it well*. Through extensive trial and error, I eventually realised there were some key principles and models that I could synthesize into a system. Suddenly, my work as a workshop designer and facilitator improved exponentially in the space of just a few months. ## Magic tricks Since then, I’ve spent thousands of hours building and running all kinds of programs, workshops, and courses – for Fortune 100 companies, startup accelerators, creative communities, and youth nonprofits. The question I now get asked most often by workshop participants is along the lines of *“how did you do that?!”*. People think it’s some kind of magic trick to conjure up an hour, a day, or a month’s worth of learning that left them feeling energised instead of exhausted. So I’ve taken everything I’ve learned so far and built a course for anyone to develop their workshop creation superpowers. --- ## Introducing *In:Session – Workshop Creator* This course was created upon two foundational beliefs: that **anyone** can become a capable and confident workshop design and facilitator; and workshops skills are hugely valuable in tomorrow’s workplace. Consider this course your fast track to a whole new skill set that will enable you share your expertise, build your authority, inspire others, and create new opportunities and revenue streams. This is the most extensive practical course on this topic that’s available online, and I guarantee it will bring you a bunch of ‘aha’ moments that’ll lift you work to another level. [**Learn more about the course >**](https://www.insessionworkshop.com/?ref=howardgray.net) But why does all this matter? And why now? --- ### **Let’s be honest. Moving things online isn’t so easy.** A lot of meetings, courses, and workshops suffer from a common set of challenges. These can kill an audience’s energy, overcomplicate concepts, or get the teacher in a twist. Online, these challenges feel even harder to overcome. If you’re designing or leading an online learning experience, there are so many questions to answer: *How do I bring energy and engagement to an online workshop?* *What are the best ways to liven up a class or course?* *Why do so many webinars fall flat, and how do I make mine better?* *Which elements of the offline experience translate best, and why?* But there’s more than just being able to make an online experience work. With interactive workshopsbecoming the future of learning, there’s huge opportunity opening up to people who are able to design and teach them. ### The rise of the workshop creator Being able to design and run your own workshops is a fantastic way to share your knowledge and ideas, and empower others to go out and do the same. Becoming an accomplished workshop creator is a real superpower – and the two underpinning skills of process design and facilitation are now key competencies in the modern world of work. These are skills that aren’t getting automated any time soon. They’re hugely valuable – whether you’re working within a company, building a business of your own, or supporting others as a freelancer or consultant. In this course, you’ll build all the skills you need to design and deliver high-impact, interactive workshops of any flavor. ## What they say Here’s what people say about my work as a workshop facilitator and designer: > *“I cannot recommend this enough for anyone who wants to learn how to run effective online meetings, short courses or workshops.* > > *More engaging than many in-person workshops I attended. Very meta. Fun. Interactive.”* > > **Hanna Celina** > Head of Insights, FutureLearn > Former Head of EMEA Real Estate Finance, Google *‘Always excellent at explaining and making things easily understandable‘* *‘Incredibly supportive and knowledgeable’* *‘Exceptional facilitator‘* *‘great presentation skills and interpersonal skills’* *‘Awesome! Dynamic and engaging’* *‘Engaging, humorous, conducive to learning, helpful, personal, understanding’* *‘GREAT! super helpful, friendly and responsive‘* *‘Howard is really cool; easy and fun exercises. Very thought provoking‘* *‘Howard is amazing! Humorous and helpful’* *‘Fun, dynamic, hands-on, funny, great energy, and full of information’* *“Extraordinary – one of the best teachers I’ve had in any environment”* --- ## 4 Modules, 4 Mindsets We believe workshops are like stories – they unfold over time, with tension, suspense, characters, and themes. This course unfolds over 4 modules, with each module comprised of 3-5 episodes. Within each episode? A handful of scenes, breaking down the key concepts in the story. You’ll also get over 20 resources and templates to help design and build your own workshop products. #### Module 1: First Principles **Thinking like a workshop creator** You’ll get under the skin of what drives learning and growth, and build your skills in the practice of learning design #### Module 2: Design & Structure **Designing like a workshop creator** You’ll be able to design a powerful and scaleable workshop or short course format you use in-person or online #### Module 3: Content & Craft **Developing** **like a workshop creator** You’ll be able to craft a workshop narrative, and create interactive workshop activities that really work #### Module 4: Facilitation & Performance **Delivering** **like a workshop creator** You’ll build skills to lead and support a group, and develop your own unique style of presentation. ## Take a sneak peek **Module 2 – Episode 2, Scene 4 // Pillars** --- ## Course Packages This course includes over 50 bitesize video lessons, and more than 20 resources, worksheets and exercises. The course comes in 2 different flavors: - **[Self-Paced](https://www.insessionworkshop.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**: all the content, resources and worksheets, ready to roll, available whenever you need it - **[Live](https://www.insessionworkshop.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**: this 6-week experiential program will connect you with a global cohort of fellow creators, as well as our workshop team supporting you every step of the way --- If 1:1 partnership is more up your street, I offer two types of coaching packages to design and develop your workshop or program. We’ll partner up over 4 or 6 working sessions to design, sculpt and refine every aspect of your project. [Learn more about coaching and co-development](https://howardgray.net/workshop-co-development/?ref=howardgray.net) ## Not sure yet? And if you’re not sure about jumping in just yet? Check out my [free email course](https://insession-ck.wavetable.net/7-day-course?ref=howardgray.net), or explore some of my [articles](https://howardgray.net/blog/education-learning/?ref=howardgray.net) on the future of learning, ### Podcasts URL: https://www.howardgray.net/podcasts/ Last updated: 2023-01-22T02:22:38.000Z # Originals [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/11/Podcast-Art-2.png)](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/under-the-current) ## Under the Current The stories behind the life and work of creative people who come at things in unconventional ways. They’re globetrotting DJs and design studio owners; magazine publishers and marketing professors. [Find out more >](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/under-the-current) --- [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/03/Tickets_Logo.jpg)](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/tickets) ## Tickets Featuring the visionaries, producers and operators behind some of the world’s most exciting and innovative live experiences. Guests include leaders from companies like Airbnb, Duolingo, The Royal Albert Hall, and The New York Times. [Visit the Tickets website >](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/tickets) --- [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/08/TheTension_Artwork-1024x1024.png)](https://howardgray.net/2019/09/09/a-new-podcast-the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net) ## The Tension A short-form podcast series on noticing, embracing, and harnessing the tension that shows up in the work we do, so we can get where we want to go. [Visit the The Tension website >](https://howardgray.net/2019/09/09/a-new-podcast-the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net) # Guest Appearances Some of the podcasts where I’ve appeared as a guest: ### The Pathless Path with Paul Millerd: Money, Fatherhood and Creativity ### The Community Corner with Beth McIntyre: Edutainment 3.0 ### [The First 10 podcast: Finding the first 10 clients for a talent agency](http://www.first10podcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net) --- ### [Workshops.work: Episode 81 – What if more Facilitators Mastered the Art of DJing?](https://workshops.work/podcast/081/?ref=howardgray.net) --- ### [The Portfolio Career Podcast: Episode 105 – Creating Workshops](https://www.portfoliocareerpodcast.com/howard-gray2/?ref=howardgray.net) --- ### [Comcast’s LIFT Labs podcast: Blind Spots and Hidden Networks](https://lift.comcast.com/podcasts/howard-gray-ideas-elevated/?ref=howardgray.net) --- ### [The Portfolio Career Podcast: Episode 43 – Using Lowercase Skills](https://www.portfoliocareerpodcast.com/howard-gray?ref=howardgray.net) --- ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #7: Further resources for workshop success URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-7-further-resources-for-workshop-success/ Last updated: 2021-06-16T15:37:26.000Z You’re here! It’s the last lesson in this 7-part series. As promised, here’s a quick cheat sheet to help avoid common pitfalls, plus some more resources to dive into. ## Workshop Creator Cheat Sheet In the **design** phase, don’t… - **Overpack**: humans are generally pretty bad at estimating time. If in any doubt, strip it back – give your audience time for discussion, questions, and integration rather than pushing more content onto them - **Start with the slides**: you’ll burn your time, creative energy and motivation if you start with the slides. Structure and content planning first, slides come later - **Lose sight of learning outcomes**: it’s easy to get excited by a piece of content, or a new idea you want to add. This is great if they’re well-aligned with your learning outcomes, but you’ll often discover they wander off into other areas. Be vigilant with [shiny objects](https://howardgray.net/2018/01/02/harness-your-curiosity-beware-the-magpie/?ref=howardgray.net)! When **facilitating**, you want to avoid: - **Starting badly**: a strong start with a concise intro and a clear overview of the session builds trust and engagement. Start badly, and you’ll be on the back from the beginning. As they say, first impressions count - **Not reading the room**: This is most important when it comes to energy. It’s inevitable that the energy levels of your attendees will drop over time – having a room with low energy isn’t necessarily a problem, but realizing (and therefore not doing anything about it) is. Don’t be afraid to take a break early, or nip out a bit of slower content if it’s going to serve your attendees better in the long run - **Speaking too quickly**: If you feel like you’re speaking a little too slowly, you’ve probably got it just right. It’s easy to forget that your content is probably very new for your audience, and they’ll need processing time, especially if you’re using visuals or hands-on exercises. Take your time. It’ll also help you stay calm ### Resource: Learning Design Template To get your structure tighter, a learning design document can be really helpful. I’ve created a simple template you can use to start mapping out your session in more detail. Just click the link below, make a copy, and fill in your content! [Learning Design Template >](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13rZT4WhDy7oCU8igGJ8yfyCzrWg8LfuYBWVos1%5FoCfI/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net) ### Bonus Content Here are a few other resources to get stuck into! - [Creating a Zoom workshop](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net) - [Designing compelling content](https://howardgray.net/2020/03/16/how-to-design-a-workshop-slide-deck/?ref=howardgray.net) - [10 tips for workshop greatness](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTRMN-dlfPcUDk5NSnMpuK8eOJHFB%5FB4nV7ElK6lft6g8JSIgwPeXxWo9Gb1ceV1o5Agf4Fu9Z1NAnS/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&ref=howardgray.net) - [Audience & Topic ideation guide](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRbozV0b1ErvD0UUa3xCu-qQz7IKeJDu3FXeDlgaDkol5GGywdQWhjOObBfcxKne0Ov16pksEUE-fnt/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=30000&ref=howardgray.net) --- ### Going Further Hopefully, the tips and resources in this lesson will hold you in good stead along with the other material you’ve learned so far, but if you want to go further there’s much more to explore: Today is the last lesson in this course, but there’s much more to explore. Here are a few ways you can continue the journey: **1\. On-Demand Course**: Our [self-paced online course](http://www.wavetable.net/wc/course?ref=howardgray.net) features over 50 bitesize video lessons and more than 25 resources, worksheets and exercises. You’ll get into every aspect of successful workshop design and delivery, all at your own pace and with lifetime access. Even better – enter EMAIL7 at checkout and you’ll get 15% off! **2\. Join our live program**: Our [Workshop Creator live program](http://www.wavetable.net/wc/live?ref=howardgray.net) runs 3 times a year, and is a 6-week immersive experience where you’ll develop your workshop or course alongside a global community of fellow creators, as well as our team of coaches and designers. [Find out more >](http://www.wavetable.net/wc/live?ref=howardgray.net) **3\. Working 1:1:** Looking to take your workshop design, facilitation, or public speaking to the next level? [Just get in touch >](http://www.howardgray.net/contact) And whether you choose to dive in deeper with these resources, are confidently out running your own workshops, or are just starting to plan out for your first session, I’d love to hear about what you’re working on. Let me know – [send me a note here >](https://www.howardgray.net/contact/) Thanks again for joining this course and good luck with all your workshop endeavors! ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #6: Delivering on the day URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-6-delivering-on-the-day/ Last updated: 2020-07-27T19:31:18.000Z As we’ve seen throughout this course, preparation is key for success, but in the end, you’ve still got to show up and deliver for your audience on the day. Facilitating a workshop session can be nerve-wracking. It can feel like there’s so much to remember: from specific content details; to transitions between sections; setting up the room how you want it; being able to answer audience questions; and keeping to time… and those are just a few of the things to juggle. *(Let’s not even start on the nerves you may have when it comes to speaking in front of a room of people).* It may leave you feeling a little like this: ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Creative-Mornings-Field-Trip-11th-April-2019-4.jpg) this is THE FEAR. We want to avoid this feeling. However, there’s some good news. You can remain calm, confident, and engaged during your session by utilizing just a few simple principles. Even better, you’ve probably already applied these elsewhere in your life. Today’s lesson brings together those principles along with some top tips from pro facilitators to help you facilitate your workshop session like… well, a pro of course 🙂 Let’s get into it. --- ## **Getting Started: Introductions** In workshops, as in much of life, first impressions count. The introduction you give about yourself at the start of the session can be an incredible lever to build trust, empathy, and engagement. It can also put you on the back foot straight from the get-go. To get the former to happen rather than the latter, at its essence your introduction should do two things: assert your **credibility**, and display your **humanity**. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Creative-Mornings-Field-Trip-11th-April-2019-5.jpg) the two keys to a successful introduction What’s more, by focusing on [credibility and humanity](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/22/how-to-introduce-yourself/?ref=howardgray.net) you can touch on all of the 7 characteristics mentioned in the previous lesson: - **Confident** - **Charming** - **Charismatic** - **Professional** - **Empathetic** - **Gravitas** - **Approachable** Pretty cool, eh? Let’s see how to do it. --- #### Credibility **Credibility** is companies you’ve worked at, projects you’ve completed, notable people you’ve collaborated with, events you’ve been invited to be a part of. It often boils down to names and accomplishments. You don’t want to be a name-dropper, but sprinkling in a couple of relevant names your attendees are familiar with is an easy and effective way to display credibility. Credibility in your introduction indicates you are Confident, Professional, and possess Gravitas. #### Humanity **Humanity** is about you as a person; your life experiences, your personality, the places you’ve been, the emotions you’ve felt. Authentically displaying your humanity in your introduction can give the audience a sense you’re Empathetic, Approachable, Charming, and Charismatic. It’s really as simple as that. Showing your humanity also often does wonders to reduce an audience’s nerves or concerns, which in turn will probably do the same for yours. Good news for everyone involved. In the next section, I’ll share an example of how I use credibility and humanity in my introductions. --- ### Three principles for a great introduction That’s right: just three principles are all you need to help make your introduction a secret weapon for workshop success. Here they are: 1. **Credibility & Humanity** 2. **Take one minute** 3. **Tailor to the audience** We’ve already talked about Credibility and Humanity; let’s look at the others. The second principle is even simpler than the first: keep your introduction to a maximum of 1 minute. If you’re a great storyteller you can get away with a little longer, but as a rule of thumb keeping your introduction short and sharp is the best way to go. The third principle requires a little more work – vary your introduction depending on the audience. This is important, as what’s credible for one audience may have next to no credibility with another. To explore this principle a little further I often ask myself the following question ahead of my workshops: #### “To DJ, or not to DJ?” ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/photo-1493676304819-0d7a8d026dcf-1024x768.jpeg) Like a DJ with music, it’s worth taking the time to consider which stories are going to resonate with your audience When I’m running sessions focused on tech, I obviously want my introduction to frame and underline my interest in technology. To do this, I have a story about my life as a DJ and talent agent and how I utilized the power of software to build my business. This story can be very effective when talking to younger (i.e. under 35) audiences who are in more junior positions in a company, or work for themselves. However, for a more senior corporate audience it’s unlikely to land so well, especially when the session is more specific, technical, or mission-critical. For better or worse, DJs have a bit of stigma attached and it can make me come off as a bit too casual. On these occasions, I may instead mention my work coaching executives at multinational companies, or in technical product management roles where I saw certain thorny challenges appear. Alternatively, I can tell the same DJ story but talk it about as building the systems to run an entertainment company. Same story, same desired outcome, different context. In both cases, my introduction aims to assert my **credibility** (through the brands and partners I’ve worked with over a period of time) and my **humanity** (through working in situations very similar to theirs). ### Overcoming Objections You may remember this from the lesson on learning outcomes. That question of *‘what are you trying to convince them of?’* comes in handy here Introductions are a good way to cover off objections before they overtly come up. For example, using your intro to mention a common frustration people have with the topic can simultaneously build empathy and nix negativity. Think back to Lesson 1 of who your workshop is for. One of the questions was *‘What are they not yet voicing?’*. If you know the answer to this you can tailor your intro to handle these concerns or objections straight out of the gate. Here’s a really simple example you could use: > *“Like a lot of you shared in your registration forms for this session, my early time getting hands-on with \[technology/product/skill\] X felt really overwhelming.* > > *After just a couple of hands-on sessions doing \[Y\] with my team I suddenly found myself feeling much more comfortable.* > > *We’ll be aiming to do exactly that today.”* --- All this may seem like a lot of detail for what’s a very small part of your session, but as mentioned at the top of this section, a strong introduction can be one of your secret weapons. As with your overall session preparation, it’s worth practicing your introduction so it feels solid but natural. Do it in the mirror, with a friend, on a walk with your dog – whenever, whoever, and wherever you can. There’s much more we could cover on introductions (yes, really! for more on introductions [check out this resource](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/22/how-to-introduce-yourself/?ref=howardgray.net)), but let’s move on to a few best practices within the session itself. --- ## **During: Best Practices** There are dozens of facilitation approaches and tactics you can use. Some of these will work better in some sessions than others, so to get started here a few best practices you can go out and apply in pretty much every workshop you facilitate. #### You do want to: - **Speak loudly, at a comfortable pace:** The simplest rule of thumb here is if you feel like you’re speaking just a little too slowly, you’re probably doing it right. If you have a naturally quiet voice, it’s worth practicing projecting your voice up and out so the attendees at the back of the room can hear clearly. Try this at home and also in the room with a co-facilitator or friend before the session starts (as you’ve arrived early you’ll have a bit of time for this). - **Use leverage:** This is a pro tip everyone can use. Workshops aren’t lectures; they’re interactive. Engaging attendees is a great form of leverage. By engaging attendees you can make people feel more involved, hear diverse perspectives, and utilize the knowledge of any subject matter experts who may be in the room**.** - **Be present:** If there’s any one tip that stands above the rest, it’s this. Being present and connected with the session and your attendees may not make your workshop a roaring success on its own, but checking out or being distracted will hugely reduce your chances of a positive outcome. You’ll be amazed at how much people value being seen and heard, with a facilitator who’s right there with them. Again, this is simple, but it’s not always easy. Checking in with yourself every so often is a good habit to build to help with this. - **Focus on Experience > Finish Line:** It’s easy to become focused on managing time, or delivering the content exactly as you designed and practiced it. These are important, but your workshop is more likely to have a successful outcome if you place your primary focus on the experience of your attendees. Doing this also often gives you space to be yourself and enjoy it. The added bonus here is a positive feedback loop: focusing on their experience makes it more likely you’ll be yourself, which makes them feel more comfortable, and improves their experience further. A win-win. #### You don’t want to: - **Fiddle with your phone:** We all know how tempting and distracting our phones can be. Even if your group are heads-down in an activity, resist the temptation to check your emails, look at your train times, or send a text. At best it’s a mild distraction, at worst it says to the attendees you don’t care. It’s best to leave your phone in your bag if you can. - **Act like the smartest person in the room:** This is a workshop rather than a lecture. Even if you are a subject matter expert, acting like the smartest person in the room changes the atmosphere, increases the pressure on you, and can draw out some negative behaviors in both you and the attendees. Being open, inclusive, curious, and engaging creates an environment where all ships can rise. - **Try to accomplish other work:** Just like fiddling with the phone, trying to do other stuff while you’re facilitating a session is a distraction at best, and at worst an arrogant, dismissive gesture to the people you’re there to serve and support. Even if you feel you’ve got time and space to do something during the session – don’t. You’ll slip up. ## **During: Pro Tips** Alongside these best practices, there are of course many other tactics and delivery methods that can really help bring your session to life and make the workshop feel even more smooth and professional. Here are 5 of the most effective. - **Learn the narrative & set up transitions:** The lesson on structure mentioned the importance of thinking about narrative arcs. Alongside designing and memorizing the details of the content, your delivery will benefit hugely from paying attention to the overall arc of the session and the transitions between content elements. This takes time and practice, but is well worth the investment to create an experience that feels smooth, enticing and engaging. - **Know what to emphasize:** There are probably plenty of details you want to cover in the time you have. Too top-line and you’ll miss your learning objectives. Too granular and you’ll run out of time and lose your audience. Take some time to pick out the key points you want to emphasize. Don’t be afraid to mention them twice or refer back to them later in the session. You have may noticed a few concepts in this course have been emphasized more than others 🙂 - **Sprinkle in news / current topics / stories:** Taking that extra time to pick out something timely and topical to include in your session can lift energy and engagement, and give attendees the sense you’ve custom-designed the content especially for them. It’s also a great way of opening up conversations around a particular content area - **State aloud the skills and vocabulary learned:** A particular skill and term may be obvious to you (after all, you’ve designed and are facilitating the session), but it’s worth remembering your attendees are probably experiencing this for the first time. Simply stating the key skills and terms can help attendees synthesize what’s happening, integrate their learnings and feel a sense of achievement - **Manage energy:** Energy tends to drop at three key times: before breaks, 30 minutes after lunch, and 15 minutes after an exercise. Your session design will help mitigate this, but it’s worth being aware of these energy changes during the session. Don’t be afraid to take a break early, skip a little bit of content, or change your delivery style if it means maintaining attendee energy The final part of this lesson focuses on wrapping up – both closing the session and what to do once your attendees have left the room. ## **Wrapping up** your workshop When you’re bringing things to a close, here are 3 foundational elements to focus on. - **Strong summary:** In your summary,touch briefly on the activities and topics you’ve covered together. Remind the attendees of all they’ve done. You may also want to ask people to share their biggest takeaway from the session. All of us have a recency bias so picking out a couple of possibly forgotten key learnings from the start of the session can be a good idea here too. Like your introduction, this short section can be a really powerful part of your workshop - **Tie back to learning outcomes:** Make sure to refer back to your learning outcomes during your wrap-up. By following all the lessons in this series your learning outcomes will be baked into the workshop, some nice positive reinforcement 😉 - **Say thanks!:** Your attendees have invested their time, energy, attention, and quite possibly their money into the session. A simple thank you can go a long way. You may also want to offer time for a brief Q&A for anyone who wants to chat afterwards ## After the workshop Once everyone has left the room, you may want to jump for joy, have a lie-down, or run for the hills (hopefully the former). Before doing that, take some time to: - **Tidy up:** Unless the venue has expressly said they’ll take care of tidying up, it’s good karma and good manners to get the room back in the state you found it. Realign chairs and tables, collect resources, and power down any tech kit - **Debrief and give co-facilitator / team feedback:** It’s good to debrief as soon after the session as possible. If you’re working with a co-facilitator, take 10 minutes to chat through what worked well and which areas could be improved. If you’re working alone, writes some notes or record a brief voice memo. Although you may feel tired and your feelings and insights will likely change after more time to rest and reflect, it’s worth taking note of those instinctive feelings in the first hour after the workshop has finished - **Breathe & Decompress:** Facilitation can be exhausting and emotional! Carve out some time to decompress in a way that works for you. It could be meditation, sitting alone for a while, breakdancing (I haven’t tried this one), or going out and socializing with friends. Whatever you choose, give yourself the space to celebrate what you’ve achieved --- Phew! This was a packed lesson, but following these tips will set you up for a great delivery. And of course, you can come back and revisit this and every lesson whenever you like. There’s now one lesson left in this series. Ahead of that, if you have any questions or comments on what’s been covered so far just [send me a note](https://www.howardgray.net/contact/) – I’d love to hear from you. ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #5: Facilitation Essentials URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-5-facilitation-essentials/ Last updated: 2020-07-27T19:26:47.000Z The first four lessons in this series have focused on design: from defining who your workshop is for, to creating clear learning outcomes, building a structure for your session, and bringing in cornerstone content. Now you have the key elements of your design in place, it’s time to move into delivery – the facilitation of your session. Just as there are several flavors of workshop design, there are various types of facilitation and several definitions of what a facilitator is. Here’s one definition by Terrence Metz which aligns well with our thinking: ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/IMG_1461RTC.png) > *“\[A facilitator is\] a meeting or workshop leader who creates an environment where every participant has the opportunity to collaborate, innovate, and excel.”* > > Terence Metz But how do you go about creating this environment? In this lesson we’ll dive into what makes for a good facilitator, and how you can set yourself up for success before your session. Let’s get going. --- ## What’s in a name? A ‘facilitator’ can be a bit of a nebulous term. For some people, it probably feels kinda cringe-worthy. Sure, there’s that definition mentioned above, but isn’t what we’re doing here just teaching a class, or hosting an event? Yes and no. As with many types of terminology, this is all open to interpretation, but my personal take is that facilitation is not the same as instructing, teaching, or hosting. It has elements of all of those, but per the Metz definition, there’s a larger focus on **creating an environment to give people opportunities**. It’s also worth noting the nature of a facilitator’s work may change depending on the topic, learning outcomes, and audience. Some workshops have more content and thus more teaching-style work to explain concepts; while others contain more hands-on exploration for attendees and thus the facilitator acting more like a host who guides conversations and activities. In fact, there are 3 flavors of workshop; [this resource](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/26/3-flavours-of-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net) explains the similarities and differences between them. However the session shapes up, the overall focus of the facilitator is on creating the best possible environment for attendees to collaborate, innovate, and excel. As I mentioned, some of this is semantics, but for today’s lesson let’s use the Metz definition as a guide for our work as facilitators. ## Facilitator Principles **What makes a good facilitator?** It’s not an easy question to answer – there are many different attributes that contribute to success, and different attributes will show up in different contexts. Here are some of the attributes that help make a good facilitator: - Serve the purpose and goals of the group - Be clear about their role (and agenda) - Recognize learning styles - 2 ears and 1 mouth - Be themselves - Generate increasing participant/group ownership - Ask open questions - Invite and encourage - Summarize - Instill confidence - Come prepared - Expect Challenging Situations - Optimize space - Have a plan - Ready to change it - Embody the energy they want to create - Let the group show where the energy is - Open with intention - Be honest, transparent and real - Remove obstacles - Answer questions - Gracefully troubleshoot - Over-deliver Ok…there are a lot! But if we distill this down a little, a few common characteristics emerge. - Confident - Charming - Charismatic - Professional - Empathetic - Gravitas - Approachable If you don’t feel you possess some of these – don’t worry! I believe everyone has the capacity to exhibit these characteristics, especially when delivering content they feel connected to and invested in. I’ve seen all sorts of people become superb facilitators – all it takes is some practice, and understand the principles we’ll outline here. If you’re still not convinced, let’s break facilitation down into 3 parts, just as you did with your structure – but instead of the Beginning, Middle and End, let’s look at **Before**, **During**, and **After**. The rest of this lesson will focus on what you can do in advance of your workshop before moving into ‘on the day’ facilitation in the next lesson. --- ### **Before: In advance** In advance, there are 4 key areas most worth focussing on: 1. **Validate assumptions**: What assumptions are you making about the attendees, the timing, the content? This can be a lot tougher than it looks. Ask for someone else to take a look at your plan – they’ll probably notice something you haven’t. 2. **Customize**: Which elements of the session should you customize based on the group you’re working with? Is there a case study or topical story you can share that will add extra life to your content? Also note at which point customizing makes you feel uncomfortable: it’s easy to try and be all things to everyone and end up being not enough to anyone (this is an easy trap to fall into!) 3. **Practice**: Some people like the short, steep on-ramp when it comes to rehearsing, but it usually pays to allow plenty of practice time, especially in the early days of your workshop facilitation. Trying to memorize the entire thing word for word will likely work against you however, so focus on having a good handle on key concepts, and the transitions between them (*pro tip: smooth transitions can work wonders!*). Again, get someone else to sample your work – they’ll be able to spot parts that are too fast, confusing, or go on too long 4. **Onboarding**: What do you need to have in place for your session? Which resources, assets, people? It could be handouts or software logins, venue partners or co-facilitators. All these things need preparing and onboarding in one way or another. Without taking the time to do this in advance you’ll find yourself scrambling on the day itself and starting your workshop on the back foot. A good rule of thumb here is to feel you have a really strong feeling for: - The overall arc of your session - The first 10-15 minutes - The cornerstone content you’ve created This isn’t to say the rest is unimportant, but trying to have the entire session committed forensically to memory often gets in the way of good facilitation. Feel ok about giving yourself some space. Once you’ve gone through your preparation, what about the day itself? ### **Before: On the day** Your preparation on the day itself shouldn’t feel too much like hard work. By preparing ahead of time, you can focus your energies on the following areas before you get started: 1. **Arrive early**: Allow an hour before the workshop session starts to check in with venue hosts, get the space set up, and welcome any early attendees. Often you’ll need far less time than this (especially if it’s at a venue you know – for example, your company’s office), but it’s always best to err on the side of caution; give yourself ample time and space to get comfortable with the venue and surroundings. If you’re online, again use the [divide by 2 rule](https://howardgray.net/2020/03/05/5-ways-to-run-better-remote-workshops/?ref=howardgray.net); 30 mins should be fine, but don’t cut it much shorter! 2. **Equipment check**: Many workshops use equipment of some kind: most often a projector and laptop for slides, or anything from clay, to film, to scissors, to post-it notes. Checking the equipment is crucial: making sure it works, that there’s enough to go round, that you have a backup available (and can revert to Plan B if you really need to). Also bear in mind you may be relying on others to provide some of this (for example an IT technician to connect your laptop to the projection system). If you’re online, this most definitely still applies! 3. **Arrange the room**: Get the room and materials set up in a way that’s appropriate for your session and the audience’s needs. Usually, this comes down to common sense (and working within the constraints you have), but there’s more to explore on the environment design in the next lesson. Online rooms still need arranging; you may to plan out breakout rooms in advance, set up some music to play on arrival, or leave an introductory prompt in the chat. 4. **Allow yourself some space**: All being well, you’ll find yourself with some time before the session starts. Go to the bathroom, get a glass of water, do whatever works to help you relax and feel comfortable. The closer you are to your most present, natural, and comfortable self, the better experience, and outcomes your audience is going to have. *Note: Go out of the room for a short while if you like, but be aware you’ll need to be ready and welcoming for any early arrivals (and sometimes they can be very early…).* You may be thinking all these points are obvious. You’re right. They’re simple. They’re usually easy, too. They’re also easy to skip, and simple to miss. Missing them can invoke THE FEAR. We do not want THE FEAR. More on this in the next lesson 🙂 Invest properly in the preparation and your on-day facilitation will be a whole lot easier. The next lesson is a bumper edition and will focus on exactly that – delivering a great session. See you there. ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #4: Cornerstone Content URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-4-cornerstone-content/ Last updated: 2020-07-27T20:17:51.000Z If you work in media, marketing, or have a personal blog, you may be familiar with the term ‘cornerstone content’. Cornerstone content is made up of the best, most important articles on your site; the pages or posts you want to rank highest in the search engines. This concept also applies when thinking about designing workshops. You want to have a small number of key components in your session that rank highest – but instead of them being ranked by automated robot crawlers working on behalf of search engines, the focus is on your audience of highly-engaged, intelligent humans. Your cornerstone content could be a key concept you’re breaking down and explaining, or a hands-on activity to give our attendees a deeper understanding of a particular technology or methodology. For your cornerstone content to have the desired effect, it’s important to think through how you set it up, how you deliver it, and how you get attendees to take away and integrate their learnings. In today’s lesson we’ll work through each of these three elements so your cornerstone content is rock solid. Let’s begin. --- ## Formats ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Workshop-Design-Workshop-6.jpg) It’s time to get deeper into design. To design your first piece of cornerstone content, it’s worth taking some time to consider formats. Without a clear format, your content will feel shapeless and attendees can easily end up lost, confused, or disengaged. There are many formats you can use to deliver your workshop content. You may want to deliver in a classic lecture format, set a hands-on exercise for attendees to try, or open up small group discussions. Five of the most common formats are: ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Workshop-Design-Workshop-3.jpg) There aren’t really any set rules on which format to use, although a couple of factors to consider are **matching** and **duration**. ### Matching Matching simply means the match between the topic and content of your workshop, and the format you’re using. For example, a lecture format will have limited benefit if your workshop is on yoga postures, and a hands-on exercise may not be the best first format to use for a session on extreme chemical reactions. Of course, you can use multiple formats in one session (in fact, it’s recommended – as you’ll find out next). A lecture portion for even the most physical of workshop topics can be very effective when used in the right context. ### Duration When looking at duration it’s worth thinking back to one of your least enjoyable educational experiences. Got one? Great. It probably felt like it went on forever. Chances were there was only one format being used. Now, that might not have the only reason it wasn’t enjoyable, but it almost certainly wouldn’t have helped. As designers and facilitators of awesome, engaging workshops we don’t want to evoke those bad memories in our attendees. Switching formats every 30 minutes or so is a simple but effective way to keep energy and engagement up. *Pro Tip: Online, divide by 2\. Try switching format every 15 minutes instead of every 30\. You can usually afford to go a little longer, but this is a good rule of thumb when you’re starting out.* Using multiple, well-matched formats on regular rotation will increase the chances your content connects and your audience stays engaged. A win-win. Let’s take our formats and move onto the interactive stuff – workshop activities. --- ## **Activities** When it comes to the activities you can set, there are dozens of options available – we could create an entire workshop just on this topic! In fact, our [online course](https://howardgray.net/workshop-creator-online-course/?ref=howardgray.net) and [live program](http://www.wavetable.net/wc/live?ref=howardgray.net) have an entire module devoted to activity development… To get started, a good way to think about this is extending the movie producer mindset out into two other creative mediums: **music** and **dance**. A composer or choreographer orchestrates various elements in an order that creates harmony, flow, and alignment. Taking on this mindset can help sculpt the activities in your session. Let’s take this mindset, and think about purpose. ### What is an activity ***for***? We see a lot of workshop creators fall into a trap here. It’s really easy to get excited about activities – they’re the fun, interactive stuff! – but without thinking about the purpose, you can end up with something like feels a bit like a Segway: kinda cool, but, umm…well…er, yeah: ![](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-3-4.jpg) To avoid this trap, we can borrow a handy model from the [British Design Council: the double diamond.](https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond?ref=howardgray.net) This is used in lots of design projects large and small, and we can also utilize it here in our activity development. ![](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-3-5.jpg) Very simply, every activity we create for a workshop will either be focused on **Diverging** (for example, ideating in teams) or **Converging** (making a decision, like picking a title for a website): ![](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-3-6.jpg) Knowing what your activity is for – Diverging or Converging – is a great start point when it comes to activity development. Building on this, there are a bunch of more specific purposes an activity could have. Here are a few: ![](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-3-7.jpg) You can use this approach forwards or backwards. For example, if you know it’s an Ideation activity, then it’s going to be Diverging. If you know it’s a Converging activity, then you could choose from Reviewing Options, Analysis, Making Decisions, and so on. The key thing is to know **what it’s for**. --- ## Delivery Methods We’ve spent a bit of time with Formats and Activities. What about how you deliver them? When it comes to delivery methods, again there are lots to choose from. Here are just a few: ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Workshop-Design-Workshop-5.jpg) For most activities, your delivery method will probably be pretty obvious. However, it’s often worth experimenting with something unexpected to see what emerges. For example, could you use audio in an interesting way: perhaps you could get attendees to record the audio of their pair conversation and share it back with another pair? This is a good chance for you to do some exploration of your own by mixing things up and trying out new ideas. --- ## Combining the elements By combining a chosen **Format**, **Activity** and **Delivery Method**, you’ll be able to start seeing your Cornerstone Content take shape. For example, for a workshop called ‘*How to make better podcasts*’, your Cornerstone Content idea could be: - **Format**: Hands-On - **Activity**: Prototyping - **Delivery** **Method**: Editing a sample audio clip using the Audacity software package #### Lead-in and Lead-out Once you have this basic plan in place, you can then add additional formats either side of the content. Using the same example, you may choose: **Lecture > Hands-On > Group Discussion** Here we’d use a Lecture format to lead into the Hands-On Prototyping Activity, followed by a brief Group Discussion – we could choose to support this discussion with a technology tool like [Menti](http://www.mentimeter.com/?ref=howardgray.net). Adding these lead-in and lead-out sections strengthen the central content and encourage better outcomes for your attendees. What was an idea for editing some audio suddenly becomes a far more varied and engaging piece of Cornerstone Content. --- ## Putting the pieces together Once you have your Cornerstone Content in place you can repeat this process for other key content elements in your workshop and slot them into the structure you created in the last lesson. By keeping an eye on the matching and duration of each section you can maintain engagement and energy while getting across all the key points you want your attendees to absorb. Sweet! --- ## But what about the content design?! Wecould go down a rabbit hole with the specifics of content design (there’s an endless range of options and creative ideas!), so to keep things easily digestible I’ve left it out of this primer course. That’s not to say the content design phase isn’t key – quite the opposite in fact. In [my other courses](https://howardgray.net/workshop-creator-online-course/?ref=howardgray.net), there are a bunch of sessions on content creation, but if you have an immediate question on this area [feel free to get in touch](https://www.howardgray.net/contact/) and I’ll do my best to help out. --- Now you’ve got the key parts of your workshop in position, it’s time to move out of your design phase and into part two: **facilitation essentials**. ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #3: Really Simple Structure URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-3-really-simple-structure/ Last updated: 2020-07-27T19:19:09.000Z You’ve identified your audience and learned how to define clear learning outcomes. Let’s get further into design. When it comes to workshops, a surprising amount of the work (and resulting success) comes in the design phase. Good design? You’re well-placed to smoothly handle any issues that may present themselves on the day. Bad design? The chances of panic stations just went up…. big time. In this lesson you’ll learn how to design a really simple structure for your workshop, and see how applying the principles of the best storytellers can help you create something engaging, impactful, and maybe even magical. We’ll also look at the benefits of encouraging exploration, and how thinking like a movie producer can set you up for success. Let’s get into it. --- ## Movie Making ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/1-9780789428134.jpeg) First, let’s talk about movies. I first became enthralled by the movie business when I was 9 years old. I spent an afternoon in my local library in rural [Cornwall ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornwall?ref=howardgray.net)reading a book about Hollywood special effects and I was completely hooked. The movie business role I’ve since become most fascinated by is the producer. Producers are responsible for so many aspects of a movie or TV production: from pitching a story and building a team; managing the finances; and helping bring the final product to audiences. The work of a TV or film producer is also a great way to think about your work as a workshop creator. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Workshop-Design-Workshop-2.jpg) Producers are: - **Story Builders**: whether in the content itself, the overall arc of the experience, or the background story to sell the project - **Resource Collectors**: bringing in on-stage talent and people working behind the scenes, securing finance, and collating key components to make it all happen - **Detail Detectives**: doing the background research, checking facts, and looking out for the tiniest glitches and opportunities for improvement that escape the untrained eye - **Time Pessimists**: it’s easy to be overly optimistic and make promises that can’t be kept. The Time Pessimist aims to deliver the best quality product while always managing expectations of everyone involved (while staying positive, of course!) - **Compelling Speakers**: able to explain and articulate what’s happening throughout the process, and keep people engaged even when things inevitably get tough - **Team Enablers**: making sure the whole team are seen and heard, and that they’re set up with what they need to succeed Adopting this mindset can be really helpful throughout your workshop design process, but especially in the structure phase – which is what today’s lesson is all about. ### 3 parts of the structure Perhaps you’re familiar with this little song from Sesame Street *(beware: it’s deceptively catchy).* That’s right, a workshop structure is also a story. It has a beginning, middle, and an end. More specifically, the three parts of a workshop arc can be thought of as: - **Opening** - **Exploring** - **Closing** You can see an example in the diagram below. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Workshop-Design-Workshop.jpg) this diagram was originally created by Hyper Island, one of my collaboration partners ### Mapping out your workshop structure First, draw out something similar to the diagram. You can do it on a slide, a design program, or just on a piece of paper (I recommend the latter as you’ll probably want to quickly test a few versions). A simple rectangle and a few arrows are fine for now – don’t worry about the squiggly lines. Next, add two numbers: a zero at the bottom left, and another number bottom right. These numbers indicate the length of your session (for example, if you’re planning on a 4-hour session, write the number 4 bottom-right). You now have the start of your structure. Time to start filling it in. #### Part 1: Opening In the Opening, you’ll want to introduce yourself and the session, along with the learning outcomes. You’ll want to provide a structure for the session, and create a sense of commitment to and among your audience (and because you’ve done your research on who it’s for, this should flow naturally). This structure can be as simple as stating the learning outcomes and signposting where the breaks will be – in fact, keeping the structure simple and clear is often a winning plan. Part of the opening section will also feature some of the key concepts and content you want to share with your attendees. They’ll be getting to grips with these concepts in the next phase – Exploration. Sketch in some space onto your structure diagram to indicate the length of your opening section. Feel free to add a couple of notes on the key things you’ll be including. #### Part 2: Exploration Exploration is where attendees start using their creativity – trying out tools, collaborating in groups, experimenting with new ideas. You’ll use a number of different **Formats**, **Activities**, and **Delivery Methods** in this section – we’ll cover these in more detail in the next lesson. For now, estimate the duration of your exploration section, keeping in mind your learning outcomes and who the audience is and what they’re here for. You may also want to add some notes or use different colors to denote any particular activities or key concepts you want attendees to spend more time on. #### Part 3: Closing The third part of your structure is Closing. Attendees will start integrating learnings and focusing in on the key elements of the session that were most effective for them. Here you’ll provide space for them to document some of these learnings, and also encourage them to think about what they want to do next. Again, there are a number of different formats you can utilize here – and again, we’ll dive into these in the next lesson. ### Adding learning outcomes You can also add your learning outcomes into your structure. ![](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/M2-E3-S1.001.jpeg) An example of adding Learning Outcomes and Pillars into the structure Add your learning outcomes to your structure diagram. As you can see in the example, your learning outcomes don’t have to be linear or in set chunks; there’s a good chance they’ll intertwine and overlap. You may introduce both learning outcomes at the start, then spend some time focused on learning outcome 1, before bringing in number 2, and then integrating both together. For now you don’t need to worry about being too accurate – things will change as the content is added. However, overlaying your learning outcomes onto your structure helps you see where you may need to focus particular time and energy during the session. This can be invaluable in the content creation stage. *Optional: Now’s the time to add some squiggly lines to mark out the arc of the session – where activities are connecting with particular learning outcomes, or where the most important concepts may weave in and out of the workshop.* #### Timing One other key part of the structure is the timing plan. Again, this doesn’t need to be precise at this stage, but there’s one key principle to abide by: ***Don’t go any longer than 2 hours without giving attendees a refreshment or bathroom break.*** In fact, 90 minutes is preferable, but 2 hours should be the absolute maximum. Any longer and you’ll end up with uncomfortable, irritable attendees, and a frazzled facilitator (i.e. you). *Pro Tip: Online, divide this number by 2\. It’s good practice to take a break every 45 mins or so* Now is where those numbers you added earlier really come into play. On your structure diagram, draw a vertical line for where you’re going to place each break *(if you’re running a session longer than half a day you’ll probably need to add a break for lunch too).* Finally, if you think you’ll need some special effects or particular resources to deliver your session (like flipcharts, whiteboards, technical equipment, or a special room setup) – make a note of these next to your structure diagram. ### Really Simple Structure: Reflection Time To finish up this lesson, go back to the movie producer mindset with these 3 questions. - **Where are the peaks in the story?** - **Where might an audience’s attention dip?** - **Which parts of the session are most important to highlight and spend the most time on?** Annotate your diagram with anything new you notice from answering these questions. You’ll probably shuffle things around a lot during the design phase, so don’t worry if your first draft feels very rough. --- You’ve now got the basic structure and skeleton of your workshop. Next up is adding some content to bring it to life! ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #2: Learning Outcomes URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-2-what-are-they-going-to-learn/ Last updated: 2020-07-27T19:12:47.000Z In this lesson we’re going to focus on the why and the what: - **Why you’re putting this together for your audience** - **What you want them to take away from your session** You can encapsulate this through a small number of well-defined learning outcomes. Learning outcomes get you focused on the purpose and desired outcomes of your session. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to drill down from your broader overarching topic to a more closely defined area, before creating your key learning outcomes. You’ll also learn the importance of having strong pillars to sit underneath your learning outcomes, and how using the power of persuasion can help you unearth a compelling learning outcomes. Combined with a good understanding of your audience, after this lesson you’ll have a strong sense of the ‘**Who**’, ‘**Why**’ and ‘**What**’ of your workshop so you can start pushing on into the ‘**How**’ – creating a strong structure and compelling content. Let’s get started. --- ## Introducing Learning Outcomes ![Learning Outcomes](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-2-1.jpg) Simply put, learning outcomes are describe what your attendees can do after completing the workshop. This is worth reiterating; it’s subtle, but HUGE. We can think of Learning Outcomes as: **What they can do after the session that they couldn’t do before** Without clear learning outcomes, it’s unlikely your workshop will get the interest it deserves, nor that attendees will get what they came for. Bad news all round. The good news is clear learning outcomes do a lot of the heavy lifting for the rest of your workshop design. They’ll make the content easier to put together, and, as you’ll see in the next lesson, provide the central core of your workshop structure. Here’s how we can start thinking about learning outcomes: ![](/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Creative-Mornings-Field-Trip-11th-April-2019.jpg) A very meta example; learning outcomes for a workshop on workshops! *Note: You may also hear the terms ‘learning goals’ or ‘learning objectives’; these are similar to learning outcomes. but there are important distinctions. Outcomes are generally broader in scope, but lean toward action (which is good for us as workshop creators). Learning objectives are more specific and measurable but focus on what something strives to achieve, rather than the outcome for the participant.* ## So how we can start thinking about our learning outcomes? Here’s our quick start guide to sculpting learning outcomes. 1. **Limit your learning outcomes to a maximum of 3** 2. **Use a framing question** 3. **Use a single action verb** That’s it. 3 steps. Let’s get into it. --- ### Step 1: The magic number De La Soul said it best. Feel free to play this during the rest of the lesson – it’s a classic, after all. Three is indeed the magic number, or, in the case of your learning outcomes, the maximum number. Just 1 or 2 learning outcomes are totally fine too (and definitely recommended if you’re just starting out and/or are running a shorter session), but going above 3 is where you’re likely to come unstuck. Trying to cram in 4, 5, or 6 learning outcomes is going to risk you skimming over content, going too quickly, or confusing your audience. Focus on nailing a small number of key learning outcomes. Less is most definitely more. ### Step 2: Framing Questions To help surface learning outcomes, here’s are a couple of framing questions to ask yourself. First: > *Why are you doing this workshop and what do you expect the result to be?* Aim to answer this with yourself in mind while also looking through the lens of your audience. This may sound paradoxical but it’s pretty simple. Here are a few examples: *‘I want them to \[X\], and be able to go out and \[Y\]’* *‘I know that people who do \[X\] struggle with \[Y\]. If they can understand \[Y\] better, they’ll be able to do \[X\] and \[Z\].’* *‘People who are interested in \[X\] have told me they love the idea and want to know more about it. I know \[Y\] is something that will really help them here, and it’ll also help position me as an expert in \[Y\] (and help me get to \[Z\], which is something I’ve had as a goal for ages’* The second framing question you can use is: > *What am I trying to convince them of?* This question is slightly different. I find it’s particularly helpful to surface objections or areas that may be confusing about a topic. You’ll end up with an answer along the lines of: *‘Because \[topic\] is really \[positive adjective or description\], but people usually think it’s \[negative adjective or description\]’* *‘Because *calligraphy* is *really valuable as a skill set for graphic designers*, but people usually think it’s *old fashioned and redundant*‘* As well as learning outcomes, the response to this question often leads to useful marketing copy, activities, and all kinds of other good stuff. Once you’ve listed out a few answers to your framing questions, it’s time to turn these into learning outcomes. ### Step 3: Single action verb You want to write each learning outcomes as one sentence, including a verb. The learning outcomes should focus on what they can do or create after attending your workshop. But how can you get to the right verbs? #### **Introducing Mr. Bloom** Back in 1956, Benjamin Bloom created his Skills Taxonomy as a way to categorize the levels of reasoning skills required in classroom situations. We can use Bloom’s 6 levels to help us get at some of the verbs we may want to include in our learning outcomes. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/B8F0FC46-9B1E-4D6D-8E1C-6090462F95F6-1024x614.png) a version of Bloom’s Taxonomy via TeachThought Below are Bloom’s 6 skill levels, and some associated verbs. 1. **Remember** Memorize, show, pick, spell, list, quote, recall, repeat, catalogue, cite, state, relate, record, name. 2. **Understand** Explain, restate, alter, outline, discuss, expand, identify, locate, report, express, recognize, discuss, qualify, covert, review, infer. 3. **Apply** Translate, interpret, explain, practice, illustrate, operate, demonstrate, dramatize, sketch, put into action, complete, model, utilize, experiment, schedule, use. 4. **Analyze** Distinguish, differentiate, separate, take apart, appraise, calculate, criticize, compare, contrast, examine, test, relate, search, classify, experiment. 5. **Evaluate** Decide, appraise, revise, score, recommend, select, measure, argue, value, estimate, choose, discuss, rate, assess, think. 6. **Create** Compose, plan, propose, produce, predict, design, assemble, prepare, formulate, organize, manage, construct, generate, imagine, set-up. #### Sculpting your learning outcomes Based on your answers to the framing question, choose one of Bloom’s skills and then try out a few of the associated verbs to create a learning outcome. For example, in our [Sustainability for Innovation](http://www.mountcrescent.co/?ref=howardgray.net) session we wanted attendees to be able to figure out which Sustainable Development Goals mattered most to their business. This skill is **Evaluation**, and the verb ‘**Assess**’ felt most appropriate. So the learning outcome was simply: > **‘Assess which Sustainable Development Goals are most relevant and timely for your business’** *Pro Tip: If you’re feeling unsure about your learning outcome being too loose or vague, try running them against the* [*SMART goals framework*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART%5Fcriteria?ref=howardgray.net) --- #### Action: Try this exercise for yourself, creating 1-3 clear learning outcome for your workshop. During the creation of your learning outcomes, remember to think back to your audience – who they are, why they’re attending, and what they want to get from the session. In the next lesson you’ll start creating the structure for your workshop. See you then 🙂 ### Workshop Creator - Lesson #1 - Who's it (really) for? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lesson-1-do-you-know-who-its-really-for/ Last updated: 2020-07-27T19:40:01.000Z Before we get into building content and thinking about delivery, there’s a question you want to ask yourself. > *‘Who is this for?’* It’s a simple question, but not always an easy one to answer. > *‘Who is this* really *for?’* One of the most commons pitfalls I see workshop creators fall into is not having a good handle on who their audience **actually** is. Too often people create great content but have their sessions fall flat because they’ve failed to understand who the workshop is for, and why their audience is showing up in the first place. Getting this right sets you on a solid path, and keeps you aligned – even if you may miss the mark with some other parts of your session. Getting this wrong means you’re going to struggle, no matter how snazzy your content may be. Knowing who your workshop is for will make everything else easier. And besides, why make life harder for yourself? Let’s get started. --- ## Identifying your audience To start getting a better handle of who your workshop is for, you can ask yourself 5 questions. 1. **Who are they?** 2. **How many of them are there?** 3. **How experienced are they?** 4. **Why are they showing up?** 5. **What are they not (yet) voicing?** You may not know all the answers right now. That’s ok. For example, if you’re designing a workshop to be sold to a company or advertised directly to an audience in a new market you probably won’t know how many people are going to show up. These questions are starters to get you thinking about the makeup (no, not that kind) of the audience/audiences you want to reach. *Pro Tip: If you’re doing any marketing for your workshop, the responses to these questions will help you focus your marketing message* ### Example Here’s an example of how I answered these questions for a workshop on using [Sustainability as Innovation](https://howardgray.net/projects/?ref=howardgray.net): 1. **Who are they?**: Established professionals based in New York City who are curious about demystifying sustainability concepts and being able to use sustainability principles in their businesses / with their clients. Several of them have a marketing background. They all work at different companies. A few are independent consultants. 2. **How many of them are going to be there?**: We’re limiting this session to 20 people. We’re expecting to sell 12 seats as a minimum. 3. **How experienced are they?**: Most of them are experienced professionals in their respective fields, but very few of them have any experience in sustainability. A couple have done some climate change consulting so may have strengths in this area. Some of them have got strong experience in innovation. 4. **Why are they showing up?**: They see sustainability as something that matters to them in their personal lives, but they’re mainly showing up because they’d like to learn more about the topic to help their clients/company with creating new initiatives. It’s something a lot of businesses are both curious and concerned about. 5. **What are they not (yet) voicing?**: That this is a complex and probably a bit of boring topic. They may also have concerns about their time – they’re busy and they don’t know us or the topic very well, so there’s some risk that they won’t get value. Some of them may also have concerns they don’t know enough about this topic, and their boss or client needs them to. Even with just a few short answers, we’re quickly able to start getting to the audience’s underlying drivers for attending, the gaps in their knowledge, and what they’d like to get from the session. Some other questions you could ask yourself include: - **What have they done before that’s similar to this?** - **How does this topic relate to what they do in their company/department/practice/life?** - **Where else would they go for this kind of material?** If you want to dive deeper into audience discovery you may want to sketch out some user personas, or even map out a customer journey. These methods can be particularly useful if your workshop is for a group with time or location constraints (a few examples here are healthcare professionals, teachers, stay at home parents, and very senior corporate execs). If you’re new to customer personas or user journeys there are plenty of guides – to get started here’s a [persona guide from UserTesting.com](https://www.usertesting.com/blog/customer-personas/?ref=howardgray.net) and a [customer journey map by Ideo](http://www.designkit.org/methods/63?ref=howard%5Fgray%5Fworkshop%5Fcreator%5Fcourse). We’ve also got a more workshop-specific Learner Persona which we often use. [Drop us a note](https://howardgray.net/contact/?ref=howardgray.net) to get a copy. ### Managing your assumptions During this process, you may notice yourself making a few assumptions. The best way to validate (or invalidate) these assumptions is to speak to the people you’re looking to serve. There are many ways you can do this (again there are lots of good resources available online to help with this). You can do this well in advance as a form of customer development, or through a pre-event survey or registration form after attendees have signed up. *Note: I prefer using a survey form only after people have committed to attend, or at least already registered some interest in the session. If I’m looking to learn more about an audience before I’ve created a session that’s available to register for, I’ll either build a landing page asking for an email address, or just go and chat with people.* #### Resource: pre-event survey / registration form Here’s the pre-event survey we sent out for our most recent Sustainability as Innovation workshop. It’s simple and only takes attendees a few minutes to complete, but gets us a good bit of insight about where they’re at and where they’d like to get to. Feel free to copy these questions and adjust for your needs. 1. *Your Name* 2. *On a scale of 0 (very low) to 10 (very high), how would you rate your current overall knowledge and understanding of sustainability?* 3. *On a scale of 0 (very low) to 10 (very high), how would you rate your current knowledge and understanding of sustainability in relation to your business/clients/customers?* 4. *Tell us briefly about a sustainability issue you’re interested in or curious about* 5. *What’s one key takeaway you’d like to get from the session?* 6. *How did you find out about this workshop?* 7. *Do you have any visual impairments, learning difficulties, allergies, or anything else we should be aware of? (leave blank if none)* 8. *Is there anything else you’d like us to know?* --- #### Reflection Time By the end of this exercise, you should have a much better handle on who your workshop is for. Here a few reflection questions to consider… - **What do you notice showing up once you’ve spent some time identifying your audience?** - **Is there a concern they have about this topic you’ll need to address upfront?** *(in a later lesson we’ll use some facilitation skills to address this!)* - **Do they have a high level of experience in a particular area?** **Resource**: To get deeper into [Audience & Topic ideation, check out this bonus resources](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRbozV0b1ErvD0UUa3xCu-qQz7IKeJDu3FXeDlgaDkol5GGywdQWhjOObBfcxKne0Ov16pksEUE-fnt/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=30000&ref=howardgray.net) With this information in hand, you can more confidently move on to creating learning outcomes and a structure to give your audience the best possible experience and maximum value. And that’s exactly what we’ll be getting into during the next two lessons. Stay tuned! Any questions so far? [Drop me a line](https://www.howardgray.net/contact/) – I’d love to hear from you. ### Adventures... newsletter URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures/ Last updated: 2023-01-22T02:15:11.000Z ## Actionable and unexpected inspiration for creative humans Subscribe Free > "There's something wrong." Great! Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription. We've all been on exciting adventures. They offer that tantalising possibility of magical, eye-opening, and even life-changing experiences and connections. However, going on these journeys can also be frustrating, exhausting, confusing - and sometimes a little scary. Our careers, ventures, and creative projects are no different. --- The *Adventures…* email digest exists to provide inspiration and ideas to support your creative and entrepreneurial journey - whichever way you're heading. Each month, you'll receive an email with a curated selection of: - Opportunities for new entrepreneurial endeavours - Tools and tips to improve the way you work - without burning out or becoming someone you're not - Stories from fellow travelers Every edition is delivered through the lens of entertainment and pop culture - featuring music, movies and much more. This newsletter doesn't pretend to have all the answers. But it will offer some paths and maps for you to explore - and hopefully turn on a few lights, too. Just add your email address below to join a growing community of subscribers from around the world. Subscribe Free > "There's something wrong." Great! Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription. --- ## What they say... > "Your consistent newsletter gems are beauty in my inbox" - Leslie B > "This newsletter is fab" - Amanda P > "An excellent read as always" - Keir T > "So so good to read this. I love these updates" - Matt S --- ### Previous Editions If you'd like to read back through previous editions and browse through the archives, you can find them below. ### Writing (archive) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/blog-old/ Last updated: 2021-08-21T15:24:46.000Z On this page you can find my best articles to read on topics like the future of learning, entrepreneurship, media & entertainment, coaching, and creativity. I started writing here in 2015, and there are now over 350 articles on these pages, as well as various videos, slide decks, mixtapes, diagrams, and other ideas. You’ll find articles on [how to create a workshop in Zoom](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net), what to do [when you’re not killing it](https://howardgray.net/2017/08/07/when-youre-not-killing-it/?ref=howardgray.net), [how to start a podcast](https://howardgray.net/2019/01/20/my-podcast-gear-recording-editing-and-publishing/?ref=howardgray.net), the value of the [Educator in Residence](https://howardgray.net/2019/08/01/the-educator-in-residence/?ref=howardgray.net), the best way to [build your network](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/27/how-to-build-your-network-in-a-new-city-country-or-culture/?ref=howardgray.net) in a new city or country, and much more. Ready to jump in? You can browse using the Series or Categories below, or scroll down to see every post I’ve written listed out by date and title. ## All articles by date # A monthly digest of ideas and resources to fuel your career journey ***Adventures...***is my monthly email newsletter. Free to join. No spam, no gimmicks. Subscribe Unsubscribe whenever you want. ✕ ### About Me URL: https://www.howardgray.net/about/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T19:15:22.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/_A5A8206-small-1.jpg) Drinking tea, recently. I'm a teacher, writer, and experience designer, based between London and New York. People keep asking which one I actually live in. Before any of this, I spent a decade in music and talent, running my own companies - DJing, putting on events, then representing artists around the world. Somewhere along the way I noticed I was more interested in how people communicated than what they were selling. So I switched from remixing music to remixing information. Now I run [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), where we build the things teams practice on. I write [Groove Theory](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory), where each edition takes one person who's very good at something and works out what they actually do. I teach at business schools when they'll have me (Columbia, IE, UFM, and others). I sit on the SXSW advisory board, which mostly means I get to be curious about things before they're obvious. The work usually involves some combination of storytelling, learning design, and whatever I can't stop thinking about that week. Keynotes and workshops through the [Speaking & Teaching ](https://www.howardgray.net/speaking)page. Playable case studies through Wavetable. I also take on a small number of advisory clients - founders, transformation leaders, and creative teams who want an ongoing thinking partner as they figure out how to develop their people, tell their story, or navigate what's next. Not coaching exactly, more like strategic conversation over time. If that sounds interesting, [drop me a line via email](mailto:howard@howardgray.net) If you want to get a sense of how I think before reaching out, the [newsletter](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory) is probably the best place to start. I'm a certified coach (ICF PCC), though I don't lead with that. Enneagram 5w4, if that means anything to you. I collect vinyl, box (southpaw), follow Crystal Palace FC, and do reformer pilates because my back, hips and most other joints demanded it. --- ### Questions I keep coming back to - How do we make learning feel more vital than homework? - What do careers look like when the old paths don't fit? - Why do some moments stay with you and others just fill an hour? - Where's the perfect breakfast? --- ### Some things I believe - Structure creates freedom - The room is smarter than any one person in it - Most training doesn't work because it's designed for compliance, not learning - Rhythm matters more than information - You learn more from what you notice than what you're told - Guides, not gurus ### Recommendations URL: https://www.howardgray.net/recommendations/ Last updated: 2023-02-18T02:20:20.000Z A few of my favourite books, blogs, podcasts, tools, playlists, and mixtapes. ### Podcasts - [The Moment](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/slate/the-moment-with-brian-koppelman?ref=howardgray.net): hosted by Billions showrunner Brian Koppelman, an interview series with creative people on the moments that defined their careers - [Pivot](https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/pivot?ref=howardgray.net): I find myself drawn to this, despite finding the hosts a little off-putting at times and the focus on big tech a little uninteresting. What works for me is the dynamic, the strong opinions, and the view on how business and society impact each other - [Akimbo](https://www.akimbo.link/?ref=howardgray.net): Seth Godin’s weekly missive. I still don’t know how he conjures this up every time - [The Business of Authority](https://thebusinessofauthority.com/?ref=howardgray.net): practical, actionable advice on becoming an authority as an independent practitioner - [Tickets](https://howardgray.net/podcasts/?ref=howardgray.net): ok this one’s by me… - [The Tension](https://howardgray.net/podcasts/?ref=howardgray.net): and this one 🙂 --- ### Reading I like reading. I also like collating things to read. There are a few piles of books in my apartment, a list of books on a Trello board, clippings from articles, transcripts from videos, blog posts to review. I’m currently collating a new list 🙂 --- ### Movies This list could be very very long…but here are 12 of my favourites, in chronological order from the first time I saw them. - Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Aliens - La Haine - The Usual Suspects - Memento - The French Connection - Heat - The Prestige - Michael Clayton - Nightcrawler - Marriage Story - Parasite --- ### **Music** When I was 8 years old I bought my first album – [The Greatest Hits of 1990](https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Greatest-Hits-Of-1990/release/3027226?ref=howardgray.net) compilation. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/R-2352686-1313952534.jpeg.jpg) It was a double cassette as we didn’t have a CD player at home. I was exposed to such wonders as Adamski, The Adventures of Stevie V and 808 State (alongside Jason Donovan and Bros of course), and would constantly play, rewind, play, rewind. At the time I had no idea what these crazy sounds were, but I liked them. Fast forward 25 years or so and I’ve since spent time working in a record store, promoting events, DJ’ing, and representing artists as a talent agent. It’s pretty safe to say music is a big part of my life. Here are a few things I’m listening to right now. Enjoy. (this reminds me of a wonderful trip to Brazil back in 2011) I've also listed out the various [tools and technologies](https://www.howardgray.net/gear) I use in my work ### Speaking & Teaching URL: https://www.howardgray.net/speaking/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T19:15:26.000Z I've run 300+ sessions across four continents - business schools, main stages, conference halls, the V&A. The common thread: people do things, not just hear things. They try it in the room, badly, while nothing is riding on it. I came to this from teaching - at universities, companies and schools, years of rooms where people had to leave able to do something. That's still the brief I design to, whether it's a keynote or three days. Some bookings are one talk. Others are the whole run - the same room four times in two days, product demos, the awkward questions, still being useful at the evening mingle. I've found I quite like the second kind. At Wavetable we build Rondo, a platform teams practise on - which means the room usually ends up doing the work rather than watching me do it. **If you want to work together - get** [**in touch**](https://www.howardgray.net/contact) **with what you're thinking.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/_A5A7892_small.jpg) Hello. --- ## Selected clients - **Corporate:** Deloitte Global, EY, Pernod Ricard, Publicis Groupe, NBC Comcast, IBM, Mastercard, Ubisoft, mci group - **Education:** Columbia Business School, IE Business School, Universidad Francisco Marroquin, The New School, University of Westminster - **Events & Creative:** SXSW, CES, Soho House, IBTM World, CMX Summit, Betaworks, The British Council, V&A Museum, Creative Mornings ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/Pernod_May2024.jpg) setting the stage: Pernod Ricard event at El Nido de Quetzalcóatl, Mexico City ## Recently - **ByteDance** \- London, 2026 - **mci group Business Academy** \- Paris, 2026 - *"AI Acceleration: The Three Bets You're Already Making"* - **IBTM World** \- Barcelona, 2024 and 2025 - *"AI for Event Professionals"* - **Pernod Ricard** \- Mexico City, 2024 [Full speaking history →](https://www.talkmezzo.com/speakers/howard-gray?ref=howardgray.net) --- ## What I do - **Keynotes** \- 20-60 minutes. I don't do the TED-style performance monologue. My keynotes have interaction built in - moments where the room does something, not just listens. Works better, and people remember more of it. - **Workshops** \- Half a day, or a full one, or two. I've designed and run hundreds, and it's probably the format I'd pick if you made me choose one. Hands-on, structured, vibrant, with frameworks people use afterwards. Not death-by-Post-it. - **Programmes** \- Several sessions over weeks, same group, each one building on the last. For when it was never going to fit into a single day. - **Expert residencies** \- Extended engagements where I'm your AI expert across multiple sessions, an event, or a product launch. Think: credible independent voice who can teach, engage, and run a room - not a one-and-done keynote, but sustained presence. The gig that doesn't fit neatly into "speaker" or "facilitator" - at CES I did it as an expert guide on the show floor. *Two or three a year.* - **Advisory** \- Ongoing, usually monthly. For organisations designing something they'll run for years - an academy, an internal programme, a whole capability - who'd rather have someone who has designed a lot of them on the call than a deck at the end. Also: - **Panel moderation** \- It's underrated. A good moderator does the prep, keeps the energy, makes the panelists look smarter than they expected, and gets the audience involved. I've hosted panels on AI, creator economy, learning innovation, and media futures - and I enjoy it more than I probably should. - **Facilitation** \- Offsites, strategy sessions, team days. When a group needs to figure something out together and needs someone to design the structure and keep it on track. --- ## What I work on *Four bodies of work. Any of them runs as a keynote, a half-day, or the spine of a residency - the length changes, the material doesn't.* ### 1) Nobody's Using It **Closing the gap between AI rollout and adoption** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/nobody-using-it-1.jpg) You bought the licences. You ran the training. Six months on, the same four people are doing all the interesting work and nobody wants to open the usage dashboard. This isn't a tools problem. People don't adopt a tool because someone showed it to them. They adopt it after they've used it on their own work, badly, somewhere that was fine. What the gap actually is, why training doesn't close it, and what does. #### Details For: Leadership teams, enablement and transformation leads - anyone who's already bought AI and can't show the returnYou're asking: We've rolled it out. Why isn't anyone using it?Why me: I've run this for MCI and TikTok. I build the practice environments teams use afterwards, so I see which ones still get opened in week three. ### 2) The Three Bets You're Already Making **AI strategy while the ground is still moving** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/three-bets-1.jpg) Every business is already making three bets on AI. Most haven't said them out loud, which means nobody has checked whether they're the right ones. This session names them: what you're betting on the tools, on your people, and on what you actually sell. What's genuinely shifting in how work gets done - and what isn't. Taste, judgment, the calls that don't get automated. Not a trends deck. Three bets, examined, with your own business on the table. #### Details For: Leadership teams, annual conferences, strategy offsites, internal conferencesYou're asking: What's real, what's hype, and what should we actually be doing?Why me: I've taught AI and machine learning to executives at JP Morgan Chase, IBM and Mastercard, and I run a studio building with these tools daily. Practitioner perspective, not analyst commentary. **Industry cuts:** Agencies and professional services · Events and experiences · Product and leadership teams *Delivered as "AI Acceleration: The Three Bets You're Already Making" at mci group Business Academy, Paris 2026, and as "AI for Event Professionals" at IBTM World, Barcelona 2024 and 2025.* Keynote at mci group, Paris - 2026 --- ### 3) Groove Theory: The Five Elements of Creative Work *Finding your rhythm when AI handles the rest* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/groove-theory-1.jpg) Some work connects instantly. Other work - equally smart, equally polished - just doesn't. The difference is groove. I write a newsletter called [Groove Theory](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory), reverse-engineering what makes certain work unmistakable: the Safdie Brothers' tension design, Dishoom's theatrical hospitality, Trent Reznor letting his songs go, Citymapper's interface choreography. Five elements keep showing up: Structure, Rhythm, Modality, Presence, Signal. Thirty editions in, they've held up. AI can generate content. It can't find the groove. These are the skills that matter more now, not less. #### Details For: Leadership teams, creative departments, and anyone building work that needs to resonate with real humans in real spacesYou're asking: What's distinctly human about creative work now that AI can generate infinite content?Why me: Groove Theory finds patterns across music, film, game design, and learning. This is the framework underneath all of it. --- ### 4) Everything is Experience Design Now **Why the future of communication looks like production** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/experience-design-1.jpg) A decade ago, production-quality experiences meant studio time, crew, and serious budget. Now a small team can produce work that used to require a department. This shift is reaching everything - product education, internal communications, customer experiences, corporate events. The tools to create narrative-driven, production-quality experiences are accessible. But the bigger question isn't about tools - it's about what communication even is when information is everywhere and attention is scarce. The answer looks less like broadcasting and more like enrollment - work done with people, not to them. #### Details For: Product teams, internal comms, marketing leaders, anyone responsible for explaining complex things to humansYou're asking: How do we make people actually care about what we're telling them?Why me: I run Wavetable, a studio where we build narrative-driven, interactive experiences. I've designed hundreds of these across corporate, education, and events - and the principles transfer. --- ## Every session runs on Rondo **Pilots get simulators. The rest of us get PowerPoints. So I bring a simulator.** [Rondo](https://rondo.wavetable.net/play?ref=howardgray.net) is the practice platform we build at Wavetable. Whatever the format, the room can be doing something on their own devices twenty minutes in - working a scenario, making a call, seeing what everyone else decided - instead of waiting for the Q&A. Not a word cloud, not turn-to-your-neighbour. People make decisions that have consequences, then find out what happened. You'll try it yourself before you leave, and take away what you made - the scenario you worked, the call you argued, something you can run again with your own team. It means a keynote can have a middle rather than a build-up, and a workshop doesn't need forty Post-its to prove people participated. --- ## In Action --- ## What people say > *"Extraordinary - one of the best teachers I've had in any environment"* > "Loved the keynote content, but even more, the warmth, the sense of humor, how authentic you are. More speakers should be that genuine and warm" > *"Dynamic, hands-on, funny, great energy, and full of information"* > *"Howard's facilitation exemplified an impressive blend of creativity, analytics, and empathy"* > *"THANK YOU HOWARD! I have the deepest respect for you and really am honored that I got to take your class. You are an amazing educator and an awesome cheerleader."* > *"Howard is a great facilitator. He has a friendly and relatable teaching style as well as nicely designed decks that retain my focus and help me to absorb what I am meant to be learning."* --- ## Speaker Bio & Photos Howard Gray is a teacher, writer, and experience designer. He runs Wavetable, a studio that builds playable business cases - simulations where teams practise the hard conversations before they have them for real. He also writes Groove Theory, a newsletter about how creative work finds its rhythm. Much of his current work is about the gap between rolling AI out and people actually using it. He's delivered 300+ sessions across four continents, taught at Columbia and IE Business School, and has sat on the SXSW advisory committee since 2019. Based between London and New York, Howard is still searching for the perfect breakfast. ### Headshots ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/05/_A5A8562.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/05/_A5A7892.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/05/_A5A9094.jpg) ## FAQs #### Why you? I've had an eclectic career - illegal rave promoter, advertising producer, talent agent, entrepreneur, teacher, soccer referee - and I'm hugely curious about creativity, entrepreneurship, and the future of work. Every talk is customized for the audience, and there will probably be some alternative pop culture references in there too. #### What's your approach? Rhythm matters more than information. Most sessions have too much content and not enough structure. I think about pacing, energy shifts, and when people need to do something - not just listen.Participation isn't a gimmick. I don't add interaction because it's "engaging." I add it because people learn by doing, and a room full of passive listeners isn't learning much.The room is smarter than any one person in it. My job is to unlock that, not to be the smartest one up front. #### Can I watch some of your talks? The majority of speaking and workshops are done for private clients, but I do have videos from a select number of sessions.If you're interested in viewing more than what’s available on this page, just send me an email. #### Do you ever speak for free? Creating engaging and well-designed presentations takes a lot of time, energy, and effort so I don’t tend to speak for free, with two exceptions:charities and nonprofits with a mission close to my heart; opportunities to visit places I haven’t yet been to and really want to check out.Are you in one of those locations, or run a charity or nonprofit? Drop me a note and let’s chat… ## Let's talk Tell me about the event, the room, and what you need people to leave with. That's usually enough to know whether it's a fit. [Get in touch ->](https://www.howardgray.net/contact) ### What I'm doing now URL: https://www.howardgray.net/now/ Last updated: 2025-05-17T14:50:12.000Z _No content available._ ### Sketches URL: https://www.howardgray.net/sketches/ Last updated: 2021-06-28T20:25:31.000Z This is a home for riffs, bits and other things that are in the early stages of development. It's scrappy, but way less noisy than a Twitter feed. Feel feel to copy, remix or steal anything here. ### Gear URL: https://www.howardgray.net/gear/ Last updated: 2026-09-05T20:03:28.000Z Updated September 2026\. The last version of this page still had Skype on it, which tells you how often I come back here. ### Writing and thinking Bear for notes - everything starts there. Scrivener for anything long. Notion runs the actual business: tasks, contacts, finances, the content pipeline. Ghost for this site. ### AI Claude, mostly. The desktop app for thinking out loud, Claude Code in the terminal for anything that touches files, repos or admin. ChatGPT and Gemini for a second opinion. Cursor when I am building rather than writing. ### Building Cursor, GitHub, Vercel. Node and Bun. ### Video and audio DaVinci Resolve for the edits that matter, CapCut for the ones that do not. Descript for talking-head work and transcripts. MacWhisper for transcribing locally. OBS and Camo Studio for recording. ffmpeg for everything a nice interface makes difficult. ### Design Figma for almost everything now. Adobe Creative Cloud - Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere - for the things Figma still cannot do. Miro for workshops. ### Running the day Raycast. Granola for meeting notes. Fastmail. Notion Calendar. Slack, Signal, OpenPhone. ### 👋 Hello, I'm Howard. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/home/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T19:15:23.000Z Welcome. This is where I keep the things I've made and found. I'm Howard Gray - teacher, writer, experience designer (and, before all that, a decade in music and talent, which probably explains a lot). I run [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), where we build the things teams practice on. I write a newsletter called [Groove Theory](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I teach at business schools when they'll have me. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/Homepage-Band.jpg) The work usually sits somewhere between storytelling, learning design, and whatever I can't stop thinking about that week. Lately that's been how people get good at the parts of the job nobody scripted. I'm curious about how experiences shape people - why some moments stay with you and others just fill an hour. Pick a thread and wander - there's a [**Start Here**](https://www.howardgray.net/start-here) if you'd like a map. Or take the newsletter for the short version. ## Get Groove Theory Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. One person who's very good at something, and what they actually do. Not the famous version - the bit underneath. --- ## **Let's chat** Got a wild idea you want to bounce around? Or just want to swap breakfast recommendations? [Drop me a line](mailto:howard@howardgray.net). I'm all ears (and taste buds). ## Posts ### Founder's log: hiring, new biz, darlings, and coffee wandering URL: https://www.howardgray.net/founders-log-hiring-new-biz-darlings-and-coffee-wandering/ Last updated: 2026-09-09T12:47:30.000Z I am the founder of a small independent studio. Here’s a bit of what I’ve learned recently. We build games and workshops for the work that doesn't come with a playbook. I write these riffs every so often. Maybe this is useful to someone doing something similar. Four things this time out: ### Hiring. Fascinating, challenging, and it eats the week. Role specs are hard to pin down: they feel wriggly, slippery, elusive. What’s possible now keeps shifting and we look for unusual skill stacks that are tricky to assess on paper or even a portfolio. As we are small, even a single freelance hire comes with high stakes. Hiring requires even more of my brainbox than I anticipated. ### New business. Few talk about this part honestly. Every route seems to loop back to a referral. Cold outreach, content, events - all of it is a longer way round to somebody saying your name when you’re not there. Not true of every business, but of many (and maybe an increasing number?) New business is harder still when your contact list is eclectic rather than ten years deep in one sector. Quick sample of mine: music agent, conservation scientist, cyber security expert, chef-restaurateur. Great people, but the new biz pipeline says nein, danke. ### Killing things for the wrong reason. We went back through the archive and found three really good immersive scenarios buried because the sessions they sat inside didn't go so well. The design wasn't the problem. The room was. Don’t kill your darlings too early. I received this exact feedback during a team co-location earlier this summer, and six weeks later… hey presto. Duly noted. ### Walking around. On Friday I had 20 mins to kill. I stopped in at a random coffee shop. Two guys were outside, chatting about what I think was an AI product for restaurant architecture. One doing all the talking, bouncing around product demos, the other nodding politely but with heavy questions on his mind. Both of them could walk into one of our scenarios tomorrow, as written. I’ve already done a one page treatment. People, places, the world. It’s good to walk around. That’s all for now. If any of this has piqued your interest feel free to ask questions - I’m happy to share more. Our company is [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), btw. ### Most writing is editing URL: https://www.howardgray.net/most-writing-is-editing/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T12:45:19.000Z A lot of people bemoan AI writing. I understand - most of it is grim. But most writers will tell you: most writing is editing. And as an editor, AI can be wonderful. Mine reviews my stuff via two skills I've built. Each contains ten files of banned phrases, editing passes and a scoring gate that nothing ships under. Every new mistake it catches gets written back into the files, with a date. The whole thing is really a diary of my errors, recited back to me in cold white text. I never studied grammar at school. Is that an English thing - the English not teaching English? Ironic. I just sort of taught myself. That means a machine is now filling in the gaps school never got to: my comma splices, my dropped subjects, all manner of things I'd been doing without noticing. The cool bit is that it's teaching me - and that I use it less, not more. I run a draft through, learn what the issue is - three negations for one fact, the deliberate motif, the aphoristic kicker - and start catching it myself before the machine gets a look. A year ago I didn't really know what any of this stuff meant. Has it made me faster? A bit - maybe 20%. Better? I'll let the reader decide. Either way - the editing still matters a ton. I still toil over the final line, the turn of phrase, the fear that someone might misunderstand me. Like I did writing this. That part it can't do for me. I checked. ### Groove Theory #34 - The Guava Roll That Worked URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-34-the-guava-roll-that-worked/ Last updated: 2026-09-06T06:30:35.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: paying homage to GTA via a new London-themed mini game (try it [here](https://staging-rondo.wavetable.net/play/backseat-driver?ref=howardgray.net)!); playing basketball for the first time in 23 years. Groucho Marx resigned by telegram from the Friars Club: *“Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”* I'm the food version. More than a handful of people waiting and I'm not going in. The matcha spot in Flatiron, that pitta place in the railway arch in Hackney - never been in either. Whatever it is, it isn't worth it. There's always something decent round the corner, and there's always home, if I can be bothered to sharpen my knives. One of my few exceptions is a bakery in Mexico City. There’s usually a queue down the block. The gaff is called Panadería Rosetta. And it was a bit of an accident. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/09/Rosetta_stock.jpg) Its owner, Elena Reygadas, trained at the French Culinary Institute in New York and cooked under Giorgio Locatelli in London before going home to Mexico City. In 2010 she opened Rosetta in a Porfirian mansion in Colonia Roma - mosaic floors, high ceilings, the lot. It was ranked in Latin America's 50 Best eight times. She won World's Best Female Chef in 2023\. A Michelin star in 2024. Elena picked Roma for reasons that had nothing to do with any of that. She wanted to live there, walk her daughters to school, and walk to work. At the time, Condesa was the fashionable one - not Roma. People who'd eaten at the restaurant wanted to buy the bread. Then the restaurants nearby started turning up in the mornings wanting to buy it too. It opened in 2012, one block away, in a small space. Her reasoning: *"You might not go out for dinner every day, but you might go and buy bread for your family every day. That's what I think is very beautiful about a bakery - it's a more easily accessible place to enjoy every day."* Every day. That's the whole thing. Fine dining is an occasion, and occasions are rare by definition. Bread is… Tuesday morning. --- ## The Tension The pastry that did it was the rol de guayaba - puff pastry around guava jam and a soft cheese filling, which is a French technique wrapped around ate con queso, the guava-paste-and-fresh-cheese thing Mexican kids grow up eating. It became the signature of the neighbourhood. Then of the city. It did what she wanted, at first. *"More people come in more frequently, so we got to know each other better. I love that community feeling."* And then the queue. It runs down the block now, and you hear almost as much English in it as Spanish. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/09/image-1.png) Rol de Guayaba I know someone who lived round there. The pastries sold out fast, so going often and getting one were different things. He and his partner got there about once a week. A treat. Elena said she wanted people there every day. He lived close enough to walk it, and it was still a treat. There's a complaint you hear in Mexico City about what all this has done to Roma, and it's a fair one. I'd make it if I had any standing. I don't - I'm part of what's being complained about. An American pal of mine said he'd move to CDMX tomorrow, but only if he could find a way to be properly part of the neighbourhood. Gringo-Digital-Nomadism-get-me-a-skinny-matcha-latte-and-dont-make-the-tacos-spicy-gracias was not for him. Nobody did anything wrong. She didn't raise a drawbridge. She opened a shop and people liked it. Elena chose the bakery *because* it was the format people could use every day. It worked so well that stopping in on your way home is no longer something you can casually do. --- ## Step Into It You might have a version of this. Something you made small on purpose. The monthly dinner for six. The workshop you ran because three people asked. The hour you leave open because you want to be reachable. It worked. It's booked out three months deep now, and the people you built it for are the ones who can't get in - because the people who found it later are better organised. You could ration it. You could raise the price and call it honest. You could leave it and let it find its own level. Or you could accept that this one has stopped doing what you made it for, and go and make another. What did you build it for? And is it still doing that? --- ## The Groove: Modality Elena wasn't picking between the restaurant and the bakery. She went for great *and* every day - the same ideas, the same respect for the ingredients, in something you can hold in one hand on the pavement. As she's put it: *"the fact that one is more casual than the other doesn't mean it's less special."* That combination is the hard one. Most of us settle for one or the other: the brilliant thing that happens rarely, or the available thing that's decent but not spectacular. She took neither. Great, and every day, in a pastry. The queue is the proof. The queue is also what undid it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/09/Rosetta.jpg) The line at Rosetta. Photo: Tbhotch, via Wikimedia Commons Call it *format decay*. It only happens to things that are handmade, or hand-delivered. Nobody queues for Coca-Cola - you can always get more of it. But a pastry is laminated one at a time, and a morning has only one of you in it. At its busiest the bakery bakes up to 500 breads a day. That's the ceiling. So every new person who finds it makes it slightly less available, and the people it was built for tend to feel it first. Nobody has to do anything wrong. That's what makes it hard to catch. Which is presumably why she keeps opening things. Lardo. Café Nin. Bella Aurora. Salón Rosetta. --- 🎹 ****Groove Notes** ****1) The reason you chose the format is not guaranteed by the format.** Cheap, quick, casual, open to all - if any of those depend on somebody's hands, success is what erodes them. Format decay. Write down why you picked the vessel, then check annually whether it still does that. Most people never check, because it looks like it's going well. ****2) Who's stopped showing up?** Your numbers won't tell you - they rise while this is happening, or sit flat because you're already at capacity. Regulars thin out, newcomers replace them one for one, and the total doesn’t change much. It's a question you have to answer by name: who was there at the start, and when did you last see them? ****3) If the format stops doing the job, make another one.** Reygadas has six places, not one. The instinct to defend the successful vessel is strong and mostly wrong. Work out what it stopped doing, then go and build the thing that does it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Modality is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release At Wavetable, we do co-locations every few months. We’ve done four of them in Mexico City - more than anywhere else. Rosetta has been involved pretty much every time. So much so, we now have a shorthand. A codeword. ***Rosetta Donuts.*** Not the guava roll. I've had one, once. There's a donut, and that's what we go for. We're not big best-seller people. The phrase means the unreasonably good thing. If somebody walks in with a box the day changes - people stop what they're doing, there is a small amount of undignified behaviour, and whatever you were about to discuss waits ninety seconds. It's come loose from the pastry. It's a standard now - not for everything we make, but for the small, regular things. The weekly treat rather than the big launch. Is this actually Rosetta Donuts, or is it just good? Usually it's just good, alas. The goal is for Wavetable things to travel the same way - a phrase reached for by people who've never worked with us. What I don't want is the queue. I want all sorts of people, able to walk right in and get that ninety seconds. That was her plan too - simply for you to buy bread on a Tuesday. That's one club worth being a member of. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **On why bread specifically:** *"Bread is meant to be shared, and torn by hand, not cut. Bread brings you closer to others."* The format shapes the behaviour. Fine dining is a performance you watch; a loaf is something you can pull apart with somebody. - **In defence of the queue:** Fortune ran a piece in July on [conspicuous waiting](https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/rise-conspicuous-waiting-19th-century-070000839.html?ref=howardgray.net) \- Veblen's conspicuous consumption, updated. The line is no longer the price of the thing, it's part of the thing, and you post it online. An hour outside a bakery for an eleven-dollar cake, photographed. Which complicates the argument above: plenty of people in that queue are enjoying it, and some of them want it long. Just not the ones who used to pop in on a Tuesday. (My position remains that of Groucho’s, btw) ### 515 startups and the case for case studies URL: https://www.howardgray.net/515-startups-and-the-case-for-case-studies/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T11:59:22.000Z 515 startups were handed identical AI tools, identical credits and identical technical training. One group did one thing differently. And they made 1.9 times the revenue. Their workshops were case studies - how AI-native companies had rearranged their work around the technology. Everything else was the same, including the hours in the room. The control group's workshops covered general entrepreneurship instead. The case-study firms found 44% more uses for AI than the control group, mostly in product and strategy rather than the places everyone looks first. They finished more work. They were 18% more likely to win a paying customer. This is from a preregistered randomised trial out of INSEAD and Harvard, which is not a sentence I expected to write about workshops. \[1\] But why did it work? Training tells you what the tool does. A case shows you what somebody like you decided to do with it, including the bits they got wrong. One gives you capability. The other changes what you think you are allowed to ask for. I've been arguing this for years - but mainly from lived experience and a decent but small set of metrics. Now, someone has run the experiment properly. These were startups, of course, and a startup can rearrange itself over a weekend in a way a global bank cannot. Take the size of the number with salt. But the overall direction stands up. Most corporate AI programmes are still built as training. Access, a prompt library, a lunch and learn, a dashboard counting who logged in (somebody will screenshot it for a board deck). Both groups had the tools and knew how to use them. The 1.9x went to the group that had seen what they were for. P.S. Playable case studies and scenarios are what Wavetable builds - AI, customer experience, storytelling - so of course I would say all this. Happily, the experiment is someone else's. \[1\] [Kim, Kim & Koning (2026), "Mapping AI into Production: A Field Experiment on Firm Performance](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=6513481&ref=howardgray.net)", INSEAD / HBS working paper, March 2026\. Verified 2026-08-24. ### Sounds of the Sports Hall URL: https://www.howardgray.net/sounds-of-the-sports-hall/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T18:12:42.000Z One morning in late Spring, my son and I did a tour of our local municipal leisure centre. There's rooftop football; swim and sauna; the gym with all its weird and wonderful contraptions. The studios with pilates, yoga, taekwondo. Then there are the squash courts and the sports hall - each with their own viewing deck. As we wandered the deck, him marveling at the 'thwob' of the squash ball and the players' squeaky toed pivots, something caught my eye. A black sign in the far corner of the sports hall below us. Through the full height dividing net, splitting off the badminton from whatever was behind it, was the unmistakeable logo of the NBA. We went down to take a look, past the teenage badminton players, and into the basketball court. There was not a player to be seen. Just two coaches, looking a little forlorn. We wandered up to them, struck up a chat, and before we knew it two coaches were working with one five year old on dribbling, passing and shooting. Since then, we've kept showing up to the NBA Game Time sessions (run across the city by the NBA and the Mayor of London's office). He's now shooting baskets, hunting down rebounds. My parents even installed a hoop in their garden for when he wants some rural Game Time. And so, as end of summer rolled around, I couldn't help thinking it was my turn. I found a pick-up game in that exact same sports hall, a Wednesday evening at 7pm. I paid it little mind ahead of time, despite not playing a proper game in... 23 years. Suffice to say the message of 'All levels welcome' was - while correct - scant comfort. Most of those levels had left the building. What remained at 6:57pm was 11 guys hitting 3 pointers, doing passing drills and casually flipping the ball around like it was my son's favorite squishy toy. Just one looked near my age, the rest were barely 30. I instantly felt that familiar tug. The emotional pull. That one from school, from university, from when I last played a year after graduation. Stick like glue to the wall, gaze into the middle distance, and pray to keep out of danger. The organizer explained this was a straight-up game - 5-a-side, one sub, 5 minutes then switch. No warmup, no drills, no practice. Not even any names. Just a couple of 'alright?'s and that was it. It was... up and down. I didn't know where to stand, where to run, what was a foul and what wasn't. I kept fouling when I didn't mean to, and winning the ball when I thought I'd foul someone. And I really, truly, did not want the ball. Defense was fine. Stretch, reach, jump, pull it out of the air. Intercept the odd pass. Then, give it to a teammate. Immediately, wherever possible. On the attack, I did whatever I could muster to avoid coming into contact with the thing. Feigning a screen, dummy runs, marking an attacker in the back court while the others went to score, leaping for a rebound I was never going to make. It was as I play football - last at the back, sweeping up, looking up and out. Intercept, adjust, release, observe. Over the course of an hour, I think I made 4 rebounds, 1 steal, a couple of assists. And 1 shot. Only because it was so obvious to everyone on court it was the only option. It missed. And despite a couple of moments where I nearly subbed myself off permanently at the futility of my labouring, I made it through. For the last 5 minutes, I was due to be subbed out. I can only describe the feeling as one of gratitude. Sitting at the side, drenched in sweat, haunches on the shiny yellow wood of a classic school bench - itself a reminder of my previous ugly encounters with basketball as a youth - I thought of my son. I'd made it through. I nearly hadn't. I wanted to walk away, leave, for the ground to swallow me up. I'd muttered under my breath. Yet despite my avoidances, I'd stuck with it. I was - in a tiny, utterly unremarkable way, being some kind of a role model. And then, clattering into my ears, the noise returned. It came from the other side of the net in the hall. Thirty minutes earlier, the badminton players had been doing a peculiar ritual that involved bashing their rackets and yelling. It sounded like a strange visceral celebratory howl - an end of badminton university; the shuttlecock gala; a wailing sacrifice to the feathered gods. Now, they were at it again. I had to find out what was going on. As our game wound down, I wandered around the court to get closer to the noise. The other half of the hall had been split in two. On the side closest, were indeed badminton players - but just playing as usual. I kept walking, peeked over the net to the other partition, and saw where all the commotion was coming from. Not for the first time, my feel for the game was rusty. It had been that kind of evening. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/09/IMG_2845.JPG) ### Putting your name on it URL: https://www.howardgray.net/putting-your-name-on-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T12:24:28.000Z I made hundreds of mistakes running my first company. I wonder if one was worse than all the others put together. I kept my name off everything. It was a talent agency - we booked DJs and bands for their gigs around the world. Every agent had their own roster, a few artists were shared, and outside my own direct clients none of it had my name attached. I told myself a bunch of stories why: I was too busy; I didn't have the gravitas for it; it would be tiring and overwhelming; and so on. Which was, in hindsight, extremely stupid. Artists who were on the cusp of leaving had no idea who I was, so there was no call I could usefully make. Dropping someone (a horrible job) always fell to one agent on their own - or me showing up and it looking disingenuous. And when an agent left, the roster invariably went with them. I didn't stand a chance of rescuing it because nobody on it really knew me. That was the worse one. In fact, it nearly killed the company - twice. Meanwhile someone else in the same game was putting their name on everything, co-booking tons of acts, naming the company after themselves. For many reasons, they did a great deal better than I did, but putting their name on things can't have hurt. You may have your own version of this. Sometimes we don't feel the cost of staying in the background until we need someone to know who we are. ### It nearly got through mine URL: https://www.howardgray.net/it-nearly-got-through-mine/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T12:08:32.000Z We're building a playable drill around the 5 Whys, and our AI design assistant is doing some image assets. It came up with this. Looks…alright, right? Someone sketched the framework on a glass wall. In non-permanent marker, naturally. I didn't love it. Couldn't have told you why, though. Not enough to stop. Then I looked again. Somebody has written WHY on the glass five times and left the building. Or worse. It has not made the cut. The brief was about a line long. I was running first tests, so nearly everything in that picture is the model filling a gap I left. The empty office. The arrows pointing down. Nobody in the frame. Nothing in it is actually wrong. It would get through most checks, automated or human. It nearly got through mine. People talk about 'taste' a lot. Usually we mean whether something looks good. This is also taste. How a thing reads to somebody – especially when that somebody isn't you. ### I built a video game about surviving my own workshop URL: https://www.howardgray.net/i-built-a-video-game-about-surviving-my-own-workshop/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T10:22:58.000Z I built a video game where you play me teaching a class, and the enemies are the people in the room. Weirdly, other people want to play it. There is the Skeptic, who questions every promise. The Expert, who corrects you mid-sentence. The Scroller, who is half here and half on their phone. The wifi drops out on a timer. The fire alarm goes off for no reason. The final boss is a snack machine that has eaten your coins and is not going to discuss it. All of that has happened to me. Including having a hangry audience. 0:00 /1:07 1× I built it for a workshop I was running, with the AI tool I was there to teach. The plan was to show the game. Ninety seconds at the front, get a laugh, move on. The day before, I made a version that works on a phone. In the sessions, people stopped asking how I made it and started asking me to reset the leaderboard. Then for more time. Seventeen names went up on the board. Then, two hours after the last session had ended and the room was empty, sixteen more runs appeared inside eleven minutes. People had gone back to their desks and were still playing. I am currently fourteenth at surviving my own workshop. See if you can push me further down the list: [play.wavetable.net](https://play.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) P.S. This was based on a session that went badly several years ago. As you can tell, I am completely over it. Put it behind me. No problems here. No sir, none at all. ### Home Games URL: https://www.howardgray.net/home-games/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T08:00:00.000Z A touring DJ plays almost every night away from home. Strange room, strange setup, no idea what this crowd wants or when the place comes alive. Andy C says the hardest gigs of his career were at his own club. If the name means nothing to you: he co-founded Ram Records as a teenager and was voted the best DJ in drum & bass every year from 2009 to 2018. He ran Ram's Friday night at The End in London for eleven years. His label, his room, his crowd. He'd built it. And yet. “The most high-stress situations I've ever had as a DJ were doing those intros at The End. I would be shaking and sweating.” The booth at The End sat in the middle of the dancefloor, a foot or so above everyone. There was no stage to hide behind. His signature move is the double drop - landing the crescendos of two tracks together, at 175bpm, across three turntables in a room full of people jumping. One tiny nudge and it's gone. He does it in front of thousands of strangers in LA or Adelaide without blinking. The room that got to him was his own. What he does about it is the part worth stealing. He doesn't turn up early. “I don't like turning up too long before the set because I get so focused on the set I get distracted and very anxious. It sounds weird but I like to sit and chill in the car.” Away games are hard because you don't know the room. Home games are hard because the room knows you, and you're the reason they turned up. The man who built the room sits in the car until it's time to walk in. ### Groove Theory #33 - The Tour He Stopped Giving URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-33-the-tour-he-stopped-giving/ Last updated: 2026-08-23T06:45:21.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: making a 90s platform game for TikTok team members to level up their AI skills; visiting [Cyberdog](https://www.cyberdog.net/?ref=howardgray.net) in Camden Market (no purchases this time, alas) --- I look at houses I am never going to buy. I stop at estate agents' windows the way other people stop at bakeries, and I've run the numbers on places in towns I'd been in for just two hours. It isn't really about property, though. It's the fantasy of somewhere that ends up completely yours, because you get to make every decision along the way. Most of us never do it. Some do - and get a very good kitchen along with a home gym or garden studio they never finish. Dennis Severs did it and then kept going - way past the point where a normal person stops. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/Dennis-Severs-House-1980s.webp) Dennis Severs with creative partner Simon Pettet (standing), 1980s He was Californian, from Escondido, and he moved to London in 1967, five days after finishing high school. He came for the English light, he said (yes, a Californian said this...) and for a version of England he'd picked up from black-and-white Dickens adaptations. He bought a Victorian horse-drawn carriage and drove tourists round Kensington in top hat and tails. Then the traffic got bad, so he took the tour indoors. In September 1979 he bought a derelict Georgian house at 18 Folgate Street in Spitalfields and moved in. He declined to install electricity. He declined to install plumbing. "The 20th century is a nice place to visit," he said, "but you wouldn't want to live there." Then he took a candle, a chamber pot and a bedroll, and slept in each of the ten rooms in turn - "so that I might arouse my intuition in the quest for each room's soul." Each floor is designed to be a different moment in time. 1725 on the ground floor, 1919 by the time you reach the garret. Every room is staged as though a family of Huguenot silk weavers was there moments before you arrive. Candles. A lit fire. Half-eaten bread. He invented the family, the Jervises, gave them two hundred years at 18 Folgate Street, and called the result a still-life drama. It took him the rest of his life. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/gt33-02-door-and-lamp.jpg) outside 18 Folgate St (photo: Living London History) --- ## The Tension For twenty years, Severs was the tour. He walked people through it himself, by appointment, at seven, with straw laid on the pavement outside. Ten rooms by candlelight, him talking the whole way. A glass of port at the end, and hooves on the cobbles. David Hockney called it one of the world's five great experiences. If you interrupted and Severs didn't warm to you, he put you out on the street. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/Image-2340x1561.jpg) He was, by every account, a magnificent guide. Then he stopped. Tired of it, he said, and told visitors to walk round in silence and imagine the thing for themselves. Which is the much harder version. For twenty years he had been the proof that the house worked. How could he remain present when he wasn't there? --- ## Step Into It If we think about our own work, it's pretty rare we get to give the kind of tour Severs did: room-by-room, captive audience, key details highlighted. Most of the time we're offering up the silent tour. Our audience has to imagine things for themselves. Fill in the gaps. Colour in the spaces. We hope they interpret it all the way we hope they do. We don't tend to think of our tour as being silent, but we do get fed up when people miss the point, misunderstand it, see something that isn't there. Perhaps it's about designing ourselves back into it somehow. --- ## The Groove: Presence So how do you run a room you're not standing in? Severs answered it three ways. The silence you've already met. The other two he had to build. The second is the notes. Not wall labels. Notes - little written things placed about the rooms, almost clues. They put Severs into a room he can't be physically in, and they tend to fall into three categories: - Some poke fun at you, naming what you're privately thinking - that this is a bit much, that you're not sure you're doing it right - before you can feel caught thinking it. - Some are meta reminders - breaking the fourth wall, reminding you what to do, or that the family has just left the room. - And some just point at something you'd walked straight past. No explanation. Look there. The combination makes you aware of Severs' presence, and you feel that's exactly the way he wants it - that he made all of this. Yet, of course, he's not here at all. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/IMG_9393_LivingLondonHistory.webp) The desk. Photo: Living London History The third way is the staff. They stand at the top of each staircase, saying nothing. You come up, and a small movement of the head sends you left instead of right. You want to ask them a question, engage with them somehow, because they clearly have some answers. But they can't speak - they're under the same rule you are - and they're stationed the way an eighteenth-century household's servants would have been. Why are they there? Two reasons, perhaps. They set the tone, and they imply that you should focus on the room - their head nod says 'over there... look a little closer'. The house's motto is also a provocation. Above the door, *Aut Visum Aut Non* \- "you either see it or you don't". But this hands all the credit to the seeing and none to the scaffolding. Severs didn't leave the seeing to chance - he wrote the crib sheets, he posted the ushers, he put the whole house in a book as well as building it. He took his own name off the assist, but his name is on the front of his house. He's anonymous, and yet he isn't. Coincidentally, I re-watched season 6 of Curb this week. It's tricky being Anonymous. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. You might be the thing that has to go - and stay** Severs was the reason the house worked. Then he stepped away and replaced his physical presence with another version of it. ****2\. Say the awkward thing before they think it** The notes that tease the visitor call out the skepticism in each room so it stops being a secret. Whatever your audience is privately thinking about your thing, just saying it first can flip them into co-conspirators vs. detached observers. ****3\. Design for noticing** People tend to learn more when they notice something - when their curiosity is sparked - rather than being told about the thing straight up. I would tell you more about this, but... well, y'know. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Presence is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release Because there are no photographs, I came home with almost nothing. I can describe maybe four rooms with any confidence, and I've caught myself more than once reaching for a camera roll that doesn't contain anything. I can't remember his notes either. Which wouldn't have surprised him. Near the end he wrote: *"I have recently come to accept what I refused to accept for so long: that the house is only ephemeral. That no one can put a preservation order on atmosphere."* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/Dennis-Severs-Hogarth-Smoking-Room-Painting.jpg) The Hogarth painting. Scroll down for its significance. And then, on the way out, one of the staff mentioned that somebody lives there. A friend of Severs'. Not a ghost and not a guide. A resident. Each day he goes to a studio in Hackney Wick then returns home to 18 Folgate Street in the evening, sleeping in the master bedroom. In the morning strangers start filing through his home in silence, and the staff tidy up behind them, and somebody sets the table again. I never saw him. The entire house is built around a family you are told about and never meet - and there is a real man upstairs doing just the same. Severs stopped giving the tour. It's been silently running ever since. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **He sold it back before he died.** Severs died in December 1999, of AIDS. He had already sold the house to the Spitalfields Trust, who run it now - which is its own kind of planning: he arranged for the dream to survive the dreamer. - **The book.** *18 Folgate Street: The Tale of a House in Spitalfields*, with an introduction by Peter Ackroyd. Severs wrote the house down as well as building it. - **Exit through the gift shop**: At the end, one of the staff walks you to the gift shop. A home whose owner declined to install electricity has a silent employee steering you to the till. [Business, always business](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUphDV3Pjww&ref=howardgray.net). - **The room inside the painting.** The first-floor smoking room hangs a painting by W.Hogarth - men round a punch bowl, falling off their chairs - and then stages the aftermath around you: the emptied bowl, smashed glasses, clay pipes, a wig left on its stand. You're standing in the picture, a minute later. ### Avon & Stringer - hard enough, smart enough? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/avon-stringer-hard-enough-smart-enough/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T10:21:35.000Z > "I look at you these days, String, you know what I see? I see a man without a country. Not hard enough for this right here and maybe, just maybe, not smart enough for them out there." That's Avon Barksdale talking to his partner-in-crime Stringer Bell in The Wire. Stringer wanted to go legit - apply business-school thinking to the streets. Avon wanted to stay in the game. Neither could fully be what the other world required. I think about that line a lot. For me, it goes something like: Too commercially minded for the artists. Too weird for the people in the good suits. Too independent for the org chart. Too small for the VC spreadsheet. Not smart enough for the academics, maybe. Not hard enough for the hustlers, definitely. And, alas, too big for those 34" trousers that fitted me last summer. (You'll have your own list.) Avon already had a name for it: a man without a country. There's a version of this where we keep trying to get hard enough, or smart enough, for worlds that don't quite fit. And there's another where we build something that works with our nature rather than against it - gaps, peculiar Venn diagrams and all. Maybe being not quite right for either world is the point. It didn't work for Stringer, of course. (It rarely works for anyone in The Wire.) But that doesn't mean it won't work for us. P.S. If you want to know what good narrative writing looks like… subscribe to [Groove Theory](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter) … no, not really. Look at some of the writing on The Wire. Sheeeeeet. ### Teaching to Learn URL: https://www.howardgray.net/teaching-to-learn/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T07:59:59.000Z “Teaching is the best way to learn something.” I believed that for a while. Now I'm not so sure. When we think of teaching we think of the delivery - showing up and, well, teaching. The delivery isn't much of it at all. The design is where the learning is. The most recent programme we built at Wavetable is ten hours of teaching delivery. It had a team of four working on it for six months. The learning came from designing the teaching. How do we get into this topic? What does this term actually mean? Which foundational models do we use? Where do the scaffolds go? How do we move from this concept to that one? Where do we change tempo, intensity, modality? And a bazillion other questions. Levels of material, experience, depth, how concepts link together. This is why I get a bee in my bonnet about so much of education. Online courses, sure, but plenty of the formal stuff too. Having knowledge doesn't mean you can teach it. And being able to teach it doesn't mean you really know it. So yes, teaching is the best way to learn something. If you're designing it too. ### Question Design URL: https://www.howardgray.net/question-design/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T07:59:59.000Z If you could add one subject to every curriculum - five-year-olds through to chief executives - what would it be? Prompting LLMs? Climate science? Nutrition? Mine would be questions. It takes empathy and precision. The microscope to see the detail, the telescope to spot what's coming. A great question is a billiard break. One shot, and everything opens up in the right position. Unlike pool, there's no chalk dust on your hands to show you've been practising. Asking is the smallest part of it. Like any trick shot, a question needs design (the angle), timing (the moment), delivery (the touch) and follow-through (the effect). They need sequencing and layering too. Build tension, release it. Create space, and let someone else fill it. Whether you're helping a five-year-old follow their curiosity or a chief executive read a market shift, the question comes first. Ask the wrong one and everybody spends the next hour answering it. ### Tight But Polite URL: https://www.howardgray.net/tight-but-polite/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T07:59:59.000Z There are two people on a nightclub door and neither is on your side. The picker decides whether you get in. The bouncer decides whether you stay. As a combination, it's terrifying. Which is why the guy on the gate in Ridgewood, Queens threw me completely. A little while ago it was my birthday and I'd been driven east with no idea where we were going. I guessed wrong the whole way. The rooftop comedy gig, a Mets game, that Sri Lankan place near JFK. Then we crossed into Bushwick and I worked it out. Mister Sunday. The outdoor party spot. We hadn't been in nearly two years. Just inside the gate, a big guy came towards us. I'm 6ft 6\. He was 6ft 8 and twice as wide. I braced for the “not tonight, guys.” He was friendly, relaxed, visibly pleased that people were arriving. He was also completely clear about the rules, and there are a lot of them. Both jobs at once, and neither of them felt like a threat. I didn't know what to say back. What a delight. He must have done that a thousand times that day. It didn't sound like it. Inside was how I remembered. Bright colours, smiling faces, every kind of person. I design the openings of things for a living. The first ten minutes, the welcome, the bit before anything has started. I spend a long time on it. The guy on the gate delivered on it in 30 seconds. I never got his name. A good reason to go back. P.S. 90s London rave flyers often said the same thing. “Security: tight but polite.” Glad to see it still stands in NYC. ### The Fortune Cookie Test URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-fortune-cookie-test/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T07:59:59.000Z If your feedback would fit anyone, it's a fortune cookie. “You showed good judgement here” fits everybody. That's one of six rules. Fer, our Experience Design lead, spent a few weeks in the research on feedback - what changes behaviour, what just makes people feel judged. We needed them because we're working out how a simulation should respond to a player while they're still playing, rather than at the end in a report. The other five: - We comment on how someone decided, not what they decided, and never on who they are. - We reframe rather than evaluate - same facts, a different lens. - We stay tentative, because the player should need us less afterwards, not more. - We don't give scores. Attach a number and people read the number and ignore everything else. - Every piece of feedback ends with one thing to try tomorrow. Under the rules sit sixteen design patterns, each tagged with where it came from. Some are game design. Some are coaching. One is a military after-action review. Which pattern belongs to which moment is the properly difficult part. What works after a two-minute drill doesn't work after a long scenario. We're still working that out. ### When everyone hates your best work URL: https://www.howardgray.net/when-everyone-hates-your-best-work/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T09:40:47.000Z Run-DMC's road manager used to leave the arena when they played Walk This Way. Walked out, every night, while the record was climbing the charts. The group weren't much keener. When Rick Rubin played them the Aerosmith track in 1986 and suggested a hip-hop act might pivot to stadium rock, one of them called the lyrics “hillbilly gibberish”. They couldn't work out what the man was singing. They recorded it against their own judgment. Aerosmith turned up, two of them deep in addiction, and the groups spent the session in opposite corners of the studio. Then it broke on rock radio and urban radio at the same time, which hadn't happened before. They still didn't want to play it. The song birthed rap-rock, resurrected Aerosmith, made Run-DMC superstars, and got Black artists other than Michael Jackson onto MTV. The people who made it thought it was rubbish - right up until the world disagreed, and for a while afterwards. The road manager held out longest. Rubin heard something they couldn't. He booked the session anyway, put both groups behind the same glass, and kept going while every one of them wanted to stop. That's the job. Not playing, not singing, not on the poster. Knowing how it will sound before it exists, and getting people to make it while they still think you're wrong. Someone (probably you) will point out that this is survivorship bias. For every Rubin who was right there's a producer who was just as certain and simply wrong, and nobody writes that one up. And you're right. We only tell this one because it worked. Either way - we're going to need many more of those people, and outside music I'm not sure the role has a name. I wonder what that road manager thought, out in the corridor, listening through the doors. ### Groove Theory #32 - The Hum They Took Out URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-32-the-hum-they-took-out/ Last updated: 2026-08-09T07:08:31.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: in a village in northern Spain, finding out whether I can still write (early indications: yes?); plotting some in-person gatherings, in New York and in London. For years the lock screen on my phone was a piece of graffiti sprayed on a garage door. A photo I took somewhere in Palermo, Buenos Aires, in 2011\. I don't know why it stayed there so long. Fifteen years on, I am still soft on Buenos Aires. Perhaps it was Ana, my first Spanish tutor, who is from Palermo. Perhaps it was the cafes of San Telmo, the edgy enticement of Boca Juniors, or the steak and chimichurri at La Cabrera. It was not the Argentina football team. I never asked Ana about Juana Molina. She'd have known exactly who I meant. *Juana y sus hermanas* was a Friday night sketch show that started in 1991\. Juana Molina played nearly every character in it herself, and most of the country watched. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/08/image.png) A few of Juana's characters In 1993 she got pregnant, was ordered onto bed rest, and stopped filming. Lying still for the first time in years, she heard herself think. *"What am I doing? This is not what I wanted to do. I need to get out of this place right now before it is too late."* She had made a great deal of money. She had also worked out exactly what not doing it would feel like: "I imagined myself as a decrepit old woman watching MTV, thinking 'I could have done that.' I pictured myself feeling an infinite grudge, hatred, and envy." Juana never went back to television. Her first record came out three years later. It didn't quite go to plan. ## The Tension *Rara* arrived in 1996\. Not one radio station in Argentina played a track from it. Zero. The album went through a producer, and the producer was Gustavo Santaolalla - the man who built the sound of Latin alternative rock, later two Oscars and *The Last of Us*. Which is rather the problem. He shaped her songs toward something radio could handle: verse, chorus, verse. To make room he took out the drones - the long sustained hums under her songs that don't move when the song does. They were too strange for radio, so out they came. The record is called *Rara*. It means strange. Those hums were also the newest thing about her. She had found them by accident: "I got in some kind of trance, and the only thing that made me stop was the end of the cassette. I was totally taken by the drone I produced, like a feedback." Years of being other people for a living had worked as armour - "nothing could hurt me because it wasn't myself I was being." Then she started to sing. "I suddenly felt naked." What went into the shops was a tidier, more acceptable version of a woman who has never once in her life been tidy or acceptable. Taking the drones out didn't help her. It also didn't hurt her. Argentina had decided about her before the needle dropped. "People just didn't come to my shows because they thought that, because I was an actress, what I was doing was shit." It wasn't that Argentina couldn't take strange. In 1973 it took *Artaud* \- Luis Alberto Spinetta's record, named after a French poet who died in an asylum. The sleeve was so awkwardly shaped that shops trimmed the corners off to make it fit the racks. Argentina decided it was the best record the country had ever made. Artaud, by Spinetta's band Pescado Rabioso Juana had spent years on television playing a parade of grotesques, and Argentina adored that too. The country had always liked her strange. It had liked her strange in costume. But thirty years on, it's still the record she regrets. It's not on streaming. I don't know whether that's her doing or the label's. ## Step Into It I spent this week taking things out of a workshop deck. I gave the tech stack plain-English names, and rebuilt a guidebook written for engineers so a room of people who don't write code could use it. Both were the right choice, and I'd make them again. But every edit went one way. Nothing I did made the deck stranger, and nobody has ever handed one back asking for it to be weirder. Santaolalla would have said all of that too, and he'd have been right by every standard his craft recognises. The danger was never bad advice. I still don't know whether I made it clearer or just safer. I find out in two weeks, in front of two hundred people, which is slightly late in the day. You'll have your own version. The bit you left out because it needed too much explaining, or because someone senior would have raised an eyebrow. Did it work? And - separate question - would you ever know if it hadn't? ## The Groove: Presence What happened to Juana next took four years and involved leaving the country. She moved to Los Angeles, played clubs where nobody had heard of her or her television programme, and taught herself to record - loops, pedals, one woman playing every part. There was nobody to explain the drones to. *Segundo* came out in 2000\. She released it herself in Argentina, where it did almost nothing: a second record, ignored twice. Then a copy reached Japan. I have not been able to find out how. Japan went for it. Domino signed her in 2003\. David Byrne heard the record and took her across the States - and every night he came out first, in front of his own audience, to tell them who she was before she played. She was the first Argentine artist to play Coachella. She hadn't got braver. She had removed the person you have to convince - and on *Rara*, that person's judgement was, on paper, worth more than hers. She has produced everything herself since - seven more records, each one further out than the last. One experience of being tidied was enough. Yeah, you're right. Never letting anybody produce you again is an odd thing to recommend. Plenty of people who stop listening just get worse in private. She didn't. *DOGA* arrived in November 2025, her first record in eight years. The title is a word she made up. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Are they objecting to the work, or to you making it?** Argentina adored a woman playing a parade of grotesques on Friday night television. It would not take four minutes of sustained hum from the same woman. Same appetite, different container. If the resistance is to you doing this at all, editing the work moves nobody. ****2\. Which part is the strange one? You may not know yet.** Nobody did in 1996 - not the label, not Santaolalla, not Juana. The drones only became the point in hindsight. Keep one that turns out to be nothing and you lose a little reach. Cut one that turns out to be the thing and you never find out what you lost. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Presence is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release The tidy ending is that Argentina came round, and it sort of did - once the reviews started arriving from abroad, people at home had a rethink. She doesn't tell it that way. *"Over the years I have built a completely new audience with completely different people, and only a few are fans of both things."* Only a few. Most of the country had watched her on Friday nights, and almost none of them followed her. Her records got home to Buenos Aires eventually. Via Tokyo. *Rara* was sanded down and it failed. *Segundo* kept every drone and it failed too, at home. She paid in drones for an objection nobody was making. Neither one worked. She only regrets one of them. Most people say yes because they need the work. Juana didn't need the work and said yes anyway. Where are you allowed to be strange? Somebody has already decided, and it probably wasn't you. That graffitied wall was on my phone for years. If anybody had asked me why, I wouldn’t have had an answer. It was just a strange thing I liked. Howard **P.S.** After writing this I went back into the deck and put some of the strange back in. The demo game I built alongside it, too. I'll let you know. --- ## Extended Mix - **Juana on working:** "When there are thoughts, intentions, concepts, ego, all bad things happen. When you don't think and you're really *there*, the only result is pure truth." - **A frame for the Japan bit:** Erin Meyer's *The Culture Map* argues that no culture is high- or low-context on its own - the position exists only relative to whoever is listening. Japan sits at the far end of that scale, where meaning lives under the words. The drones are the layer under the song. I can't prove that's why Tokyo went first. It's a good coincidence. - **Don't cry for me, Argentina**: Two editions back, in [Barrilete Cósmico](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-30-barrilete-cosmico/), I wrote about Víctor Hugo Morales forgetting himself on the Maradona goal - and being ashamed of it afterwards. So that's twice now that Argentina has handed me someone who did their best work by stopping managing themselves... ### Why Me? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-me/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T07:59:59.000Z I've been asking people a question that reliably makes them uncomfortable. When someone introduces me to a new contact, I ask them why they thought of me. It sounds like fishing for a compliment, and I'll admit there's a tiny bit of that in it. But it isn't what I'm after. I want the connection they made - something in their head filed me next to this person, and I'd like to know what. The answers are rarely what I'd have guessed. You did the music thing. You know this person. You built that thing. You've been through what they're going through now. Sometimes it's disheartening. Once or twice my internal monologue has been screaming “noooo, I don't do THAT.” Which is why it's worth asking. None of it is exactly how I'd describe myself. It's how I'm stored in someone else's head. You can decide what you want to be known for. The referral tells you what you are known for. Mind the gap. ### Rehab for writing URL: https://www.howardgray.net/rehab-for-writing/ Last updated: 2026-09-06T12:58:10.000Z I've forgotten how to write. I don't do retreats. You can't expect me to be silent for ten days - come on now. Retreats are weird. I can't switch off, and when I do it only makes things worse: I come home all anxious and odd. So I’ve gone on a... I don't know what it is. A break? A work-ation? Writing rehab? I’ve disappeared to a random village in northern Spain for four days. Population: about 40 people and 6 cats. I felt a lot of guilt about it. Real money, no plan. But I had to leave the house. Did it work? Sort of. I got distracted. I indulged in too many riffy posts, and too much cheesecake (they serve it for breakfast - you really expect me to pass that up?). The owner of the one and only bar invited/demanded me to be a guest at an impromptu street BBQ at 11pm on a Tuesday. But the words came back. Via laptop, notepad, and restaurant napkins, from time to time they flowed. I cant really say when or how or why. Which is frustrating, but in a strange way also reassuring. P.S. It was also the first time I'd driven a car in three years. An experience - especially on the Cantabrian mountain roads. ### Cereal Is a Soup URL: https://www.howardgray.net/cereal-is-a-soup/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T17:37:27.000Z A professor told me her students weren't bringing evidence to their arguments. When they did bring it, they hadn't looked properly. And when they had looked, they hadn't checked whether what they'd found held up. Three separate problems. We've built a game about the third one. "Cereal is a soup." Stake a hot take like that and Milo, your over-eager research intern, races off to find evidence to back you up. He comes back with sources. Some are solid, some are rubbish, and he can't tell the difference. 0:00 /0:55 1× Your job is to spot the duds, name what's wrong with each one, then take a source that holds up and back it with your own experience, by voice or in writing. The tool we use here is CRAAP - Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose. A real librarian's checklist, developed by Sarah Blakeslee at California State University, Chico. We didn't invent it. We turned it into a game. Hence why the game is called 'Who Gives a CRAAP?' It's running in some university classes next semester, and in our own sessions on storybuilding and applying AI. Check it out: [https://rondo.wavetable.net/play/hot-takes](https://rondo.wavetable.net/play/hot-takes?ref=howardgray.net) ### 120 Questions With Correct Answers URL: https://www.howardgray.net/120-questions-with-correct-answers/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T15:29:13.000Z Mexico's most prestigious university has cancelled around 3,000 entrance exams. They suspect a mix of AI and leaked questions. Everyone's arguing about the detection. I'd look at the exam. UNAM's entrance test is 120 multiple-choice questions in three hours, one point each. There's no pass mark either. Places go to the highest scorers until they run out, so it's a ranking machine, and every inflated score pushes a real candidate down the list. This year UNAM put it online for the first time. 158,000 people sat it in May and June. The scores came back looking wrong. Students flagged by the AI proctoring system are now disputing it. So the detection is under suspicion too. Some places have gone the other way and redesigned the assessment rather than the detection. The University of Sydney have quite an interesting approach. They split assessment into two lanes: - Lane one is secured and supervised. It exists to form a trustworthy judgement about what someone can do. - Lane two is open, and AI is encouraged. It exists to help them learn. One assessment can't do both jobs, which is why detection became the battleground everywhere else. UNAM's entrance exam is lane one. They put it online. What replaces it at that scale, I don't know. Oral exams and portfolios are lovely, and you can't run them for 158,000 people in six weeks. My instinct is that the honest answer here is a boring one. At this scale you can't design an exam that AI won't solve. You can only put people in a room and watch them do the test. Which is deflating, when designing the alternative is what I do for a living. If you're teaching or examining right now, I'd like to know how you're thinking about this stuff? ### Now - 4 Aug 2026 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/now-4-aug-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T11:31:03.000Z Star date: 4 Aug 2026. - Building a suite of playable business case studies - [rondo.wavetable.net/play](https://rondo.wavetable.net/play?ref=howardgray.net) - Enjoying summer holidays with my son (who's just turned 5 - much Lego play afoot) - Coming back to writing again - and trying to make space for more Slices of Life in the mix - Feeling ever more Transatlantic in body, mind and soul ### Utah to Vegas, via Norway URL: https://www.howardgray.net/utah-to-vegas-via-norway/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T09:09:34.000Z Imagine Dragons are one of the biggest bands in the world. Their path to get there is stranger than you'd think. They started by commuting from Utah to play tiny venues in Las Vegas. For a new band, Vegas means the dive bars off the highway rather than the strip. Sticky floors, rough sound, crowds who have no idea who you are. But someone on holiday caught a gig, bought their CD, and gave it to a promoter friend back home. For his festival. In Norway. That festival was the band's first international gig. The CD was their one and only EP. They were unsigned. Utah to Vegas to Norway. Not exactly a straight line. Yes, they're one in a thousand. And yes, CDs are ancient history. But the foundation stands: people travel to experience something new, and they want to share it with others. The gig you think sucks might lead somewhere interesting. P.S. Vegas was built by the mob and the Mormons - sin and purity, chalk and cheese. Maybe that's why it works. A place designed for people passing through, looking for something they can't get at home. P.P.S. They also seem to be enormously popular with small children. I've never worked out why. Anyone? ### Thirty Years of Hating Television URL: https://www.howardgray.net/thirty-years-of-hating-television/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T11:13:21.000Z A lot of people with 10, 20, 30 years of experience are feeling the pressure right now. Some good news, courtesy of the man who gave us Paulie Walnuts, Phil Leotardo and Tony Soprano. David Chase had been in television for almost thirty years before HBO let him make *The Sopranos*. He wrote for *The Rockford Files* in the seventies, spent the eighties on failed pilots and TV movies nobody remembers, and ran *Northern Exposure* in the nineties. He was 53 when the Sopranos pilot aired, and had spent most of those years wanting to be making films instead (he has never been shy about this). "*The Sopranos* does not exist without David Chase having worked in television for almost thirty years," said Blake Masters, the writer-producer who created *Brotherhood* for Showtime. "Because *The Sopranos* really could not be written by somebody unless they understood everything about television, and hated all of it." Jason Grote - a playwright who came to TV writing late and ended up on *Mad Men* \- said much the same thing: "Prestige TV wasn't new blood coming into Hollywood as much as it was a lot of veterans that were never able to tell these types of stories, who were suddenly able to cut through." I'm not sure your world maps exactly onto the TV and film industry of the early 2000s. But where there's disruption, distrust, disillusionment (hello) - knowing exactly how it all works, and hating most of it, might count for more now than it did five years ago. P.S. The pilot script the networks read had no murders in it. Chase assumed they'd never allow one. "*The Sopranos* was a mob show where nobody got killed." He rewrote it before HBO, and put in Christopher shooting Emil Kolar in the back of the head at Satriale's. That's the version they bought. ### Groove Theory #31 - Joker Poker URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-31-joker-poker/ Last updated: 2026-07-26T06:35:38.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: building off-sites that don't feel like off-sites; making Minecraft treasure chests from cardboard. This week I've been designing three games at the same time. The first is for work - a game for grown-ups, the kind of thing I build for a living. It's a 'Hot Takes' game - you float a provocative idea, an unreliable AI intern digs up evidence to back you up, and then you find out how well the whole thing holds up. The sort of thing a professor sets loose on a class, or a strategy lead on their analysts. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-25-at-16.16.14.png) The Hot Takes game, using the **CRAAP* evidence-building framework. [Try the demo ->](https://staging-rondo.wavetable.net/play/hot-takes?ref=howardgray.net) The second game is a birthday party. My son is turning five. Somewhere between six and twenty-six children will come - I genuinely don't know how many, and neither does he. It's in a public park, so I can't even rely on walls. And he's requested, with total confidence, a Minecraft party. Except… he doesn’t really want Minecraft. He's four. He doesn't know how it works. Gently push him on it and what he wants is the *feeling* of it - the pickaxes, the blocks, the creepers, the diamonds. He sees the big kids at school being into Minecraft. So what should it be, exactly? After wrangling with it a while, I went away from Minecraft entirely - stopped trying to reproduce the game, made some other stuff. Then, I came back to it sideways, through the parts that matter to a five-year-old: tools, dragons… cupcakes. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/07/IMG_2511.JPG) Game testing: Prototype tool, gems and key. As for the third game - I don't get to write its rules, and alas cupcakes aren’t the unlock. Another story. Either way, my week has been consumed by three games. None I fully understand. All due sooner than I'd like. The good news: these constraints are also how one of the most talked-about games of the decade got made. --- ## The Tension LocalThunk - a pseudonymous games designer - created Balatro, a single-player card game. You build a poker hand, then juice it with oddball 'joker' cards until the score tips into the millions. It's sold more than five million copies and became the first game made by one person ever nominated for Game of the Year. Picture a bedroom producer, no label behind him, up for Album of the Year against the majors. Sort of like Banksy, or [Burial](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=PzYrr7K1dvU&list=OLAK5uy%5Fk5jYleZ3mdh6BqleMCncporqm%5F-lqtwE8&ref=howardgray.net) before anyone knew his name - working in 16-bit graphics. He built most of it refusing to look at anyone else's work. *"I intentionally avoided playing or watching most games outside of Rocket League in an effort to keep my design ideas fresh and keep myself interested in the design space I was naively exploring."* (Rocket League is a game about playing football in rocket-powered cars - not even relevant to his own game…) Everyone told him to study [Slay the Spire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R1D-w5Cxf4&ref=howardgray.net), the game his whole genre treats as the masterpiece, the obvious homework. He refused to touch it for a year and a half. I know that instinct, although I don't always channel it. Once you've seen how someone brilliant solved your problem, you can't unsee it - their answer is just there, and so often you drift towards it without meaning to. That clumsy, naive early stretch - reinventing wheels, wandering down routes nobody sensible would take - is where the original stuff often comes from. That's what all LocalThunk's not-looking was for. --- ## Step Into It You're designing something - a strategy, a plan, a pitch. Something with *oomph*. The client mentions a famous framework twice. There's a book everyone in your field has read. The professional thing to do is to consume all of it before you start, to arrive fully briefed. You know how this goes. You watch the author’s talk on YouTube, and a few of its lines lodge in your head. You skim the book, and a fortnight later you're thinking in its categories without noticing. Sit down to build, and you catch yourself tracing. The lines are already there in someone else's hand; all you're doing is inking over them. What if the homework you're supposed to do - and the inspiration you go hunting for - is exactly what makes your work sound like everyone else's? --- ## The Groove: Structure *Shape the idea. Move from fog to form without losing your voice.* We usually mean one thing by structure: the shape of the finished thing - the outline, the scaffolding you hang your ideas on. There's a second kind that gets almost no attention - the structure of your inputs. What you let in, and when. LocalThunk was strict about it. For a year and a half he let almost nothing in - no other card games, nothing from his own genre - and only went looking once his game could absorb the hit. The first thing he let in was the feeling he was chasing - breaking rules, stacking combinations until the numbers went silly - long before he knew what the game was even about. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/07/Balatro1.jpg) Balatro in action The theme came later, and it barely mattered. Balatro looks like poker on the outside, though LocalThunk doesn't even play it. "The poker theme was slapped on top of the game I was already creating, mainly as an onboarding tool." It's there so a stranger can glance at the screen and feel they already know the rules. Other people's work came last of all. Only once the game was unmistakably his own did he go looking. A year and a half in, he finally bought Slay the Spire - and only to crack one narrow problem: how you let someone play a card game with a controller instead of a mouse. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/07/GT31-----What-you-let-in--and-when--framework-.jpg) His reaction, in his own dev diary: "Holy shit. now that is a game." Then, a beat later: "Thank goodness I avoided playing it until now because I surely would have just copied their incredible design." Months on, he lifted its difficulty system outright and noted it in his patch log: "This is from Slay the Spire (see? Told you I'd steal from it)." 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Feel first, measure later** Trust how a thing feels before you make it technically correct. LocalThunk: **"If the picture FEELS level but actually isn't, that is better than it being technically level but feeling askew."* The spreadsheets came after. ****2\. One obsessive beats a happy room.** Don't tally the people who quite liked it. Watch for the one who can't put it down. (LocalThunk knew he had something when a friend sank dozens of hours into a rough build.) ****3\. Do the reading last** Do your own fumbling before you study how anyone else solved the problem. The clumsy first draft is the only one that's fully yours - get it down before you go looking. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Structure is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release I've got three games in development, and a card-game designer in Canada has shown me how to think about two of them. I don't need to understand Minecraft. I need the coat of paint - it's not even called a Minecraft party, it's a Block Party. I don't need to understand the grown-ups' game yet either - I need the feeling I'm chasing, and the discipline not to fill my head with everyone else's answers before I've found my own. And because I can't know my numbers - six or twenty-six, a handful of players or a full house - I'm building something loose. A shape that hopefully flexes. My son asked for Minecraft. He didn't really want Minecraft. He wanted the feeling of it, rendered in cupcakes. Likely you've got something to make this week too. What could you get wrong on your own first, before you go looking up how it's done? Howard P.S. It’s also ok to buy some things from the supermarket. You didn’t really think I was going to bake two dozen Minecraft cupcakes, did you? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/07/MinecraftCupcakes.jpg) --- ## Extended Mix - **The coat of paint nearly got it banned.** In 2024 the ratings board PEGI flipped Balatro from "3+" to adults-only overnight - "prominent gambling imagery" - and it was delisted across parts of the EU. There's no actual gambling in it; the poker is a skin. LocalThunk fought back, PEGI climbed down to "12," and even rewrote its gambling policy. The onboarding tool was that convincing. - **48 to 208,401.** That's what Balatro's Steam wishlist did between May 2023 and launch day. The first few hours of sales beat his entire lifetime earnings up to that point. He marked it with burgers and champagne. - **Minecraft started the same way** \- one person (Markus "Notch" Persson), messing about with blocks, no plan. Microsoft bought it five years later for $2.5 billion. My son's Block Party has a smaller budget. - **"**[**The Balatro Timeline**](https://localthunk.com/blog/balatro-timeline-3aarh?ref=howardgray.net)**"** \- LocalThunk's own blog, honest about the anxiety attacks as well as the champagne. ### Just in Time Experience Design URL: https://www.howardgray.net/just-in-time-experience-design/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T09:49:48.000Z The Wavetable team spent seven months building a programme. Two weeks before launch we threw away seventy per cent of it and rebuilt. It was horrible, and one of the best things we've ever done. We'd been asked to build a skill development programme for the innovation team at a company you have definitely heard of. The first build was smart and well planned. We did the user interviews. We followed a solid process. We have done a lot of this. But you know that feeling where part of you wants to talk yourself into it being fine, and underneath you know it isn't? Too much explanation, not enough practice. The modules had got tangled. And the games we built were too clever by half. We should have noticed earlier. I should have. So two of us rebuilt the whole thing, working until the night before the first session. There was self-loathing, irritability, and real concern about burn rate - cash and human. After one session of delivering it, we knew eighty per cent of what we needed. After three we were close. We could picture the people by then: their pacing, their goals, who they actually were. Looking back at the first version, it was good. Good meaning we liked it. It wasn't right, meaning someone coming in cold couldn't use it. You could reasonably read this as an argument for not planning. It isn't. The seven months weren't wasted - we'd never have known what to cut without them, and you can't playtest something that doesn't exist yet. The mistake was leaving it seven months before putting it in front of anyone. User research only gets you so far. A real room of people gets you much further. Just in time, but for experience design. That programme is about to start cohort six. It's one of the best things we've made. We've rebuilt it twice more since. ### The Game URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-game/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T09:37:30.000Z Between Se7en and Fight Club, David Fincher made a film nobody talks about. It's called The Game. Michael Douglas plays a wealthy control freak who receives a mysterious “game” as a birthday present from his brother, played by Sean Penn. It takes over his life. He can't tell what's real. The stakes escalate until they feel genuinely life-or-death. At some point he stops being an observer and becomes a participant. The pressure makes him act as if it's real, and once you're acting as if it's real the distinction stops mattering. That's true of flight simulators. Escape rooms. Military exercises. Improv. Watching your team in a World Cup game. You can't tell people to pretend something is real. That never works. Something in the design has to make them forget to ask. It's what I'm chasing every time we build something at Wavetable, and the same three questions come up every time. Where's the line between immersive and overwhelming. How much of the framework should be visible and how much sits underneath. And how do you create stakes when nothing is actually at risk. Someone will say this is gamification with better lighting, and that most of it is exhausting. They'd be right about most of it. The difference is whether the stakes are invented or borrowed - a leaderboard is invented, and a room of people watching you decide is not. Maybe that's why The Game still rattles around in my head. The film does to you what the game does to him. ### Groove Theory #30: Barrilete Cósmico URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-30-barrilete-cosmico/ Last updated: 2026-07-12T06:57:18.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: getting more bookings to speak about AI (it’s always nice to be wanted); wondering if England will play Argentina this week… --- Mexico City, 1986\. Diego Maradona picks up the ball in his own half and runs through the entire England defence. Goal of the Century. In Buenos Aires, radio commentator Victor Hugo Morales loses his mind. *“Genio… genio… genio… ta ta ta ta ta…”* He screams. He stutters. He invents a phrase on the spot - “Barrilete cósmico” - cosmic kite. *“Thank you, God, for football, for Maradona, for these tears.”* In Argentina, the riff became as famous as the goal itself. Museums play it on loop. Documentaries treat it as cultural artifact. When Morales dies, someone will play it at his funeral. But for years, he couldn’t listen to it. --- ## The Tension A professional commentator - trained, prepared, experienced - reduced to fragments and tears. Stuttering "genio, genio, genio" like something had short-circuited. Inventing phrases on the spot. Thanking God on air. In a 2011 interview, Morales admitted he was ashamed of it. He'd lost himself completely - and for a long time, that felt like failure. I get it. Most of us are conditioned to stay composed - to be the expert who stands just a little bit away from the moment, not the person swept up in it. Losing control feels unprofessional. The cringe comes later, replaying it in your head (usually at 2am, inevitably). But Morales did something that day that all his composed commentary never did. People don't just replay the goal - they replay the commentary with it. His loss of control became part of what they want to feel again. --- ## Step Into It There's a language you're supposed to use - the professional version, the one that sounds like you know what you're doing. And then there's the thing you actually wanted to say. When did you last let yourself get genuinely excited about something out loud? Not the measured version. Not the one that sounds credible in the meeting. The one that came out before you could edit it. If you've ever facilitated a workshop, led a meeting, or reacted publicly to someone else's work - you've been in the commentator's booth. The question is the same: how much of yourself do you let in? --- ## The Groove: Presence Different cultures navigate this tension differently. English commentary leans clinical. Veteran commentator Clive Tyldesley: "Commentary is the soundtrack. Nobody ever goes to the cinema to listen to the soundtrack." The commentator as professional observer - present but separate. Arabic commentary goes the other direction entirely. Balagha (البلاغة) is classical Arabic rhetoric dating to pre-Islamic Arabia. The word derives from "to reach" or "to convey successfully." Not just persuasion. Reaching the height of eloquence. Issam Chaouali doing what he does best Issam Chaouali, the Tunisian voice of beIN Sports whose voice is installed in both Real Madrid and FC Barcelona's club museums: "We're emotional societies. We rejoice deeply and grieve deeply. It's in our nature and in our genes; we have a tendency to overreact, and I'm one of you." *I'm one of you.* Saudi commentator Khalil al-Balushi, when his country beat Argentina at the 2022 World Cup: "Write this in history! Allah, Allah, Allah. Impossible is not a word that exists in the Saudi and Arab dictionary." The English approach: stay separate, be the soundtrack. The Arabic approach: be the extended arm of the fan. Latin America goes further still - be overcome. Yet all require the same preparation for presence. Chaouali: "I devote all my time to my work. I look for details and scrutinise them, leaving nothing to chance." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/07/image.png) Pre-game notes by BBC Radio 5 live commentator, John Murray Some find a way to bridge the two. [Peter Drury](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32-kwVPoWdE&ref=howardgray.net) \- English, but closest to the emotional tradition - puts it simply: "Sometimes just shouting the right name at the right time does it." The preparation creates the conditions to be genuinely surprised. You can only lose yourself if you know exactly where you are. Football - despite its uglier sides (hi, Gianni) - is one of the few things that still lets strangers feel the same thing at the same time. Across languages, across cultures. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Know when to shut up** The best commentators go quiet when the action speaks for itself. Tyldesley: "Silences are not rests, they are thinking time." If the thing is working, don't commentate over it. And when technical insight is needed, that's a different mode - the co-commentator. Not every moment needs the same voice. (This is a tricky skill. I still struggle with discomfort when there's 30 seconds of silence when I'm teaching…) ****2\. Harq a'saab - burning of nerves** The Arabic phrase for what commentators do: channel tension, not reduce it. Sometimes your role is to amplify what people are already feeling, not calm them down. ****3\. Feed the well** You can only improvise with what's already in your brain. Commentators who read widely - poetry, history, anything - have more to reach for when the standard words run out. The language that moves us still has to come from somewhere. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Presence is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release Young Noble - the Nigerian creator behind "Homemade Highlights" - remixes commentary from his bedroom or local football field. But he's not sampling the clinical stuff. He's remixing the moments when commentators lost themselves. The screams, the invented phrases, the ones who forgot they were supposed to stay composed. That's what millions of people want to hear again. I love this guy. Victor Hugo Morales cringed at his recording for years. But nobody's remixing the measured, professional version. No one plays his most composed piece of delivery at his funeral. I reckon Morales had it backwards. The preparation wasn't wasted when he lost himself - it's what let him lose himself. "Cosmic kite" didn't come from nowhere. It came from decades of fluency. We're all in the booth sometimes - presenting, explaining, reacting to moments that aren't ours. There's a craft to bringing it alive: following the play, knowing the details, finding the right words. The preparation matters. So does knowing when to let it go. Howard P.S. I'm writing this an hour before England kick off their World Cup quarter final against Norway. If they win, chances are their next game is... Argentina. --- ## Extended Mix - **Train the Instrument**: Andres Cantor - the Argentine commentator famous for the extended "GOOOOOL" on Telemundo - took voice lessons with Gloria Estefan's coach. The thing you do naturally still benefits from deliberate practice. Here's his pre-World Cup [training regime](https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZcQmyYEXdR/?ref=howardgray.net) - **The GOOOOOL origin:** The extended “gol” dates to 1946 Brazil. Sao Paulo radio announcer Rebello Junior bellowed it until he ran out of breath. It spread from there. - **Arabic tradition in action**: Ali Mohamed Ali when Egypt goalkeeper Mostafa Shobeir made a save against NZ: "Shobeir, you lion!"; then as Salah surged forward: "Mohamed Salah, this is your move. This is your moment." Salah scored. Arabic commentary addresses players directly from the booth, speaking to them, not about them. ### Forget Quiet Quitting. We're Now in the Era of Quiet Compromising URL: https://www.howardgray.net/forget-quiet-quitting-were-now-in-the-era-of-quiet-compromising/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T10:02:12.000Z The Big Tech employee shows up at their beautiful office once a month. The startup founder hasn't seen their co-working space in four months. The digital nomad secretly yearns for a real office. Everyone's whispering about their work arrangements. Few are talking openly about it. I keep hearing fragments. A team lead mandated to show up four days a week, silently questioning why. The office nomad doing a daily two-hour stint at the coffee shop across the street. A freelancer with three co-working memberships and no routine. The remote worker who misses the commute, and won't admit it. There's tension between what companies want, what people do, and what actually works. But the interesting part is what nobody says out loud, and the stories we tell ourselves. It's like those first months of the pandemic, everyone testing and tweaking their setups - except this time without sharing the standing desk hacks and the Zoom backgrounds. Quiet compromising, rather than quiet quitting. Making peace with whatever setup works, even when it isn't what anyone planned. I wonder if this is an awkward adolescent phase. We're all at different high school parties, trying to work out where the cool kids actually are. And like adolescence, glimpses of what comes next are starting to show. So I'm curious. What's your week-to-week setup? And what would you actually prefer it to be? P.S. Mine is mostly working from home, and I know I'm seeking… something. Which, let's be honest, is part of why I posted this. ### Who explains the thing? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/who-explains-the-thing/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T09:03:45.000Z Watch any football match and there are two people talking. One calls the action. The other explains it - why that run dragged the defender out of position, why the manager made the change when he did. The second one isn't playing, and doesn't need to be. Their job is to make the game legible while it's happening. Business doesn't have that person. There's a gap opening up in how companies explain complex products, and nobody quite fills it. In-house product marketers know the features but aren't seen as independent. Engineers know it cold but aren't teachers. Comms teams work behind the scenes by design. Keynote speakers want the single big moment, not repeated sessions with custom content. So who explains the thing? I've been noticing this with AI especially. The technology is genuinely complex, the hype makes credibility harder, and the stakes are high enough that “just make a video” doesn't cut it. Companies need to explain themselves to their customers, their investors, their industry and their own employees. That's a lot of explaining. Some are hiring journalists. Some are borrowing academics. Some are creating hybrid roles that don't fit any job description. Some are calling people like me, which is nice. You could reasonably say this is just training with better branding. Fair - except the training industry sells competence, and this is something else. Nobody books a co-commentator to improve the team. They book one so the audience understands what it's watching. I don't know what the role gets called. Expert-in-residence? Explorer-in-residence? Something else beginning with E. I'm certain there's demand. On paper there's plenty of supply. In practice, not so much. ### Groove Theory #29: Minimum Viable Bedroom URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-29-minimum-viable-bedroom/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T09:33:49.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: getting back into focused work of 6-week Cycles and 2-week sprints; pondering the second-order effects of repeated heatwaves. I'm not really a hotel guy. Or maybe I am, but something's always off. The nice ones feel extravagant - all that space I don't use, the gym I won't visit, the picture on the wall for no one. The functional ones feel like a waste - why pay a premium for a box? Copenhagen, I thought, might be different. This week was our ninth Wavetable co-location. We're a remote company, so a few times a year we pick a city and work from there. This time: Copenhagen's Vesterbro neighbourhood. I found a place called CityHub - 215 ‘hubs’ across one floor in a former shopping mall. A hub is a sleeping pod with mood lighting. Shared bathrooms. And something called The Hangout. I'm 6'6". Most pod hotels, I can't sit up in bed. The reviews said this one was different. I booked it. Check-in was a wristband - also my room key, also checkout. No front desk queue, no plastic cards to lose. Turns out the founders had started with the same frustration. --- ## The Tension Sem Schuurkes and Pieter van Tilburg met at university and started traveling together. They kept being disappointed. Hotels charged for square footage they didn't use. Hostels had energy but lacked quality. Airbnb had the location but you never knew what you'd get. Each format failed differently. And the territory between all three - the gap at the centre - was empty. Their first prototype was four sleeping pods called "CityHub Bèta." Just enough to test whether anyone else saw what they saw. In 2015 they opened 50 hubs in Amsterdam. By 2016, they'd won Best Innovation in Hotel Concept at the Worldwide Hospitality Awards. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-27-at-22.13.09-1.png) Modular rooms: one up, one down. As Schuurkes put it: "We had no hospitality expertise before opening CityHub, but I think that's why we became a success - we thought completely differently than the traditional industry." Early on, people assumed they meant a capsule coffin. "Poorly automated booths where you'd sleep in a mailbox," as Schuurkes described it. They kept building anyway. Their bet: push further than hotels had dared, as long as the right things stayed familiar. --- ## Step Into It Nobody wants to be one of many. But most of us are (if we're honest about it). So where do you look? The interesting gaps aren't between us and the next person. They're at the centre of three or four competitors - where structure and modality keep everyone else out. Not where others are weak. Where they can't go. --- ## The Groove: Modality **Modality → Choosing the right vessel for your idea.** CityHub sits at the intersection of three formats: - **Japanese capsule hotel:** The pod. Space efficiency. The bedroom as sleep function only. - **Hostel:** The social layer. Community energy. A reason to leave your room. - **Boutique hotel:** Considered design. Quality materials. The feeling of being cared for. None of them could become what CityHub became. Capsule hotels have efficiency but no warmth. Hostels have energy but not quality. Boutique hotels have design but you're isolated, paying for area you don't use. ### Reduction The Copenhagen location is 215 hubs across a single floor - a former shopping mall redesigned by Spacon & X. Exposed ducts, the building's technical guts on display. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Cityhub-Copenhagen-Design-1.jpg) Check-in wristband = no fumbling for cards + every guest becomes brand ambassador My hub was 6 square metres. A king-sized bed, not a single. Maybe 15 elements total. I used all of them. USB charger. Coat hook. Mirror. Plant (I looked at it). Bed with a genuinely good mattress. Steps up to the bed. Shelf. Mood lighting via app. A robe. Nothing inherited by default. No picture on the wall. No floor area. No minibar. No free coffee - but [Buna & Co](https://bunaandco.dk/?ref=howardgray.net) across the street (shout out to Hassan). (I should add: this was June. Copenhagen in February, dark by 3pm? The model assumes you're leaving. In winter, I'm not sure I would.) ### Calibration Fernando and I walked Vesterbro that first night, the way we do on co-locations. Noticing how things work. CityHub kept coming up: why does sharing a bathroom feel fine here? Why doesn't 6 square metres feel like a sardine tin? We'd spent Monday with EY's global experience innovation team, teaching Raymond Loewy's ‘MAYA’ principle - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. 36 hours later we'd walked straight into it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/RaymondLoewy-1.jpeg) [Raymond Loewy](https://www.moma.org/collection/artists/9768?ref=howardgray.net) \- product designer extraordinaire The CityHub mattress is surprisingly good. The robe - a proper kimono - is nice enough to actually wear. The shared bathrooms serve maybe 30 people across 10 cubicles. I was expecting hostel weirdness. Instead: quality finishes, nice products in the showers. There's a sauna, which feels random and kinda nice. Materials that say *this was considered*, not *this was cheap*. Somehow it worked. Yotel - the airport pod chain - went minimal but cold. CityHub went minimal but warm. ### Shared Luxury Where did the saved square metres go? The Hangout - reception, co-work, lounge combined. But there's something else. The bathrooms are nice because they're shared - boutique finishes become affordable when 30 people use them. The savings go back to you. And CityHub assumes you'll spend them in the city. That's the bet: they're not trying to keep you in. No room service. No upsells. The room is where you sleep. Everything else happens out there - the restaurants, the coffee shops, the neighbourhood. The whole thing costs less than a mid-range hotel. Turns out floor area is expensive - especially when most of us care most about the sleep. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. The gap at the centre** We're probably in competition - the gaps may be small, but they're there. Look for the centre of three or four things, where structural reasons keep everyone else out. If in doubt, make a Venn diagram. ****2\. Count what you use** A hub has maybe 15 elements. Most offerings inherit 50 things by default - half go untouched. This doesn’t just apply to hotel rooms. ****3\. Know your mattress** The non-negotiable. The thing that makes everything else work. Sometimes it's so obvious you miss it. You're probably already standing - or lying - on it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Modality is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release Last year I was at CES in Vegas. The hotel room was almost the size of my apartment. I used hardly any of it. Copenhagen was different. A tiny pod on a floor of tiny pods. Strange solitude - alone but surrounded. The city became my living room. The hub was just where I slept. I think that's the thing about modality. Shift the vessel and you can shift how people feel. What's your mattress? Once you know that, everything else is up for grabs. Howard **P.S.** We've built open practice rooms around both MAYA and the world of hospitality - including [The Front Desk](https://rondo.wavetable.net/taster/front-desk?ref=howardgray.net), where you design customer experiences in real-time. --- ## Extended Mix - **Modular by design:** The hubs aren't built in - they're modular units that can be replaced, upgraded, or moved entirely. The building is a shell. The hubs are sustainable furniture. - **The shelter flip:** Off-season, empty hubs become temporary housing through Homies Foundation. Same pods, same quality - just a different guest. The rooms don't sit vacant; they become shelter. - **MAYA:** Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. Raymond Loewy's 1940s design principle - the industrial designer behind Lucky Strike packaging, Greyhound buses, Air Force One. His thesis: people want novelty but fear it. Push the aesthetics forward while keeping the function familiar enough to accept. ### The Feral Hope URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-feral-hope/ Last updated: 2026-06-17T12:45:32.000Z Last summer. A grimy bar on NYC's Lower East Side. Knicks versus Celtics, an NBA playoff game. I'm there with my friend who - inexplicably, given where we are - supports Boston. She is the only Celtics fan in the room. She knows this. The Knicks go up big. The bar gets loud. Not quite happy loud - more feral loud. Then Boston pegs them back. The room tightens up - like the East Village and Two Bridges are squeezing the LES from either side. There's muttering. Pacing. A guy at the end of the bar puts his head in his hands like he's receiving bad medical news. Another digs his claws into his friend's shoulder while his eyes stay fixed on the screen. Then the Knicks pull ahead again. My friend is looking nervous. Not because of the game - because of where we are. She's surrounded by people who are experiencing something closer to fever than fandom. I watched this unfold and thought: I know this energy. It's has a different scent, a broader accent, but I know it. I grew up with it. --- ## Same tribe, different accents I'm English. Which means I've spent my whole life watching my national soccer (y'know, football) team find new and creative ways to not win tournaments. As I write this, the World Cup has just kicked off. As a transatlantic transplant it feels a little peculiar - I'll be in London for the group stages, NYC for some of the knockouts, then London again. And last week it occurred to me. Seeing the reactions from this year's NBA finals game 3, thinking back to that Lower East Side bar last summer, sensing the atmosphere around England's upcoming campaign. It occurred to me that Knicks fans and England supporters might not just be similar. They might be the same tribe. Not in the details - obviously. But in the emotional contours. The way hope comes out sideways, disguised as aggression. The superstitions. The suspicion when things go well. The way decades of almost-winning has curdled into something that looks, from the outside, a bit unhinged. Both fanbases appear to be feral in a way that other fanbases aren't. Lakers fans expect to win. Patriots fans got used to winning. Knicks fans and England supporters expect to nearly win - and have developed an entire emotional architecture around that experience. --- ## The parallels Different sports, different continents, and different types of place (one is a country, the other may well believe it is a country - I'll let you decide which is which). And yet, once I started listing the parallels, I couldn't stop: | | Knicks | England | | --------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | | Originators who feel owed | MSG is "the Mecca" | "We invented football" | | Decades of hurt | 53 years without a title | 60 years since '66 | | Suspicious of hope | Nervous when up by 12 | Nervous when up 2-0 | | Demanding, not grateful | Boo their own players | Turn on managers mid-tournament | | Angry at the institution | Dolan, the Isiah years | The FA, "the blazers" | | Working class DNA | Oakley, Ewing, bruiser ball | Terrace culture, away days | | Confrontational | Spike jawing at Reggie | Too many hooligan incidents to mention, frankly | | Masochistic pride | "I survived the Isiah years" | "30 years of hurt" as anthem | | Joy comes out as aggression | Storming Seventh Avenue | Storming Boxpark | | Irony as armour | Riot jokes before Game 3 | "It's Coming Home" (knowing it won't) | --- Why, though? I started wondering what actually connects them. Why these two fanbases, specifically? Part of it is the obvious stuff. Both cities - New York, England's football heartlands - are dense, urban, industrial. The sports grew from the same soil: working class, street-level, the people's game. Not golf. Not tennis. Something you could play in a cage or on concrete. But there's something deeper. ### Entering the Orbit Both places carry the weight of having been the core, the centre, the claim to be the original. England had an empire. New York had - c'mon, still has - the conviction that it's the capital of everything. When you believe you're the original, the source, losing isn't just disappointing. It's an insult. A cosmic error that needs correcting. And maybe there's something in the immigration patterns, too. In 1948, a ship called the Empire Windrush brought Caribbean migrants to England - many settling in South London. Their children and grandchildren reshaped English football. Viv Anderson. Ian Wright. Raheem Sterling. Marcus Rashford. Bukayo Saka. Around the same time, Caribbean communities were putting down roots in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Patrick Ewing arrived from Jamaica in 1975\. This season's Knicks roster includes Karl-Anthony Towns (Dominican) and Jose Alvarado (Puerto Rican, Brooklyn-born). Before the Caribbean waves, it was Irish, Jewish, Italian. In 1946, the Knicks fielded six Jewish players. Basketball was the city game - a working class path out. English football grew the same way: factory towns, terraces, something to believe in when the week was brutal. The tribalism forged in tight spaces. There's a loyalty that borders on religious -just with different accents. Same desperate need for the team to mean something beyond the score. Both fanbases have been shaped by almost-winning. Not losing - almost-winning. There's an important difference. Almost-winning is getting to the door. Seeing it open. Watching it close. Sometimes it stubs your toe. That's what makes the hope so feral. It's not naive. It's wounded. It's been here before. --- The Knicks were in the Finals this past week. New York erupted when they clinched it for the first time in over 50 years. As I write, England are tuning up for their first World Cup match. Their fans watch with the same nervous energy, the same rituals, the same refusal to say "when" instead of "if." Two tribes, one affliction. Last week, strangers hugged on Seventh Avenue. Grown men cried on the subway. Two weeks before in North London, Arsenal fans did the same thing - estimates had over 1m people attending their Premier League victory parade. Sport doesn't need translating. The nervous is the same. The release is the same. And for a few minutes, people who have nothing in common have everything in common. It's coming home. (Inevitably, it won't.) But what if it did? Because if the Knicks can... ### 1,500 greatest song intros URL: https://www.howardgray.net/1-500-greatest-song-intros/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T09:18:36.000Z A friend of mine just shared a Spotify playlist. 1,500 of the greatest song intros ever. Not the greatest songs. The greatest intros. Those first few seconds that make you stop what you're doing. Raise your eyebrows. Smile. Sit open-mouthed. He runs an indie book publisher. This is just something he made, because he's been paying attention for decades. I asked him how he did it. Community searches. Grunt work. Going through his record collection. Asking people. Listening. Zero AI involved. You could reasonably say a model trained on enough listening would surface plenty of these. Probably true. It would also surface the obvious ones, and the obvious ones aren't why you'd open the playlist. An algorithm can tell you what's popular. It can't tell you what's great. Popular is data. Great is taste, built over years of curiosity and obsession. AI can find the pattern. It can't feel the shiver. My friend's name is DB Burkeman. He runs the rather superb [Blurring Books](https://www.blurringbooks.com/?ref=howardgray.net). P.S. Blurring describe themselves as “a publishing house focused on art, music and counterculture... by appealing to both academics and MORONS we seek to blur the lines of what constitutes an art book altogether - no coffee table required ;)” ### Clear Fountain, Population 26 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/clear-fountain-population-26/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T10:04:11.000Z France released their World Cup squad announcement video, and it's delightful. It's set in an Americana town called Clear Fountain. Population: 26. Clairefontaine is the historic HQ of French football. Clear Fountain is the literal English. A wink for les Anglais, et les Américains. 0:00 /1:26 1× Clear Fountain has a diner, a convenience store, a 90s-era office building, and traffic jams. Plus a new Volkswagen in every driveway, because they're a team sponsor. There are lots of lovely little touches. My favourites are Michael Olise doing a grass inspection in the back garden, and two Crystal Palace players making the cut. A squad list is twenty-six names. This makes you notice all of them. P.S. There are a couple of references to tournament co-hosts Mexico and Canada, but blink and you'll miss them. Art imitates life. ### Groove Theory #28 - Carlito's Run Time URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-28-carlitos-run-time/ Last updated: 2026-06-14T06:55:34.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory). I'm your host, Howard Gray - founder of [Wavetable](https://rondo.wavetable.net/groove-theory?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: Explaining myriad electronic music sub-genres to a newbie (a good teaching challenge); creating game characters - from zen mentor to washed-up rockstar. Bill Pankow kills the sound. This is how he works - images first, no dialogue, no score. Just bodies in space. He's been Brian De Palma's editor for nearly a decade, and De Palma shoots everything with intention. Pankow's job is to find it. On screen: a man walks into a room. Pool table under hard light, bar along the back wall, bathroom somewhere out of sight. Three zones and no easy way out. The man clocks the room. Someone else clocks him. Pankow watches it build. Finds his cuts. A version goes to Universal for the studio's notes. And then, they wait. --- ## The Tension The pool hall scene in *Carlito's Way* runs about seven minutes. Al Pacino walks into a drug deal with his cousin. By the end, almost everyone is dead. (Inevitably.) The film was heavily character-based with relatively little action. The pool hall sequence - the very first scene shot during production - had to be elaborate. It had to work. De Palma had already made *Scarface*, *The Untouchables*, *Dressed to Kill*. He knew how to build tension. But the studio's note came back: way too long. The team braced themselves. To their surprise, De Palma agreed. Something was off. The scene wasn't working. But his fix wasn't to cut - it was to add. More shots, extended beats, rebuilt sections. More setup, not less. The pool hall scene went to the studio once more. The notes came back: much better. Except, the scene was longer. They just couldn't tell. --- ## Step Into It You're on a Zoom/Teams/yogurt pots with bits of string. Someone's presenting. They're ten minutes in and you've already checked your email twice. It's not that they're going slowly. If anything, they're rushing - cramming points, skipping context, racing to cover everything. But somehow, it drags. Other times, you're in something for an hour and it feels like fifteen minutes. What's the difference? When you present (yes, alas, this includes you - and me), the people on the other end feel this too. *(A clue: a* [*Stanford study*](https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2021/02/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions?ref=howardgray.net) *found that video calls exhaust us because the brain works harder to read cues that aren't there.)* --- ## The Groove: Rhythm *The pacing and timing that keeps audiences engaged from start to finish.* Julian Palmer's superb shot-by-shot breakdown of the sequence. His observation: "The distance between characters IS the tension." So what did De Palma actually add? Geography. He felt the audience needed to see Carlito's viewpoint - where everyone was, how close they were - to understand the stakes. So he and Pankow added shots establishing the space. Three distinct zones - pool table, bar, bathroom - and the distance between them. Music louder at one end than the other. The colour palette draining as they walked deeper in. Billiard balls positioned with the same precision as the actors. More clarity. More room to breathe. And suddenly, faster. Run time and live time aren't the same thing. De Palma knew the difference. Pankow describes his approach simply: *"The rhythm has always been established by just feeling how long the shot needs to go on."* No formula. No stopwatch. Just feel. Paul Hirsch, who edited De Palma's earlier work, approaches it differently. A drummer turned editor, he thinks of film editing as musical interpretation - pacing scenes to an internal beat, rationing pauses like drum fills. Two opposite methods - Pankow cuts with the sound off, Hirsch thinks in music - but they land in the same place. Feel. Rhythm. An internal count that isn't on the clock. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/image.png) On set: Brian De Palma, Penelope Ann Miller, John Leguizamo, Al Pacino You can't shortcut this. Pankow edited four De Palma films before *Carlito's Way*. Hirsch cut *Star Wars* and *The Empire Strikes Back*. The feel comes from reps - hundreds of scenes, thousands of cuts, years of watching what works and what drags. That's both bad news and good news. One of our drills, [Director's Cut](https://rondo.wavetable.net/play/directors-cut?ref=howardgray.net), trains exactly this - spotting story elements and seeing how they change the feel of a story. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Diagnose the real problem** When something feels too long, the problem might not be length. On Scarface, Pacino couldn't settle in a scene. De Palma's diagnosis: **"The problem with the scene is not the scene, but the size of the set."* The surface symptom isn't the cause. Dig. ****2\. Pace to the internal beat** Sometimes more is faster. Hirsch thinks of editing as musical interpretation - there's an internal rhythm you're pacing to, not a timer. Also see - [Intensity, not Tempo](https://www.howardgray.net/tempo-not-intensity/). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) Rhythm is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release Run time is what the stopwatch says. Live time is what the audience experiences. They're not the same. Bill Pankow doesn't use a stopwatch. Neither does our audience. Setup that clarifies feels fast. Rushing that confuses feels slow. Carlito walks into that pool hall and clocks the room - pool table, bar, bathroom. Three zones. By the time the tension breaks, we know exactly where everyone is standing. That's why it works. That's why seven minutes feels like three. Clock the room. Run time or live time? Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **The escalator problem:** *Carlito's Way* ends with a chase through Grand Central station. Pankow had to cut the escalator sequence so audiences wouldn't notice how long it was actually running. Same principle - run time versus live time. - **The Herrmann discovery:** While cutting *Sisters*, Paul Hirsch felt the footage was flat. He synced the *Psycho* score over De Palma's footage as a temp track - and suddenly it worked. Hirsch convinced De Palma that Bernard Herrmann was their man. Herrmann, then in his sixties and considered past his prime, was hired immediately. The collaboration relaunched his career. - **Presentations that fly by:** At SXSW London, I sat in a [LEGO Foundation session](https://www.howardgray.net/duck-tales-at-sxsw-london/). Slides, yes - but three hands-on building moments woven in. 35 mins minutes felt like 15\. The time flew because we were inside, doing it, vs. watching from the edges. ### Choose life. Choose Scotland URL: https://www.howardgray.net/choose-life-choose-scotland/ Last updated: 2026-06-12T20:23:03.000Z Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f'ing big television. Choose Scotland. This new Adidas spot featuring Scott McTominay is rather wonderful - Iggy Pop, Irvine Welsh, and a genuinely great renaissance story. From Man United benchwarmer to Napoli talisman, sartorial icon, and carrying Scotland's World Cup hopes. 0:00 /1:00 1× The only thing I'm left wondering: if he's Renton, who's Begbie? ### Duck Tales at SXSW London URL: https://www.howardgray.net/duck-tales-at-sxsw-london/ Last updated: 2026-06-05T08:59:28.000Z Making a duck out of Lego is harder than you'd think, especially when you're a Duplo kinda guy. At least that was my excuse. The LEGO Foundation ran a session at SXSW London on play-based learning and it was rather lovely. Within 2 minutes they had all of us building ducks from scratch. QR code, digital bricks, then submit your duck into the pond where you get to see everyone else's paddle around. No instructions, no picture to work from - just a pile of bricks and the internal panic of realising you have no idea what a duck actually looks like when you have to make one yourself. Next, a bit of background on their Build for Change programs - where kids at school use Lego to show how they'd reimagine school (yes, you read that correctly). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/IMG_2310.JPG) Then, we had 5 minutes to create our own new wave city from a packet of Lego bricks. Followed by a collaboration with the person siting next to us. Our row bent the rules a bit and built a 5-person mega-structure. Alas, it didn't pass zoning regulations. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/06/Lego4.JPG) This session was delightful for a few reasons: - It was a talk, yet it had not 1, not 2, but 3 interactive elements - Ironically, you can go to a talk at an event like this, but don't get a chance to speak to people who are clearly there for a similar reason to you - everyone funnels in and out. Making stuff together changes that - Talks are good for inspiration and slogans, but the actual application is a whole other thing. 'Tap into your inner child!' feels very different when you have to make a city in 5 mins from a grab-bag of plastic bricks. Making, collaborating, sharing. Still underrated. Kids know this already, of course. Shout out to Lego Foundation's David Pallash and Joana Lenkova for bringing the playful vibes. P.S. My duck turned out fine (ish). Just can't believe I didn't use the red bit for a beak. ### Groove Theory #27: The 32-Page Life URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-27-the-32-page-life/ Last updated: 2026-05-31T07:08:22.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: searching for the key for my apartment windows (heatwave alert); building ten interactive practice drills in two weeks (no sweat…metaphorically, at least). Saturday night by the bunk bed. Soft lamp and pajamas. My son picks a book from the pile. I read. We both get drowsy. And somewhere in the middle of those 300gsm pages, the thought drifts in: *how hard could this *really* be?* Not parenting. That’s hard, make no mistake. I mean the books. Not *War & Peace*. Not even a romance novel knocked out by AI. No, easier still. Kids’ books. Fewer words than my supermarket list, cute stories any of us could make up. Especially those illustrated biography ones. You’ve seen them - the little square format, the bold faces. Coco Chanel. Frida Kahlo. David Bowie. Same format, same typography, same distinctive style. They’re in every airport, every grandparent’s house, every classroom library. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/image-4.png) Then I realised: it’s one person. One woman in Barcelona has written over 150 of these biographies. She’s sold 15 million copies in 40+ languages. Her name is Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara, and she was past forty when she wrote the first one. Which made me wonder what I was missing. --- ## The Tension In 2014, Sánchez Vegara’s twin nieces Alba and Claudia were born. She went to buy them a book about an inspiring woman - the kind of book she wished she’d had as a kid, growing up idolising Pippi Longstocking and the Spanish poet Gloria Fuertes. It didn’t exist. So she wrote one. The biggest problem she faced was compression. How do you fit Coco Chanel into 32 pages? Every turning point, every significant choice, distilled to something a six-year-old can follow while sitting on a parent’s lap? Harder than it sounds. But she’d been training for exactly this problem for 20 years without knowing it. Before the biographies, Sánchez Vegara was a copywriter and creative director in Barcelona ad agencies. Headlines. Storyboards. 30-second spots. Two decades of making big ideas fit small spaces. “Working in advertising,” she says, “you learn to condense information as much as possible.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/image-5.png) Headlines became 32-page stories. Storyboards became illustrated spreads. The skill she’d built - condensing for a distracted audience - turned out to be perfect for condensing a life. The format stripped everything back: childhood → struggles → one contribution. Same arc, every time. The formula looks like a shortcut. But the discipline is in the cutting - knowing what to leave out so a child can feel something true about a person they’ll never meet. --- ## Step Into It A couple of weeks ago I went to a dinner. 18 people at a big long table. I didn’t know any of them. The host put me on the spot: *“Howard, remind us what your company does?”* I could feel the room. No one wanted a 2-minute answer. 30 seconds, maybe. So, how about 3 seconds? *“Harvard Business School meets flight simulator.”* Eyebrows raised, conversations continued, then a few people came up to me later to chat. It worked. You’ve been there. Someone asks what you do. You could tell them everything - the full context, the nuance, the accumulated complexity, what makes it interesting to you. Or you could compress. The essence, not the exhaustive. What do you cut? --- ## The Groove: Structure *Shape the idea.* Sánchez Vegara reads her drafts "as if I was six years old." Not writing down to children, but remembering who she was. That’s harder than it sounds. Your six-year-old self isn’t sitting around in your memory, fully formed and ready to consult. You have to reconstruct them - what confused them, what bored them, what made them lean in. What did that kid need to feel something true about a stranger? Not every fact. Not the full CV. Just enough to care. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/DavidBowie.jpg) [Be like Bowie](https://www.howardgray.net/be-like-bowie/) 32 pages is a hard limit. But constraints force choices - you have to decide what matters. The arc of Little People, BIG DREAMS is broadly: Childhood → struggles → one contribution. If it doesn’t fit that arc, it’s doesn’t make the cut. (Ever notice how the best elevator pitches work the same way?) She’s done this 150+ times now. There’s a different illustrator for each one - Gee Fan Eng in Malaysia for Frida Kahlo, Ana Sanfelippo in Buenos Aires for Emmeline Pankhurst, Miguel Bustos in Barcelona for Bruce Lee. She matches artist to subject, briefs them with detailed references, and still creative directs every spread. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/Ana-Sanfelippo.jpg) Assorted works by [Ana Sanfelippo](https://anasanfelippo.com/copy-of-selected-work?ref=howardgray.net) The books don’t look the same. Eng’s Frida is soft watercolours. Cachetejack, a Spanish duo, bring something almost pop-art. But they all feel the same. Same format, same arc, same weight when you hold them. The constraint holds it together. The variation keeps it alive. Not everyone loves the formula. Rosa Parks was more than a bus seat. MLK was more than a dream. The format that makes history accessible also makes it smaller. That's the deal she made. --- 🎹 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. 30 Seconds to 32 Pages** She spent years doing headlines, storyboards, 30-second spots. I can be skeptical of advertising as an industry - and ironically, it does a terrible job of explaining its own value. But the skills? Condensing without losing meaning, making something connect in 30 seconds? They matter. ****2\. Everyone loves simplicity (in theory)** Critics call these “the Funko Pops of children’s publishing.” Everyone says they want simplicity - until someone actually delivers it, and then it’s too simple, too reductive, too neat. Her response: “You can address any issue with children - from war to segregation to sexual identity - as long as you approach it in an honest and sincere way.” ****3\. Same arc, different hands** Malaysia, Buenos Aires, London, Barcelona. Watercolours, pen-and-ink, digital, acrylics. 150+ artists, all different. But every book feels like it belongs to the same family. The format is the brand. The artist brings the soul. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small-1.png) Structure is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release Sánchez Vegara wrote herself a note years ago: "I'll sell a million books." She stuck it on her fridge. She's at 15 million books now. Childhood → struggles → one contribution. She's told that story 150 times. Same arc, different life. This newsletter has its own version. Opening hook, tension, step into it, groove, release. Honestly, section headings I'm not wild about - they can feel restrictive, even formulaic, sometimes. But they mean I can keep writing. My [previous newsletter](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/adventures/) was looser, more fun at first. Then it wandered. Then it got hard to write. Then it stopped. This one is still going. Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara’s structure let 150 artists contribute without losing her voice. Mine lets me keep showing up. Yours might do something else entirely. It's never as easy as it looks from the bunk bed. But the structure helps. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **First book (2012):** *ME: The Book of Your Life* \- a self-published adult journal. She printed 1,000 copies and sold them over a year. The kids’ series came later. - **The workspace:** She lives in a 19th-century house near Barcelona. Her office is a MacBook and a glass of water she moves around following the sunlight. 10am-5pm, one hour lunch break. (Do people actually do this? Yesterday I had three coffees before 10, forgot to eat lunch, and later spilt yogurt down my shirt.) - **Back to the dinner**: Later that evening, the host cold-called me again in front of everyone: *"Howard, what are you working on right now?".* Me: *"The NYC part of me wants to tell you all about it. The British part wants to deflect so everyone else can keep eating their dinner."* The British part won. Speaking of childhood → struggles - this might be one of mine. ### The Thick of A.I. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-thick-of-a-i/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:17.000Z One of the pernicious effects of using - and consuming - a lot of AI-assisted material is that it colours your own thinking. So I've hired a sociopath to help me. My editor is named Malcolm - an homage to Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It. (Sensitive readers, view this with caution.) Tucker is head of comms within a British government department. A sweary, explosive lunatic - but one who cares deeply about craft. Every word matters. Every sentence earns its place. Or else. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-30-at-10.53.55-2.jpg) I write something, share it with Malcolm for review, whereupon he picks out where I've slipped into Tech Bro energy, poor grammar, being tooooo self-deprecating. He also helps with my ongoing identity crisis of British vs American English. I've found Malcolm surprisingly helpful. Cranky and terse, but weirdly patient. Yes, Malcolm is an AI. A Claude skill I built for editing. The irony is not lost on me. But at least an AI couldn't actually become Malcolm Tucker. I hope. P.S. In line with modern HR practices, I've reluctantly had to tone down his language. ### Stephen J. Canell's memorable motif URL: https://www.howardgray.net/stephen-j-canells-memorable-motif/ Last updated: 2026-05-20T11:27:27.000Z At the end of every A-Team episode, after the credits, there's a mysterious motif. A writer, typing. A musical riff. It's one of the smartest signature moves I've seen. The writer is Stephen J. Cannell. The guy who created the show. In 1979, Cannell was a successful writer at Universal - he'd just won an Emmy for The Rockford Files. The usual move was to stay, take the studio's cash, keep writing hits. Instead, he left. He started his own production company. And made himself the logo. "Early 80s, I was referred to as a TV mogul. I hated that. A mogul was a guy in a green suit who kept trying to score actresses. I'd say - I'm not a mogul, I'm a writer. I write every day for five hours." When working on logo ideas, his publicist suggested doing something at the typewriter. So they did. Cannell typing, throwing paper over his shoulder, name on screen. The A-Team, Hardcastle and McCormick, Hunter, Riptide - all carried that same closing shot. Over 1,500 episodes on network TV, syndicated around the world. 0:00 /0:08 1× Pretty soon, people weren’t coming up to Cannell and calling him a mogul - they’d say ‘ah, you’re the writer!’ This was decades before Netflix's 'ta-dum' or the Windows 95 startup sound. Watching in a rural village in England, it burned into my 8-year-old brain. And given I'm writing about it 20 (ok, 35) years later, it was a pretty smart thing for him to build. Your signature doesn't have to look like what everyone else is doing. Sometimes it's quieter. Sometimes it's just a motif, done consistently, in a place only you thought to claim. Even when today's world can feel noisy and saturated, there are still untapped spaces. Where's yours? P.S. For more riffs like this, subscribe to [Groove Theory](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter). Or I’ll set B.A. and Howlin’ Mad Murdoch on ya. ### Groove Theory #26 - Two Random Dudes URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-26-two-random-dudes/ Last updated: 2026-05-17T06:49:31.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: Realising Groove Theory is 1 year old today. I often question why I’m doing it. Then I remember. --- The whales were nonplussed. I could understand why. The sea was grouchy, the wind icy, the rain horizontal. They stayed underwater, while I waited above deck, sliding around on a plastic bench. And wearing shorts, for reasons I still can’t explain. During that whale watching trip near Saguenay in Quebec I witnessed just one flash of fin. Suffice to say, I left that part of the world feeling… underwhelmed. And cold. Turns out I wasn't paying attention. At the same time I was questioning my wardrobe choices, a duo in the town were making some important ones of their own. --- Angine de Poitrine just sold out a world tour by painting their entire bodies, refusing to speak human languages, and wearing papier-mâché masks with three-foot noses. Their name translates roughly to “chest pain.” They describe their sound as “dissonance-induced cardiac malfunction.” They also call themselves a “Mantra-Rock Dada Pythago-Cubist Orchestra.” I don’t know what that means. I don’t think they do either. And they’re from Saguenay, Quebec. The band is two anonymous musicians who’ve been playing together since they were thirteen. Their music is math rock meets Turkish psychedelia meets something I can’t quite place. There are no vocals. Time signatures most people can’t follow. And microtonal guitars - instruments with extra frets that let you play the notes *between* the standard twelve notes in Western music. To most ears, it sounds slightly wrong. (Deliberately so.) They’re known only by their stage names Khn and Klek, and are, by their own admission, “two random dudes.” --- ## The Tension Angine had a practical problem - booked to play the same venue, twice in one week. In a small town, if people recognise you from Monday’s gig, are they really coming back on Thursday? So they wore masks and played under a different name. Just for that one show, supposedly. But they kept at it. Four years later, they have giant papier-mâché proboscis monkey noses, full-body black-and-white polka dot costumes, every inch of exposed skin painted before every performance. They invented an [alien language](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr972qbq1lE&list=RDsfDtfz7vXkY&index=23&ref=howardgray.net) and refuse to speak anything else on camera or on stage. When Radio-Canada tried to interview them, they answered every question in the made-up language. In character. The whole time. “This project,” one of them said, “is a culmination of a lot of years of inside jokes.” I believe him. In December 2025, they got a slot at Trans Musicales in Rennes - a festival known for breaking new acts. Seattle radio station KEXP recorded a session. Lots of bands do this. It's part of the grind. Then, in Feburary, the KEXP video was posted on YouTube. It got two million views in the first week. Fourteen million two months later. Their album Vol. II hit 84 on Metacritic. Streaming jumped 124%. French tours sold out. New York dates gone in minutes. Nine countries, forty-one concerts booked. Six weeks earlier, they'd played to 100 people in Quebec. --- ## Step Into It Think about the last thing you sent someone unprompted. Not the article you were supposed to share for work, or the video that was clearly engineered for engagement. No, I mean the thing you couldn't quite explain - you just said "watch this" and waited. It probably wasn't polished. Probably wasn't optimised for anything. No hook in the first three seconds, no caption telling you how to feel. There's a difference between content built to capture attention and something that just... has it. You can feel it immediately. One is trying to pull you in. The other already has you. But you can’t quite put your finger on why. --- ## The Groove: Presence *Bring yourself into it* Presence here isn't about visibility - they're literally hiding behind masks. I think it's about something else: the discipline needed to get this good, the commitment to never break character, and the focus to hold it together when you can barely see your own fretboard. Khn and Klek had to show up, paint themselves, put on the noses, and do the thing - live, in front of people, night after night, for years before anyone outside Quebec noticed. Behind the costumes, there's serious craft. A custom double-neck hybrid - one side guitar, one side bass, both wired separately, both with extra frets. The current instrument was built by a Saguenay luthier over 150 hours. It has phosphorescent fret markers on the side and top of the neck, because Khn can't see well through the mask. The weirdness gets you to look. But the skill is why you stay. There's a reaction video of a [popular guitar teacher watching them play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pQVKJUiI08&list=RDsfDtfz7vXkY&index=11&ref=howardgray.net). You can see several moments where he realises in ever-increasing detail what he's actually looking at. And they're clearly having the time of their lives. Two incredibly talented people building a wall of sound in real time, layers stacking through loop pedals, no backing tracks, no band. The joy is visible even through three-foot noses. They're creatures from outer space. Except you know they're not. Both things feel true at once, which I think is a big part of what holds our attention. --- 🎹 ****Groove Notes** ****1) Private work stays private** Even now, you can't get discovered in private. I know - it would be nice if the work could just speak for itself. But it has to exist somewhere it can be found - a gig, a friend with a camera, a link someone actually sends. ****2) The constraint that frees** Sometimes the weird limitation is what lets you commit fully - or find a completely different way of doing the thing. (See also: Derek Sivers on '[More than One](https://sive.rs/more-than-one?ref=howardgray.net)') ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) Presence is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/) --- ## The Release Maybe Angine de Poitrine just got lucky. Right algorithm, right moment. A couple of months ago they were playing to 100 people in Quebec, so it’s not like this was some carefully orchestrated campaign. But I don’t think luck explains why I’ve watched them a dozen times. Or why I sent it to my Dad, and now he’s considering a going to a festival in Quebec instead of the one he was at in Wrexham last weekend. That link has since found its way to people aged 4, 9, 23, 44, 52 and 71\. (Those may be next week's winning lottery numbers. Your wire transfers can be sent to my usual account.) Nothing about this should work - microtonal guitars, an alien language, giant noses, no vocals, no English, no faces. And yet here we are. Maybe because underneath all the absurdity, you can tell they're having a blast. The serious craft and the ridiculous costumes aren't at war - they're the same thing. I keep thinking about all the advice we get: smooth the edges, meet people where they are, make things accessible. And then two random dudes from Saguenay ignore all of it and the whole thing goes sideways anyway. Presence isn’t always about being accessible - or even relatable. It can also be about being so fully committed to the thing - whatever strange shape it takes - that people can’t look away. Showing up to do the thing, again and again. Or maybe they’re just two guys in giant noses having a whale of a time. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **Saguenay stories**: - The locals call themselves “bleuets” (blueberries) - the region is one of the world’s largest wild blueberry producers. - The town has a 21-metre aluminum pyramid called the Pyramid of Ha! Ha! - a monument to the devastating 1996 flood. The “Ha! Ha!” is from the local river name, which itself comes from an old French term for a dead-end path. - **First frets**: Khn built the first microtonal guitar himself before the custom one. His method: "I added more frets on a guitar, with a saw." - **Serious fun**: far too many YouTube comments to name check. Here are two for starters: - *I'd argue that these dudes are actually serious as fuck about being absolute goofballs. They've obviously put an extreme amount of thought and effort into this act.* - *the only thing better that watching this for the first time, is watching someone else watch it for the first time*[](https://www.youtube.com/create%5Fchannel?upsell=comment&ref=howardgray.net) ### The Right Wrong Fix URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-right-wrong-fix/ Last updated: 2026-05-13T20:11:48.000Z Brian De Palma got studio notes on ‘Carlito's Way’. The scene was too long. Way too long. Cut it down. So he did the opposite. He made it longer. The scene in question: Al Pacino's character caught in the middle of a drug deal he can sense is about to go wrong. De Palma understood the studio was right that something felt off. But their diagnosis was wrong. The scene wasn't too long. It wasn't long enough. De Palma knew he hadn’t set up the suspense properly. So they re-cut - expanded it, made it much longer. Added the body language, pauses, extra cuts that weren't in the first version. The studio see the new cut. They’re delighted. Their send the notes: “it’s much better now it’s shorter.” The fix isn't always the obvious one. The skill is knowing which is the right fix to make. This is difficult, of course, but that's kinda the point. We're conditioned to cut, compress. But longer can feel shorter. Darker can feel lighter. Complex can feel simple. And I don't think an AI knows how to be Benny Blanco from the Bronx. ### Voiceover for 20,000 people URL: https://www.howardgray.net/voiceover-for-20-000-people/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T13:58:42.000Z I'm writing voiceover for a global leadership experience - 20,000 people who don't all speak English at home. The hard part isn't clarity - it's keeping the narrative alive. The easy move here is to simplify everything - short sentences, plain words, nothing that could trip anyone up. But this project is narrative-driven. The language isn't just instructions; it's atmosphere. It's how people feel inside the thing. Strip too much and you lose the texture. Keep too much and you lose people. The crew here at Wavetable are in the final sprint of building a digital game experience, along with a set of 20 live workshops, running across 3 timezones, for people doing all kinds of different roles. How do you weave the thread? It's tricky. A few things we're learning: - **Idioms are expensive.** Every "hit the ground running" or "get the ball rolling" costs someone a few seconds of translation. Sometimes it's worth it. Usually it isn't. - **Vivid beats clever.** "The room goes dark" works in São Paulo and Mumbai. "The lights take their leave" might not. Concrete images travel better than wordplay. - **Read it aloud.... slowly.** If it feels awkward at half speed, it'll feel impossible for someone processing in their second language. - **AI writes American.** If you use an AI tool, it'll likely default to US - and specifically the kind of US where people "double-click" on ideas and "level up" their thinking. Not always helpful when you're writing for Jakarta or Belgrade. Clarity and immersion aren't opposites - but the overlap is narrow. Language matters. ### Several Futures URL: https://www.howardgray.net/several-futures/ Last updated: 2026-05-10T20:11:11.000Z The people who look most certain right now might be the least prepared. Nate Hagens isn't one of them. Nate has spent years thinking deeply about energy, climate, and how futures actually unfold. His podcast '[The Great Simplification](https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/?ref=howardgray.net)' is well worth checking out. His question: how do we think about the future when many plausible futures are possible? Nate's current focus is scenario thinking - it's how he keeps moving when information is overwhelming. Not as a nice-to-have, but as essential practice. He describes this as needing to move from trying to be right - making a prediction or forecast - to being prepared for several futures. And then contributing to whichever one occurs. A scenario isn't a prediction. It's a coherent mini-world - a set of conditions that hangs together well enough to ask questions of it. More outcomes, more variables, squishy stuff in the middle. What makes this hard is that humans tend toward overconfidence. Our nervous systems want resolution. Our careers and identities attach to particular outcomes. And culture rewards confident stories over honest uncertainty. Scenario thinking has to be deliberate - it doesn't come naturally. I wonder how many people are holding a forecast they're afraid to let go of. PS: Scenarios are at the heart of what we build at Wavetable. If you want to explore - give us a holler. ### The tricky bit about LinkedIn riffing URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-tricky-bit-about-linkedin-riffing/ Last updated: 2026-05-08T13:53:55.000Z I keep writing posts about DJs and Christian Bale auditions and what Nintendo knows about tutorials. That's the stuff that feels like me. The unexpected connection. The thing I noticed, that maybe you didn't. BUT... But my network is a mix. Old colleagues. Clients. People I met at conferences, or taught a class. Some people - honestly - I'd like to become people who hire us. Most of them won't. And I don't always know which is which. The advice says: Write for your ideal customer profile. Lead with outcomes. Put "I solve X for Y in Z days" as your headline. Post a lead magnet twice a week. Comment 10 times a day. Share a selfie. Run funnels. Have a spiky point of view. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a f'ing big television. Choose life. I can't do that. It's not how my brain works. And honestly, I don't want to become 'the guy' who does. I find writing riffs on band soundchecks or Japanese town planning or how sandwiches inspired video game design weirdly easy. A short bit of thought leadership or sharing our latest project? Horrible. So I'm stuck in the middle - writing what feels true and hoping the right people find it. Some weeks that feels like integrity. Other weeks it feels like a really bad strategy. Maybe others feel this tension. Or did everyone figure this out years ago? ### Most Podcasts Just... End. Why? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/most-podcasts-just-end-why/ Last updated: 2026-05-06T13:55:40.000Z Most podcasts just... end. No reflection, no pause. And it's actually a bit weird. Given that many podcasts intend to inform, inspire, educate - they miss one essential element to make that work. The debrief. Adam Morgan does something different on [Let's Make This More Interesting](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/lets-make-this-more-interesting/id1707821202?ref=howardgray.net). At the end - and often midway through - he cuts away from the guest. Just him, reflecting on what he just heard. Little snippets that got him thinking. Some hindsight now he's absorbed it. He'll point us toward things we might have missed. Breaking the fourth wall. It's a really nice touch - and it works. Having these chunks rather than one long unbroken discussion is smart. It's how learning actually works. Process, reflect, connect. Debriefs are standard in learning design. We'd never run a workshop and just... end. We always make space to ask: what did you notice? What stood out? What will you take with you? Interesting that more media doesn't borrow from this. Debriefs would indeed Make This More Interesting. Adam's latest episode with Rory Sutherland is a good example if you want to hear it in action - not to mention a whole lot of Rory's oblique ideas and riffs. ### The A.I. Bridge URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-a-i-bridge/ Last updated: 2026-05-04T13:49:31.000Z Too expensive to be fast. Not experienced enough to be essential. That's the mid-career fear. But what if it's backwards? The AI skills conversation usually splits into two camps. Juniors have the tools. They're fast, native, fearless with new tech. But they haven't built the reps yet - the judgment that comes from seeing things go wrong a hundred times. Seniors have the judgment. The pattern recognition. The "I've seen this before" instinct. But the tools can feel foreign, and there's a learning curve they didn't budget for. A lot of people worry about the middle. Squeezed from both sides. And yet. Mid-career might actually be the sweet spot. Enough reps to have judgment. Young enough to learn the tools without fighting them. The question isn't junior vs senior. It's: who's building in both directions? Juniors need to build reps - not just outputs, but the kind of practice that builds instinct and wisdom. Seniors need to get hands-on with the tools - not delegate, actually use them. And the middle? Maybe they're not as stuck as everyone assumes. As for how everyone builds in both directions - that's for another post. P.S. This slide came from my talk on AI Acceleration at mci group's Business Academy. ### Groove Theory #25 - The Woman with the Moog URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-25-the-woman-with-the-moog/ Last updated: 2026-05-03T07:10:07.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: readying an Ibiza return (including [fish shack](https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant%5FReview-g26654814-d7302522-Reviews-The%5FFish%5FShack-Cap%5FMartinet%5FIbiza%5FBalearic%5FIslands.html?ref=howardgray.net), no less); spinning up a new [storybuilding game](https://rondo.wavetable.net/play/directors-cut?ref=howardgray.net) It's the late 1960s on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and there's a strange hammering noise coming from a woman’s apartment. The early Moog oscillators drifted constantly - you could record one or two measures, maybe, before the whole thing slid out of tune. So she would bang on the casing with a hammer, coax it back, and start again. She’d play one note at a time, on a synth that could only play one note at a time. She did this for a thousand hours, after her day job, on an eight-track recorder she'd built from used parts. At the time, even Abbey Road was still on four-track. The result was the first classical album to sell a million copies. Within a few years, she’d soundtracked three of the most iconic movies ever made. Her name was Wendy Carlos. ## The Tension The million-selling album was *Switched-On Bach* \- Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, pieces by Beethoven and Handel - all of it performed on a Moog synthesizer. Every note layered by hand. Every part recorded separately, coordinated by click track. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/image-2.png) It was a proof of concept. Carlos wanted to make her own music, but first she had to prove the Moog could make *any* music. So she chose Bach - a Trojan horse. The material was the credentials; the instrument was the point. On its release in 1968, the classical establishment was appalled - Switched-On Bach caused a fury among purists, who watched in horror as it became the first classical recording to sell a million copies. The avant-garde wasn't any kinder. They were deep in atonal serialism; Carlos wanted to make music you could actually listen to. She fit neither world. Too electronic for the traditionalists, too melodic for the experimentalists. And she was alone. Not just professionally - personally. There were parts of herself she couldn't share with anyone yet. Some nights, she would ride the subway to Fifth Avenue and walk up and down the streets just to feel surrounded by people. "That's the one problem with being a Maverick," she said later. "One feels so alone." Of course, Carlos had something most people don't: she was right. The Moog *could* make music. Her bet paid off. But she didn't know that when she was banging on the casing with a hammer. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/image.png) Wendy Carlos. image: El Pais ## Step into it You've built something new. But no one's asking for it yet - the vocabulary doesn't exist. So you find yourself translating it into terms people already understand, just to get in the room. You call it "like X but for Y." You lead with the credential they recognise, not the thing you actually made. It works. You get the meeting. But somewhere around the third time you explain it that way, you start to wonder: *how long do I keep proving myself in someone else's language?* ## The Groove: Rhythm After Switched-On Bach, Carlos scored A Clockwork Orange for Stanley Kubrick: > “The face-to-face meetings for spotting music couldn’t have lasted very much more than a week or two each for me and my then partner and producer, Rachel… Since my none-too-portable studio was located in New York, and Kubrick didn’t travel, the rest of the collaboration took place via long phone calls and messages, express packages of cassettes, tapes, film and video footage, and written memos and notes.” Then he asked her back for The Shining. She spent two years on it. No contract - just Kubrick's word and the work. She delivered twenty-four tracks. He used three. "All Carlos's music arrived and Stanley was very dissatisfied," his editor said later. "By then he'd made up his mind to go with Penderecki and Ligeti." She considered legal action. There was no contract, so there was no case. She vowed never to work with him again. And then she kept going. More records. More soundtracks. Forty more years of work, most of it in near-total isolation - rarely giving interviews, never joining a scene. Work wasn't the cause of her isolation - it was her response to it. The one thing she could control. “Composing takes up every waking moment," she said. "The best ideas come when I've really spent a lot of time on it, then leave it. You have to grab it before it vanishes - if you give it an hour, it will probably be gone.” The validation did come. Eventually. Just not from the places she might have expected. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/Wendy-Carlos-Residence.jpg) ## Groove Notes 💡 ****1\. Users as builders** Carlos wasn't just a Moog user - she helped build it. She met Robert Moog in 1964 and became one of his most demanding collaborators, pushing for a touch-sensitive keyboard and a polyphonic generator bank years before either was standard. "He was a creative engineer who spoke music," she said. "I was a musician who spoke science." ****2\. Proof of concept needn't be compromise** Carlos chose Bach because Bach would get people to listen. Familiar material, unfamiliar instrument. She had to prove the Moog could make music before anyone would trust her to make her own. The three years of Bach were the price of admission. Rhythm is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/04/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) ## The Release Forty years after Switched-On Bach, when David Fincher was briefing Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on his movie “The Social Network”, he had one reference: "Do it like Wendy Carlos would." Reznor spent three weeks figuring out how that could work. "It was the one moment in the process where it felt like there may be a homicide," he said later. (For more on Trent Reznor, see [Groove Theory #10](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-10-when-your-song-becomes-someone-elses/).) Her name still meant something. Four decades on, in a world full of electronic music, Fincher reached for Wendy Carlos. Daft Punk built their Tron: Legacy score on top of her original soundtrack. Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Giorgio Moroder, Radiohead - all cited her influence. --- Wendy Carlos is 85 now. She hasn't given an interview in over a decade. When a biographer tried to write about her, dozens of people who'd worked with her over sixty years declined to be interviewed. Not one person in her personal or professional circle agreed to speak on the record. Her music isn't on Spotify - she issues takedowns when people upload it. She's still in New York, still working, still alone. I don't think the recognition fixed that. Maybe it was never supposed to. Some nights, you walk Fifth Avenue just to feel surrounded by people. Howard > “What is full of redundancy or formula is predictably boring. What is free of all structure or discipline is randomly boring. In between lies art.” > \- Wendy Carlos ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/05/image-3.png) Wendy Carlos, 2007. --- ## Extended Mix - Wavetable team member Fer Franco’s [new album](https://open.spotify.com/album/1n1di9PM79T3Jp8goGNhQg?si=npWvD57UTz61VAUYS0tVWw&ref=howardgray.net) is out this week - the latest in a long line of artists to build on the foundations of the synth pioneers - And speaking of Wavetable, our company name came from the world of synthesizers - wavetable synthesis blends digital precision with analog warmth. Felt right. ### The Inside Intro URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-inside-intro/ Last updated: 2026-05-02T13:36:36.000Z A tip for anyone facilitating for a group that isn't theirs. Get someone from the client's team to introduce it. It only needs a minute. Even 30 seconds. Something like: *"Hi everyone - we're here because of \[X\]. As you know, we're focused on \[Y\]. So we've brought in \[NAME\] to help us with \[TOPIC\]."* That's it. But it changes everything. There are some good reasons why it works: - **Authority transfer**. When an insider vouches for you, their credibility becomes yours. You're not a stranger - you're someone they invited. - **Relevance framing**. You can't say why this matters to them - you're the outsider. When it comes from inside, it connects differently. - **Enrollment over attendance**. Shifts the room from "you have to be here" to "we wanted this." Different energy to start with. (This touches on Cialdini's work on authority and commitment, and Keller's research on relevance in learning - if you want to dig deeper.) It shifts the room from "you have to be here" to "we wanted this." Different energy to start with. I've noticed this makes every session better. Now I ask for it every time. ### How to open a Primary School URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-open-a-primary-school/ Last updated: 2026-05-01T10:43:43.000Z Doug King wanted to open primary schools. He'd made his money in commodities trading - mathematical engineering degree from Loughborough, hedge funds, rapeseed oil processing. His parents were teachers. His cousin's a headmistress. When he started thinking about giving back, education felt obvious. The plan: build a network of academies in forgotten coastal towns around Britain. Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. "They're very seasonal," he told the Football Boardroom podcast. "You don't go there unless you go there. And so they get a bit forgotten." He went to a few conferences. Talked to the right people. Did the maths. "Wow," he thought. "This is going to take me 150 million years." So he bought a football club instead. --- Coventry City had won the FA Cup in 1987 and spent the next three decades sliding. League Two - English football's fourth tier - in 2017\. Homeless for years, playing games at Birmingham's St Andrew's because their own stadium was locked in a dispute with the landlord. By the time King came looking, they were back in the Championship - doing ok on the pitch. Off it, the place was a mess. Years of ownership chaos. No stadium of their own. Crumbling infrastructure. King had never been to a Coventry game. He grew up supporting Norwich. But he'd been spending time in the Midlands for his rapeseed business, and he'd figured something out: "A football club done well has huge influence in people's lives - education, schools, sport, everything to do with it." A faster vehicle for the same cargo. He did the deal in six weeks. Told his wife. Didn't tell his kids - just pinged them a WhatsApp five minutes before the announcement broke. "You better watch your news in a bit." Then he went to the training ground. --- "I was seriously shocked by it," he says now. Mark Robins - a club legend who'd kept them alive through years of ownership disaster - working out of a grim portacabin. Facilities that looked temporary. "There's not a cat in hell's chance I can get elite players in that football club in that state." That first summer, when they were recruiting, King had a rule: take the players straight to the stadium. Don't let them anywhere near the training ground. "I remember we signed Ellis Simms and he had a choice between Swansea and us. And he'd been down to Swansea's training ground, which is rather nice. And I said, look, he's not coming anywhere near here. Take him up to the stadium and have a good chat." Simms signed. --- Eighteen months later, King made the hardest call. Mark Robins had been the face of the club through all the chaos - the one constant when leadership was hiding away. But King had seen the coaching structure breaking down. "It was actually, and I don't say this lightly as a business person, quite an easy decision. The difficult decision was what Mark was and what he'd been to Coventry City." Fans were furious. King called an open forum on live radio to explain himself. Then he interviewed Frank Lampard - legendary player, uneven manager. King met him alone in his Pall Mall office and asked one question: what had he learned from the rough spells? Turned out, a lot. Lampard got the job. "I like people who've had a few shockers," King says. "You've got to see where dysfunctionality is not working. And you take a lot of time to reflect on that." --- Three years after buying the club, Coventry are back in the Premier League for the first time in 25 years. The training ground is rebuilt. The coaching structure works. The infrastructure is in place. And the club's community trust - Sky Blues in the Community - runs education programmes in fifty local primary schools. Maths, English, life skills, all delivered through the pull of football. David Busst, the former defender who runs it, hosts open days at the stadium where kids from across the city show up in sky blue. King didn't build a school network. Not in the traditional sense, at least. But walk around Coventry on a Saturday morning and you'll see kids in those shirts heading to the game with their parents. You'll see a city that got forgotten starting to believe in itself again. Sometimes the indirect route isn't so bad. --- P.S.: The full Doug King interview is on the Football Boardroom podcast with Henry Winter and Christian Purslow. The training ground story is even better when you hear him tell it. ### Playtesting URL: https://www.howardgray.net/playtesting/ Last updated: 2026-04-24T07:51:38.000Z Watching people interact with your stuff is... a lot. Pride, fear, defensiveness, curiosity - sometimes all at once. I saw this at [**London Games Festival**](https://festival.games.london/about?ref=howardgray.net) last week. I decided to go to the fringe bit - because that's usually where the most interesting stuff is. And the most accessible. It takes a lot for me to cross the tracks and go to West London. (London crew, you know what I'm talking about. North-South, East-West - it's real.) The venue was Exhibition - a former postal sorting office in White City. The New Games Plus event itself was at the edge of the festival, and I'm at the edge of the industry in general. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/04/IMG_2137-1.JPG) There's something quite freeing about that. It's a delightful place to ask dumb questions. People are really nice - excited to share, no ego, everyone figuring out the thing together. A few things I saw: \- Deviation - Pictionary, humans against AI. You draw, the AI and humans all guess. If AI wins, the humans lose. Apparently it's big in Japan, because people there embrace AI as a collaborator rather than a threat. I'm still chewing on that one. \- Wax Heads - You run a punk record store. Navigate the scene, build your collection, keep the lights on. \- Beautiful Games Club - launched by [**ustwo games**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ustwo-games/?ref=howardgray.net), it's a book club for games. Groups of people play games that jump out as being particularly 'beautiful' and see what makes them tick. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/04/IMG_2118.JPG) There were over 100 games, many still in development. When you make games, you need people playing your stuff - watching where they get stuck, what they skip, what makes them laugh. No precious attachment to the thing you made. Just curiosity about what happens when someone actually touches it. This isn't always easy. I was there as an observer. But I make things too. We're starting a playtesting circle at Wavetable - early access to new stuff, people who like poking at things. Message me if you want in. ### Three Music Revolutions URL: https://www.howardgray.net/three-music-revolutions/ Last updated: 2026-04-19T19:17:58.000Z 1986 was the least diverse year in fifty years of American pop music. And it came right after a revolution. Armand Leroi is an evolutionary biologist who treats the charts like a fossil record. He analyzed 17,000 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 2010, turning their chords, textures, and rhythms into data. Leroi found music mostly inches forward. Artists borrow, tweak, and sand down rough edges. Almost always, change is gradual.. Big bang revolutions hardly ever happen. Except three times. There were three proper revolutions where the charts got turned inside out. - 1964 - the British Invasion, when rock and roll rewrote the rules. - 1983 - drum machines and synthesizers. - 1991 - when hip-hop exploded into the mainstream. This last one was the biggest by far. The most important single cultural event in twentieth-century American pop music, according to Leroi's data. A curiosity of the 1983 revolution: it actually flattened diversity. Everything started sounding the same. Drum machines homogenized the landscape - country, rock, pop music all took on that Miami Vice sheen (mullets optional). And 1986 was the least diverse year in the entire fifty-year span. Leroi's research shows that real step changes are rare because they need to be. Culture can't reinvent itself constantly - most mutations die out. The incremental approach is safer, more sustainable. Artists build on what worked before, making tiny improvements. We convince ourselves we're living through constant revolution because the noise is loud, because change feels dramatic when you're inside it. But the data tells a different story. Most of the time, change is gradual. You'd miss it if you weren't measuring. Revolutions don't always mean more variety. Sometimes they mean everyone rushing toward the same new thing. 40 years after 1986, it sounds familiar. P.S. In ’86, the UK had The Smiths, New Order, Pet Shop Boys. More diverse? Or just a different kind of sameness? The geography factor is for another post… ### Pressure is a Privilege - but not because it's rare URL: https://www.howardgray.net/pressure-is-a-privilege-but-not-because-its-rare/ Last updated: 2026-04-19T09:23:09.000Z Part of me hates myself for posting a sports aphorism, made by a famous actor, on a platform known for corny aphorisms. But I quite like this from Tom Hiddleston: "Pressure is a privilege. If you're feeling any pressure or the weight of expectation, you are breathing that rare air that very few of us get to live inside." 0:00 /1:10 1× He was talking about nerves - how the chemical you produce when you're nervous is the same one you produce when you're excited. The story you tell yourself is the difference. I disagree with the "rare air" part though. While we may not be Champions League footballers or appearing at the Oscars, I think a lot of us are breathing it. The pressure of making something worthwhile. The pressure of doing a good job so we can support our families. The expectations of people who like us, love us, need us. That's not rare. It's everywhere. Which might make the first part even more useful. Pressure is a privilege - not because few people have it, but because it means something is at stake. P.S. He was talking about the pressure Arsenal will face when they play Manchester City in a huge Premier League football game. I'm writing this before the game... ### Groove Theory #24 - The Black Bean Sauce URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-24-the-black-bean-sauce/ Last updated: 2026-04-19T07:06:06.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: cycling around the city; sourcing members of Wavetable's new Playtesting Circle - hit reply to join us. He's cooking the beans wrong. Everyone in the tent knows it except him. It's January 2010, a shelter outside Port-au-Prince. A few hundred people are living here after the earthquake. And in one of the tents, a chef is making black beans and rice. The women helping him are smiling. Almost laughing. He doesn't speak Kreyòl. They don't speak Spanish or English. But he can read a room - the raised eyebrows, the stifled grins. Those beans he's cooking? Not how they like to eat them. So he hands over the tools. *Show me.* They gather burlap sacks. Push the beans through slowly, sieving them into a smooth, creamy purée: sòs pwa nwa, black bean sauce, served alongside steamed white rice. "So beautiful and rich and velvety," he later wrote, "this perfect texture that I had never seen before from beans." The chef was José Andrés - two Michelin stars, dozens of restaurants, the man who introduced America to tapas. He'd come to Haiti to feed people. He left having learned how to listen. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/04/Haiti-2010.webp) ## The Tension José Andrés didn't need to be in that tent. He'd introduced America to tapas, owned dozens of restaurants, knew how to feed thousands at speed. He could have kept opening restaurants and done very well. But he went anyway. And when he got there, he made beans the way he'd always made beans. That was the problem. The skills were right - logistics, cooking at scale, speed under pressure. The method was wrong. His two Michelin stars didn't teach him sòs pwa nwa. Only the women in that tent could do that. --- ## Step into it You're an expert in your field. Then something shifts - a crisis, an opportunity, a context you've never worked in before. You know your craft. The instinct is to lead with what you know. But the thing that makes you qualified can also make you blind. What would you have to unlearn? --- ## The Groove: Modality **What format best serves this idea?** After Haiti, Andrés founded World Central Kitchen - a disaster relief organization built on a simple idea: when people need food, send chefs. But not chefs doing what they've always done. WCK doesn't ship in pre-packaged meals. They hire local cooks to prepare local dishes using local ingredients. When they went to Gaza, Ukraine, hurricane zones - they didn't bring American food. They brought logistics. Scale. Speed. The vessel changed; the expertise stayed. "When you need medical service, you bring doctors and nurses," Andrés said. "When you need the rebuilding of infrastructure, you bring in engineers and architects. And if you have to feed people, you need professional chefs." Chefs learning sòs pwa nwa. Chefs who've learned to ask: show me. And then there's the language: Andrés doesn’t call the people they feed beneficiaries. They’re *guests*. Not recipients of aid. Guests at a table. Guests - just like at Jaleo. Just like at minibar, his 12-seat, 2-Michelin-star tasting menu spot in Washington DC. That framing shifts how you serve. You're not delivering calories to a problem. You're feeding people who know what they want to eat - and your job is to help them get it. WCK's guests have taste. WCK learn how to cook to those tastes - and how to feed ten thousand guests in a day. How WCK built the largest relief operation in Ukraine --- ## Groove Notes 💡 ****1\. Anticipate, then respond** WCK was feeding first responders in Raleigh **before* Hurricane Florence hit. They don't wait for permission. ****2\. Name them right** "Guests" vs "beneficiaries" isn't semantics. How you name the people you serve shapes how you serve them. Students or participants? Audience or community? Recipients or collaborators? ****3\. Ingredient relationships** "You have to have a relationship with every ingredient to really understand how they come together, because sometimes the best dishes are made of the most simple ingredients." Know your components deeply. Simple elements combined well beat complex ones thrown together. Modality is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/04/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) --- ## The Release There's no end in sight. The world keeps generating crises - Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Sudan, hurricane seasons that seem to arrive earlier and hit harder every year. WCK keeps showing up, because the need doesn't stop and neither does Andrés. In April 2024, seven WCK workers were killed when Israeli strikes hit their convoy in Gaza. In November, another strike killed three more. Each time, Andrés paused operations. Each time, he resumed. "We will not be deterred." The path from fine dining to disaster relief looks like a pivot. But it's not. It's the same skill - feeding people - just finding the modality that matches the moment. José Andrés could have kept opening restaurants. Instead, he let a group of women in Haiti show him what else his expertise could be used for. Whether you’re throwing yourself into a charitable endeavour, or simply seeking to make your day-to-day work more resilient, compelling or sustainable - there’s a bean-shaped question we can borrow. What's your sòs pwa nwa? And who's waiting to show you? Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **The work is Seeing**: *“At the very highest level, cooking is about seeing. Seeing problems as challenges to be solved, seeing adversity as an opportunity for innovation, seeing traditions as means not ends, and seeing the familiar, the conventional, even the tired in a fresh and maybe even magical way.”* - **$50,000 to 130 million meals:** Andrés funded WCK with his $50,000 Vilcek Foundation award - a prize for immigrant entrepreneurs. He could have opened another restaurant. Instead: a disaster relief organization that now serves 130 million meals a year. ### PlexCon URL: https://www.howardgray.net/plexcon/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T15:42:19.000Z A $500,000 corporate retreat in Honduras. Ex-Navy SEAL drills. Tarantula-eating challenges. The CEO gets E. coli from a salad and spends the week on an IV, nailed to his bedpost. Someone sits on a fire ant hill and takes an emergency antihistamine shot in their hind parts. A porcupine falls through a shower ceiling onto an engineer. There's raw chicken. Power outages. A hundred people stranded overnight on an island with no runway lights. It reads like an episode of Silicon Valley. It isn't. This happened to a company called Plex, in 2017. And somehow it bonded their team for years. This is not how I design offsites. But I kind of love it. Kudos to the Plex team for telling the Wall Street Journal about it: [the full story is here](https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/corporate-retreat-gone-wrong-07754741?ref=howardgray.net). ### The Right Bakery URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-right-bakery/ Last updated: 2026-04-05T07:46:37.000Z "Are you sure you have the right bakery?" That was Sithamparappillai Jegatheepan's response when he got the call. He'd just won the Grand Prix de la Baguette - Paris's most prestigious bread competition. His baguette would be delivered to the Élysée Palace for a year. Jegatheepan is from Sri Lanka. So was last year's winner, Tharshan Selvarajah. Previous years: Algeria, Tunisia, West Africa. France's most sacred bread tradition. Dominated by immigrants working bakeries on the fringes of the city. The competition is almost comically constrained. Four ingredients only: flour, water, yeast, salt. Strict specs for length, weight, salt content. Thirty baguettes were disqualified before tasting - wrong size, wrong weight. One baker tried a single long score instead of the traditional five diagonal cuts. The judges were displeased. And yet. The winners aren't always the ones who grew up with baguettes. They came from somewhere else and had to learn every step. Not read about it. Not watch someone else do it. Actually make the bread - over and over - until the knowledge moved from their heads to their hands. It may not feel like it, but being on the outside can be an advantage. This doesn't just apply to bread. ### Groove Theory #23 - Dance Like No One's Watching (Because They Aren't) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-23-dance-like-no-ones-watching-because-they-arent/ Last updated: 2026-04-05T06:37:29.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: ‘balancing’ work with Easter holiday childcare; feeling concerned at the [AI fork in the road](https://www.howardgray.net/the-fork/). A woman is dancing alone in a car park. There's no music playing - at least, none we can hear. No audience, no occasion. Just Angela Trimbur, her phone propped against a wall, and a breakup she couldn't shake. Angela kept dance hidden most of her life. When her family converted to Jehovah's Witnesses during her childhood, it wasn't the kind of thing you did. So she tucked it away. Years later, newly heartbroken in Los Angeles, she pulled it back out. She called the video series *Dance Like Nobody's Watching*. No choreography, just her moving however she needed to move while strangers walked past pretending not to notice. That video series became workshops. The workshops became the *LA City Municipal Dance Squad* \- a group she describes as "around a six out of 10" in skill. Then came a cancer diagnosis in 2018, a double mastectomy, and sixteen rounds of chemo. She sold everything, moved to New York, and became a dance teacher full-time. Now her classes sell out every week. Hundreds of people show up to do silly choreography - including a routine that mimics changing a nappy (aka *diaper* for US readers) - in a room where the only rule is: if you mess up, who cares? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/04/image.png) Angela Trimbur dance class, NYC. photo: Cait Oppermann --- ## The Tension Dance is one of the most exposing things you can do. No words to hide behind. No way to intellectualise. Just your body, visible, moving - or not. Trimbur built spaces where that exposure is the point. Where "around a six out of 10" is the explicit bar, where the choreography is absurd by design, where everyone's agreed to look a little ridiculous together. One participant described her class as "therapy, a workout, a dance party and recess at the same time." Another, who'd lost both parents to cancer, said the dance squad helped her find who she was before the grief: "I was with these girls who had no guard up... who I am today is who I was before the tragedy." Yeah, I know. Public dancing with strangers sounds like some people's idea of hell. But that's not really the point. --- ## Step Into It There's probably something you've tucked away. A thing you used to do, or wanted to do, or keep meaning to try - but somewhere along the line you decided you weren't good enough, or it wasn't serious enough, or there just wasn't space for it anymore. Maybe you pull it out occasionally, in private. Do it in front of the mirror. Daydream about it as you walk down the street. Or maybe you've forgotten it's there. Either way, the draw hasn't gone away. (I have several of them. Standup. DJing. Boxing - to name just three.). The problem probably isn't time, or motivation - although it may look that way. Instead, it may be closer to shame. The fear of being seen fumbling at something you actually care about. And you've got nowhere to do it - nowhere to be bad in front of people who've agreed that being bad is fine. So it stays tucked away, waiting for a confidence that never quite arrives. --- ## The Groove: Structure **Structure: Shape the idea. Move from fog to form without losing your voice**. Angela Trimbur didn't just start teaching dance. She built the room first. The structure she created does the heavy lifting. Not the encouragement, not the pep talk - but the low bar, the format, the absurdity. Those choices create permission before anyone walks through the door. "Around a six out of 10" sounds like self-deprecation, but it's doing something else. When the bar is that explicit, you know what you're walking into. You're not going to be the worst one there - everyone's agreed to be roughly the same amount of bad. The choreography works the same way. A routine that mimics changing a nappy is absurd by design (do you remember attempting your first nappy change? yup, me too.). You can't be embarrassed about getting it wrong when getting it wrong is half the point. The silliness is structural. Dance Church might not be your kind of room (frankly, it’s not mine). But the principle holds: if you want people to try something exposing, you can't just tell them it's safe. You have to build the safety into the structure itself. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Permission needs a container.** Telling people "it's okay to fail" rarely works. You can't just announce that fumbling is fine. The room has to make it possible - the format, the bar, the way the whole thing is set up. ****2\. Details matter.** "LA City Municipal Dance Squad" sounds civic and slightly absurd. "Apathetic Aerobics" tells you what you're walking into before you arrive. Trimbur teaches in a Jane Fonda-worthy '80s leotard. It's not ironic. The costume says: **we're doing something ridiculous, and I'm going first.* ****3\. The format is the message.** Trimbur's cancer support group runs on Marco Polo - async video messages. "There's something beautiful about not having to be an active listener," she says. You don't have to nod along. Different mode, same principle. Structure is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) --- ## The Release When Angela Trimbur was dancing alone in car parks, filming herself for no audience, she had no idea where it was going. She was just trying to feel like herself again after heartbreak. After cancer, she was asked what she'd do if she had two years left. Her answer: exactly what she's doing now. Teaching people to dance badly, together, in a place where that's the whole point. We tend to wait until we're good enough before anyone can watch. Trimbur did it the other way round - being watched is how you get good enough. You just need the right room. But more than getting good - being bad together is how you stop being alone with the thing you hid. Howard P.S. At Wavetable we're starting a Playtesting Circle. We share new stuff (games, scenarios, AI avatars), you share feedback, and get the chance to connect with other playtesters. Plus: interactive versions of previous Groove Theory editions. Reply 'playtest' to join. No dancing or diapers required. --- ## Extended Mix - **The Timing**: Trimbur didn't start Dance Church after her recovery. She built it during - sixteen rounds of chemo, double mastectomy, BRCA2 diagnosis. The room wasn't celebration. It was survival. Sometimes you build the thing you need while you still need it. - **Finding the Frame:** She tells new dancers: "We're equal, we're 13, and we're just going to do some silly choreography to show our parents before dinner." The number matters. Not 5 (too young to care). Not 25 (too self-conscious). Thirteen - old enough to feel awkward, young enough to try anyway. - **The Comedy Class Disaster**: [My remix](https://www.howardgray.net/rebuilding-a-class/) of a class where the institution thought ‘force you out of your comfort zone’ was the name of the game. ### The Fork URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-fork/ Last updated: 2026-04-04T10:58:20.000Z There's a fork in the road happening right now - AI native on one side, everyone else on the other. It's causing me some discomfort. A year ago - despite what the tech bros would incessantly yammer - the gap was quite small. A few tools, some prompting tricks, nothing you couldn't pick up a taster of in a weekend if you were curious. Now the delta is widening in ways that feel harder to close. It's not just about knowing the prompts anymore - it's about thinking in systems, orchestrating agents, being able to unbundle a web of tools, knowing what questions to even ask. I had a conversation last week that made this feel less abstract. Someone talented asked me about working together. I found myself hesitating. Not because of their ability, but because the work I'm doing now needs someone who can run this stuff better than I can. That's a strange new sentence for me. In fact, scratch that. I wasn't hesitating. Subconsciously, I already knew it was a no. If they aren't AI native (or fluent, at least), I can do 80% of what they'd be doing in 20% of the time. I didn't feel good about thinking that. Not at all. This isn't about me being great. It's about the total shift in the mindset, approach, fluency, of how you harness this stuff - and what that adds up to. I don't know what the bridge looks like for people on the other side of the fork. They're not less talented. They just got there later. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this. I'd like to be. ### Interconnected Agency URL: https://www.howardgray.net/interconnected-agency/ Last updated: 2026-04-01T23:35:53.000Z Sam Kriss wrote a piece in Harper's recently about "agency" - the new currency in Silicon Valley. VCs want founders who are "highly agentic." People who just do things. Who move like bulldozers through whatever's in their way. Kriss' article is called ["Child’s Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking"](https://harpers.org/archive/2026/03/childs-play-sam-kriss-ai-startup-roy-lee/?ref=howardgray.net). It's an excellent piece. Worth reading. But something kept nagging at me after. Not at Sam Kriss. At how familiar it all felt. How easy it is to recognise the bulldozer - and how easy it is to become one without noticing. Agency is a real word. It means something - or it used to. The capacity to act. To shape your circumstances. To not be purely subject to forces outside your control. It's been part of philosophy, psychology, political theory - it's done real work for a long time. And now Silicon Valley has it. Which means in a few years it'll be hollow - like "disruption," "community,", "sovereignty." Words that meant something until they became merchandise. Take something relational, ethical, or systemic... make it individual, extractive, brandable. But I don't want to give them the word. Agency matters. The capacity to act, to not be helpless, to shape what happens next - that's not nothing. Especially now. What does it look like when you don't amputate the rest? Agency that knows it's not alone in the frame. The bulldozer version feels powerful. But it's actually brittle - it only works if you don't care what's left behind. The version in the Harper's piece goes back to the individualistic, single player, lionized version that so many of us are exhausted by. Yet it's such an easy game to fall into - playing on solo mode. I'm gonna go for **Interconnected Agency**. You act knowing others exist. Your moves affect theirs. That's not a constraint - that's what makes it real. P.S. Stay tuned for my 'Interconnected Agency' trademark, YouTube podcast, and merchandise line. ### Saturday mornings URL: https://www.howardgray.net/saturday-mornings/ Last updated: 2026-03-29T22:30:19.000Z AI is eating the entry-level rungs. The institutions see it but can't move fast enough. So what happens in the gaps? I keep noticing something about young people entering the world. Not lazy. Not entitled. Just... unclear on where to point themselves. The old paths - get a degree, get a job, figure it out - are eroding. And nobody's quite sure what replaces them. A professor told me this week: "We have faculty meetings about this all the time. We just can't move fast enough." Some employers want to do something too - but they're often stuck doing business as usual. Zoe Scaman nailed this in her '[Pipeline Problem](https://zoescaman.substack.com/p/the-pipeline-problem)' essay the other week: the industry celebrates senior talent plus AI as a superpower - while quietly dismantling the conditions that created those seniors. The judgment they have was built through years of doing things badly and being told why. That loop is being cut. I've been thinking about what a small response might look like. A room on Saturday mornings. A couple of different cities. 18-24 year olds working through playable case studies - real decisions, real stakes, no right answers. Mentors who've been there. A couple of hours. Regular. Not a program. Not a course. Just somewhere they're taken seriously and given something real to work on. I can't do this alone. If you're thinking about this space too - I'd like to talk. And if you know someone who's into this - tag them right here. ### What A.I. quietly undoes URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-a-i-quietly-undoes/ Last updated: 2026-03-26T21:24:39.000Z Everyone's talking about what AI can do. Not many people are talking about what it subtly undoes. One thing: collaboration. This isn't because AI replaces collaboration - but because it makes it optional. You can move faster alone now. Cover more ground. Skip the meeting, the side conversation, the friction of explaining your thinking to someone else. Optional things have a way of disappearing. When you don't need someone, you stop reaching out. The friction was only worth it when it was necessary. And even when you want to share - how would you? Your setup is wired to you. Hard to explain. Hard to export. AI setups right now aren't particularly portable. Black boxes, tangled wires. The strange part is - this doesn't feel like loss. It feels like productivity, efficiency. You don't tend to notice the relationships that didn't form. The ideas that needed two brains to collide. I wonder how many people are feeling this and not naming it. A vague unease. A peculiar nagging sense. Something shifting in how they work, who they work with, whether they need anyone at all. We're gaining capability - I'm blown away weekly by how much can be done. But we might be losing something else - and we won't know what until it's gone. Anyone else noticing this? ### The Merchant's Stall URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-merchants-stall/ Last updated: 2026-03-23T13:10:31.000Z A developer tools company built their merch shop to look like a cozy anime. 0:00 /0:37 1× Merchant.dev makes backend infrastructure for online selling - APIs, Stripe integration, the kind of thing you reach for when you want to ship a store fast. Their own shop is the demo. They could have gone clean and minimal. Prove the tech works, keep it professional. Instead: soft illustrations, warm glow, the kind of hand-drawn world you'd want to linger in. It feels like a merchant's stall in a Studio Ghibli film, not a checkout flow. It's product marketing that says something. Not "here's a store" but "here's what a store could be." The backend handles commerce; the frontend can be whatever you imagine. The internet used to have more of this — weird corners, someone's specific vision made real. We traded most of it for clean gradients and consistency. But nothing's stopping anyone from building something that feels like a place. ### Madri: A Beer from Nowhere URL: https://www.howardgray.net/madri-a-beer-from-nowhere/ Last updated: 2026-03-22T16:22:11.000Z Madri is a Spanish beer. In just 5 years, it's become the fourth most popular beer in the UK. Except it's not Spanish. I kept noticing their logo everywhere - a mural on a warehouse wall in Hackney (I assumed it was a creative studio, or one of those pop-up things that lasts three weeks as a clothes store then becomes a bar that’s only open on Tuesday from 5-8). Then I saw the logo on a poster for Deftones at Victoria Park, right next to American Express. So I looked it up. Turns out - despite its strapline “Discover the soul of Madrid” - it’s made in Burton-on-Trent. By Molson Coors. The flat cap, the "Alma del Sur" tagline, the whole vibe of a sun-soaked terrace you've never actually sat at - none of it's real. And it doesn't seem to matter. What they've built isn't authenticity, it's a mood rendered with total commitment. Madri is the Spain you want to believe in, not the one that actually exists. Ask any Madrileño about Madri, they'll redirect you to Mahou. Madri no es en their dictionario. We talk a lot about "authentic brand stories" and "genuine heritage." Madri has neither. Turns out that's enough. I am perplexed on a few levels, tbh. How did they figure this out? What was the brand insight? How did it grow so quickly? If anyone knows the backstory, do tell. I’ll buy you a pint of Mahou. Someone should build a case study on this. In fact - might be time for a Wavetable playable one. ### Groove Theory #22 - A Narrow Corridor on La Rive Gauche URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-22-a-narrow-corridor-on-la-rive-gauche/ Last updated: 2026-03-22T07:05:46.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). **Currently: welcoming blue skies and post-6pm dusk; wanting you to test our new playground of business frameworks (hit reply!).* The brief arrived with two and a half weeks on the clock. A global agency network of 2000+ employees, their annual gathering in Paris, a keynote slot on AI. The document was thorough - five areas they wanted covered, from what's working now to what it means for their leaders. "Stimulating, grounded, and provocative," they wrote. "Perspective rather than prescriptions." Then the kicker: "Actionable - but not tools." The speaker had a thesis. The client had a corridor. The question was whether one could fit through the other. ## The Tension I never intended for Groove Theory to be about me. But for this edition, I'm making an exception - because the process might be useful. Yes, that brief came to my inbox at the end of January this year. Two weeks to prep and deliver. On a topic that's slipping and morphing - an octopus of hot takes and cold feet. I had a strong piece to build from - a [blog post](https://www.howardgray.net/todays-a-i-is-a-nokia-3310-and-the-iphones-are-coming/) I'd written two years before about AI's evolutionary arc. How today's AI is a Nokia 3310 and the iPhones are coming. Frustratingly, it hadn’t traveled far when I published it. This was a chance to give it another go. But they didn’t just want my thesis - they wanted it shaped for their world. This is the big question, I think: not necessarily what to say, but how much of yourself goes in when you're sculpting your message for someone else's corridor. Not enough of your own vibes, opinion and personality - then why you? Too much - and it can backfire. It's a bit like what Seth Godin says: authenticity is overrated. If we were all fully authentic, we'd be arrested for what comes out of our mouths. You don't want your surgeon to be their full authentic self when they get the scalpel out. ## Step Into It You get a call. There's a gig in two weeks - the topic's in your lane, it’s an audience you'd want to reach. The brief arrives: what they want covered, the tone they're after, how it fits into their wider programme. You've got something on this. Something you made a while back, something you believe in. But their brief isn't asking for your version as-is. It's asking you to fit it to their frame. How much of yourself do you put in? Your framing - but theirs is different. Your jokes - but you don't know this room. Your stories - but will a personal anecdote land with people you've never met? The brief says "provocative." But what does that really mean? And the clock's ticking. ## The Groove: Signal *Distill your message into something that sticks and spreads* Signal isn't just about clarity for its own sake. It's about clarity that works in context. Their context, not just yours. But there are two kinds of signal at play in a gig like this. There's the substance - the points you're making, the content they've hired you to deliver. And there's the style - your vibe, your voice, the thing that makes it yours rather than a script anyone could read. The substance had to fit their corridor. My ‘iPhone’ blog post was zoomed out, philosophical, playing the long game. I’d also put together a bunch of high tactical pieces on things like AI Playtesting. They needed zoomed in - what do leaders actually do on Monday morning? But not so zoomed in that it became prompt cheat sheets and "how to use ChatGPT." A 10,000 feet view rather than 30,000\. Starting our descent into Charles De Gaulle (ok, I took the Eurostar, but you get the idea) The style was where I had to find myself. How much of my humour? Which stories? What tone? Too much personality and it becomes about me. Too little and I'm just a delivery mechanism for a brief. The process was… messy. I estimate about 60 hours of build time over fifteen days, and none of it was linear: A rough cut of a very early version - Two drafts of a one-pager, trying to bend my thesis toward the client brief. A client call. Feedback that sent me back to the outline. Five iterations of that outline before any slides were touched. - Into Figma, building slides before the story was finished - because I needed to see the shape of the argument, not just write it. Placeholder visuals that revealed gaps in the logic. Back to the outline. A director's cut emerged that was twice the runtime, which meant half had to go. This is usually the most painful part. - I knew early on this was five things: intro, conclusion and three key points. Except, point 3 needed surgery. I tried 3 different builds and it didn’t work. Two days before: timing myself for the first time and realising the intro was too long. The night before: adding more images; trimming text that looked fine on screen but felt heavy out loud. What got cut: some of my jokes - including riffs on Nokia 3310s being used for illicit purposes in my youth. Global audience, no shared reference points, and probably best not to open with drug dealer nostalgia. A section on AI history that I loved but they didn't need. Anecdotes that worked in writing but would've died on stage. Case studies that were cool but burned too much time. What stayed: The iPhone Moment gave them a frame - a mental model for the beginning and end. But the middle was new: the bets they'd need to make on talent, model, positioning. That part had to be built from scratch for their corridor. Enough of my voice to make it feel like me rather than a recitation of what they already knew - or at least suspected. And no notes - it can be tough to trust someone reading from them. Just words on slides as anchors, mostly visuals. The architecture, the little tips and bridges - they have to be visible, because that's the only script I have. 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. The corridor is a forcing function, not a cage** Their five points felt simultaneously too constraining and too expansive. But I realised they'd done the audience reading for me. My job wasn't to replace their corridor. It was to bring something through it that only I could bring. ****2\. You can't read a room you've never been in** Hundreds of people from around the world. I barely knew any of them. How jokey to be? How personal? I erred toward restraint on paper (by my standards at least) - and then loosened once I could feel the room respond. ****3\. The technical layer is part of the craft** I do all my decks in Figma. The venue's tech team couldn't run it through their system. So I rigged my laptop at the front of the stage, inches from my feet. And then it went to sleep as I walked on. CEO in the front row, staring. Unlocking it felt like five minutes of fearful fumbling. The video shows twenty seconds. Time is weird when you're exposed. ****4\. You can't control the night before** I thought I was popping out for a drink with everyone. Turned out to be a boat party - I didn't know it was a boat. Three hours on the Seine when I still had sections to finish. Back at the hotel past midnight, slides open, brain half-fried. ## The Release In the first edition of this newsletter, I asked the question at the heart of Groove Theory: *"How do you show up fully as yourself while meeting your audience where they are?"* The Paris gig gave me a live test. I spent years touring as an agent, watching artists walk into that moment before the lights come up. Now I'm the one walking on - different side of the curtain. I find keynotes harder than workshops. They're one-way. Performative by design. No conversation, no read-and-respond. Just you and the room. I can control the story. But there's less improvisation. Less groove. I felt like I stood completely still. The video shows I moved around. I've only been able to watch it in thirty-second bursts. Something connected - I think. People came up afterward with questions, not conclusions. Which might be the better signal. Whether the corridor helped or constrained, I'm still not sure. But I found more of myself inside it than I expected. Here's the talk itself, if you want to see how it came together: The narrow corridor didn't shrink me. It clarified me. Their brief forced me to find the signal in my signal - the part that would actually matter to 350 people, most of whom I’d never meet again. The question isn't whether to accept the corridor. It's whether you can find yourself inside it. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **How I got the gig**: I pinged their head of transformation on LinkedIn. He said let's have a chat. During the chat he said he thought he knew my name. Turns out, he was in the audience for the talk I did at IBTM World in November 2025. - The source material: [The iPhone Moment thesis - before it got re-shaped for the keynote](https://www.howardgray.net/todays-a-i-is-a-nokia-3310-and-the-iphones-are-coming/) - **Keynote vs. workshop**: I ran a small-group session right after the keynote - same morning, same building, completely different energy. The keynote is broadcast; the workshop is conversation. I think people really do underestimate the difference between these two modes. Signal lives in both, but the modality changes everything. More on that another time. ### Your Other Language Skills URL: https://www.howardgray.net/your-other-language-skills/ Last updated: 2026-03-20T14:17:06.000Z Your language skills matter more than ever. But I don't mean English, French, Spanish or Swahili. I mean industries. Sectors. Scenes. And I don't mean skills, either - not verb conjugation or grammar. I mean the rhythm, the jargon, the gossip, the acronyms. The customs. The trade. The way it works. The way it doesn't. The sub-cultures, sub-genres, sub-specialities. The sub-sub-sub of all of them. "Conversational." "I can order a beer." "I'm C1." "I get by." At a high level you might have "Advertising", "Music Industry" or "Tech Startups". This is where most platforms stop - LinkedIn, Upwork, whatever. Then there's "Creative Directors", "Festivals" or "Product Management". Go further and you're into niche ad tech, Japanese indie rock venues, or Notion nomenclature. Have you ever thought about which industries you speak? Scribble them down. You might surprise yourself. The thing is, you don't learn these from a course. You learn them by doing - being in the room, making mistakes, picking up the rhythm I'm not sure I have a native language anymore. Instead, I'm Proficient, Fluent, Conversational - in different things. A growing number of us will be like this. Here are some of mine: - Music Industry - proficient, yet references expired around 2015. - Advertising - conversational when caffeinated. - Learning & Development - fluent, small country though. - Finance - enough vocabulary to nod (off) convincingly. What are yours? ### What Do You Do? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-do-you-do/ Last updated: 2026-03-19T14:03:14.000Z Y Combinator spends a wild amount of time on one thing. It's not metrics. Not code reviews. Not bro-ing down with VCs. It's rehearsing the two-sentence explanation of what you're doing. Two sentences. Sounds easy. It's really not. You're trying to make someone imagine something - without knowing what they'll imagine. You're taking on feedback constantly, so it shifts. The person you're talking to shifts. And it has to sound like you, not like a deck. And not like an AI. This isn't a positioning statement (sorry, brand strategy friends). Those are internal documents - you don't say them to people. Coca-Cola doesn't walk around saying "we refresh the world and inspire moments of optimism." (At least I hope they dont) Your two sentences have to feel casual enough to say at a barbecue. The thing is, this applies to everyone. Not just founders of bazillion dollar world-ending companies. How do you explain what you do - in two sentences - in a way that lands differently depending on who's asking? Your career. Your side project. Your freelance thing. The company you've been at for twelve years but still can't quite describe to your parents. I don't have a tidy framework. But I suspect this skill matters more than most - and almost nobody practices it. ### Piano for the Office URL: https://www.howardgray.net/piano-for-the-office/ Last updated: 2026-03-17T12:36:05.000Z In 1906, typing was marketed to women as 'piano for the office'. Respectable. Safe. A skill that wouldn't threaten anyone. I was reading [Anthropic's new Economic Index](https://www.anthropic.com/economic-index?ref=howardgray.net) and one line stopped my bleary-eyed morning scroll: workers most exposed to AI automation are 16 percentage points more likely to be female. This is not because AI targets women (at least, I very much hope not). It's because of the ball that started rolling in the late 19th century. Because AI is exceptionally good at cognitive, text-based, routine information work - administrative assistants, data entry, customer service, paralegals, bookkeepers. The exact roles women were funneled into for a century. The jobs that were "safe" are turning out to be the ones most easily automated. Meanwhile, the companies building these tools are overwhelmingly run by men. And there's a Zenger/Folkman study of 60,000 leadership assessments showing women leaders are rated more effective during periods of crisis and change - with the gap actually widening when things get turbulent. So we have one group building the displacement, another group absorbing it, and the group that tends to perform best when everything's shifting largely absent from the rooms where these decisions get made. And somewhere in the margins, young men are struggling too - just differently. I don't have a neat takeaway. But 1906 is still echoing, and nobody's at the piano. ### The Jetpack That Doesn't Work URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-jetpack-that-doesnt-work/ Last updated: 2026-03-17T10:26:05.000Z Citymapper lets you choose a jetpack, a hoverboard, or a catapult to get across town. None of them work. Tap the jetpack and nothing happens. The FAQ says "Hey, we said it was in beta!" It's a completely useless feature. And it's one of my favourite things about the app. In Singapore, the catapult animation features a local actor in his iconic yellow boots. In France, the catapult feature launches Emmanuel Macron. Someone had to build that. Someone had to localise a joke. They built a Marty McFly avatar so you can try out your hoverboard around Paris. This is the same company that rebuilt their entire app for every city because New York's subway delays work differently than Tokyo's. There's a version of product development that says: remove everything that doesn't serve the core function. And there's another, far less popular, version that says: the personality is the product. Citymapper chose the second. I wonder if the 'meaningless' feature may be ready for a comeback. A touch of joy, a little bit of whimsy, a joke that only humans would get. Which reminds me, I need to check my route to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. ### The Garage URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-garage/ Last updated: 2026-03-16T12:33:54.000Z > *"Born in a New York City bar and raised in a rented closet."* I came across this line last week - a founder describing how their company started. Great image. You can picture the scrappy beginnings. A few paragraphs down: Harvard MBA. First investor was a classmate. Peter Thiel wrote a cheque. The closet was real. So was everything that came before it. Of course the story starts where they want it to start. That's what stories do. The thing is, the editing is so good you don't notice the seams. It reads like the whole story. I spent five years building a company from a shabby office in East London. No funding, no attention, daily failures. And I remember reading other founders' origin stories and wondering why my version felt so much messier... and, well, crappy. It took me a long time to notice that many startup garages come with a set of keys somebody gave the founders. Mine did too - a degree, growing up speaking the most common language in the world, a couple of doors that opened a little easier. I'm not saying don't leap. Not at all. Go ahead and leap, step, pirouette, star jump. I love people who do their own thing. But notice the edit. Ask what came before the 'first product made in the garage'. What did they have that isn't in the story? Because when you're wondering why you're not further along - you might actually be far along. You're just comparing your rough cut to someone else's final take. ### Chicken or Egg? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/chicken-or-egg/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T15:39:50.000Z Indeed. Spotted outside the aptly named Bread & Butter cafe, Haggerston, London. Sunday 15th March, 2026. ### The Mistake Picnic URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-mistake-picnic/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T13:42:43.000Z Patrick Collison wants to spend hours going through every mistake in your book. That's the story Michael Ovitz tells. He's at Stripe HQ - Collison's company. They grab lunch in the cafeteria, find a picnic table outside. Collison pulls out Ovitz's memoir 'Who Is Michael Ovitz?'. It's covered in Post-its. "Ok, let's start.", Patrick says. "Start what?" "I've marked every place where you made a mistake. I want to know the conditions you were under. What you might have done differently. And what would have happened if you had." Ovitz asks why. "So I can try and avoid them." They spent the next three hours on every note. --- Yeah, I know, this is a riff about two hyper-successful white dudes in California. Fnargh. But, there's something unfashionable - and interesting - about it. There's a whole culture around "embrace failure" and "fail fast" and "mistakes are how we learn." It's not wrong. But the idea that you might actually study someone else's errors, carefully, so you make fewer of your own? That's not celebrated. It probably should be. Making mistakes is both underrated and overrated. You're going to make them - so it's worth getting comfortable with that. But it's painful. Failure hurts. Given the choice, you'd rather skip a few. Two things can be true at the same time. ### Taste the Soup URL: https://www.howardgray.net/taste-the-soup/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T21:11:30.000Z In 'Ratatouille', Remy tells Linguini that anyone can cook. But a great chef has to taste the soup. You have to know when it's right. Believe it or not, this applies to AI, too (yeah, I know...). I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Possibly too much. AI keeps making you soup. It's fast, prolific, confident. It'll make you tomato soup, French onion, a bisque you didn't ask for. Soup all day long. But someone has to taste it. Someone has to know if it's good. Someone has to say "more salt" or "start again" or "this is perfect, stop touching it." Here's where the metaphor gets stretched, but stay with me: - AI is the kitchen that produces infinite soup - Most training teaches you to operate the kitchen - The training that matters now teaches you when the soup is right. The skill isn't production anymore. It's judgment. Taste. The tricky part: you can't teach taste by explaining it. You have to develop it through practice - tasting, adjusting, getting it wrong, trying again. That's what we try to build at [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Not how to make the soup. How to taste it, what to adjust - and when it's time to put something completely different on the menu. P.S. Noel Gallagher once said his brother Liam was 'a man with a fork in a world full of soup'. And if AI is making soup, Liam probably isn't the only one with a fork. ### Three Big A.I. Bets - keynote URL: https://www.howardgray.net/three-big-a-i-bets/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T12:26:38.000Z I gave a talk in Paris on AI acceleration. Not the "here's how to write better prompts" kind - the "where are you actually placing your chips" kind. I shared three bets every services business is already making. Whether they've named them or not. 1. **Talent**. Why your juniors might have better AI stacks for their side-gigs than you provide for your global clients. 2. **Model**. Why the billable hour is becoming indefensible. Again. 3. **Positioning**. Why the shift isn't about adoption - it's about orchestration. And why the CFO knows this before you do. Link below if you want 25 minutes on AI's iPhone moment, poker chips, a Nokia 3310, and weird stuff in my fridge. This talk was at mci group's business academy event. Mci builds experiences for a living - and it showed. Production, content and vibes were all top. I met so many cool people from around the planet. P.S. My laptop was asleep when I walked on stage. Screen-saver, password prompt, 360 people waiting, mci's CEO in the front row - directly in my eye-line. Perhaps the gods were testing whether I believed my own material. ### The Mirror URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-mirror/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T09:56:03.000Z I've been thinking about AI as taste. Not "which AI should I use" - but which one decides like you do. Different AIs have different tendencies - and so do we. So we built a thing. The Mirror asks a few questions and shows you which AI you actually think like - not the one you'd pick, but the one that matches how you decide. We were curious. The answers have been weirdly revealing. [Try it ->](https://ai-mirror.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) It takes two minutes. P.S. There's a reason the dial goes to 11. ### Groove Theory #21 - The Fourteen Hour Queue URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-22-dubplate-drama/ Last updated: 2026-03-15T13:43:55.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). **Currently:* [**exploring IMDbPro for keynote speakers*](https://www.talkmezzo.com/?ref=howardgray)**; ranking Vermouth as the go-to tipple.* It's Friday afternoon on the Millmead Industrial Estate in Tottenham, north London. Damp brick, scrap metal, grey sky. The kind of place nobody passes through unless they mean to. Unit 64 contains heavy machinery, same as the rest. A few engineer types manning the gear. Except two things are different. First, clusters of figures in Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, Nike Air Max. Puffer jackets, hoodies, baggy jeans. Ten BMWs and Mercedes parked outside. Second, the muffled rumble of very loud music. Because this place - believe it or not - is the hub of the UK's most cutting-edge music scene. And these people are about to spend fourteen hours in a queue together. --- *Music House* was founded by Chris Hanson, guitarist in the British-Jamaican reggae band Black Slate. When the band split in '84, he sold his car, bought a mono cutting machine, and started making dubplates out of his house in Finsbury Park. A dubplate is a one-off disc - metal coated in lacquer, music carved into its surface by a lathe. It's a handmade record. Heavy. Warm. And temporary: maybe 20 to 50 plays before the grooves wear out. In the 90s, each one cost up to £45 to cut (£110 / $145 in today's money). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/03/image.png) Dubplate cutting lathe For Jamaican sound systems, dubplates were weapons - exclusive tracks cut to destroy rivals in a sound clash. That idea travelled to London, and Music House became its home. By the mid-'90s, the studio had moved to Tottenham, and a new generation of electronic music producers had claimed it as theirs. There was no booking system. No appointments. Just a queue that could stretch fourteen (yes, 14) hours on a Friday. Here's how it worked. A producer finishes a track in their bedroom, records it to tape, brings it to Music House. Engineer Leon Chue cuts it onto the disc. By that evening, a DJ is playing it to 500, 1,500, maybe 5,000 people. Bedroom to dance floor in a day. But the cutting process was public. Everyone heard everything. ## The Tension I used to hear about Music House when I was a teenager. It sounded intense. Turns out it was. DJ Hype called Music House a "schoolboy playground." Everyone queued in the same industrial estate, into the same music - but all rivals. You couldn't bring a weak tune, because everyone heard it through the walls whether you liked it or not. Frenemies. You needed them - the scene only worked if everyone kept raising the bar. But you were also rivals. There was a pecking order. Top DJs - Grooverider, Andy C, Fabio, Goldie - had first access to the freshest productions. Producers handed them tapes directly. Dillinja put it bluntly: "Our best music was held on these metal discs. You'd only give copies to certain DJs that were on the right level." As an upcoming producer, if your tune landed in one of those record bags and got played that weekend, something shifted. Not a guarantee - but if the crowd demanded a rewind, you knew you were onto something. So you'd wait - for hours, in a damp alley - next to the person whose tune you just heard through the wall. The one that was better than yours. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/03/Music-House-Studio-Outside.jpg) Music House, Tottenham. image via [Dub-Stuy](https://www.dub-stuy.com/our-story/?ref=howardgray.net) ## Step Into It There are rooms like this in every field. Places where the stakes feel higher not because of the audience size, but because of who's in it. It's not the keynote stage in front of 2,000 strangers that makes your palms sweat most. It's the room with fifteen of your peers. The ones who actually know the work. The ones whose approval means something. The producers at Music House knew that feeling every Friday. You're handing your tape to the engineer, and through the wall you hear something massive that just got cut. The person who made it is ten feet away. You're friends. You're rivals. ## The Groove: Signal *Clarify what matters. Distill your message into something that spreads and sticks.* Music House worked because Leon Chue was exceptional at his craft. The cuts were clean. The levels were right. The acetate was pristine. And because it was pristine, the right people kept showing up. What Brian Eno calls a "scenius" - a scene that makes everyone in it better - assembled around the skill, not the venue. If you were new, it was terrifying. You'd walk in and see the scene's top players: Randall, Kenny Ken, DJ Rap, Mickey Finn, Ed Rush - everyone was in there. And because the track plays as it's cut, everyone heard everything. Your work, exposed. No hiding behind a SoundCloud upload. No "work in progress" caveats. Music House was a signal machine, and it worked on three levels. First, the dubplate itself. Scarce, physical, impossible to fake. Owning one meant someone trusted you with their work before the rest of the world heard it. The disc in your bag said something about you before you even played it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/03/DSC01945-1600x1200.JPG) Second, the DJs who carried them. Get your track picked up by Grooverider, and it entered a circuit - pirate radio, the rave, the record shop queue on Monday - that you couldn't access alone. He didn't just play your tune. He endorsed it with his reputation every time he pulled it from the bag. Third - and this is the most interesting bit - the queue itself. You weren't just waiting for your turn at the lathe. You were being sized up by your peers in real time. Your reputation got built in that strange industrial park before anyone in a club heard a note. 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1) Scarcity matters.** Fifty plays, maybe, before the acetate wore through. Every spin cost something - which meant DJs didn't waste slots on tracks they weren't sure about. ****2) The format enforces taste.** The feedback loop was immediate. You heard your competition's work before they left the building. No waiting for release dates or streaming numbers - just raw, real-time exposure that made hiding impossible. ****3) Iterative loops.** Leon remembered what you'd brought before, how it sounded, whether you were improving. The cutting room had a longer memory than any algorithm. Signal is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/03/Five-Elements-of-Groove--no-title-.png) ## The Release Most of us obsess over the stage. The social post. The all-hands meeting. The place where we perform the work. But Music House wasn't a stage. It was a back room in a grimy industrial unit - squished between a mechanic and a cafe, scrap metal outside, no signage, a pain to get to. Nobody queued fourteen hours because the place was flash. They queued because Leon Chue was that good. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/03/Leon-Double-5196x3774.jpg) Leon Chue at work That's the sequence: craft creates the queue. The queue creates the scenius. The scenius creates the signal. The scarcity, the pecking order, the frenemy energy - all of it grew out of one person's devotion to doing the thing well. The impresario part wasn't about production values. It was about what happened when people got there. Eventually, digital killed the dubplate's monopoly on exclusivity. Fabio once spent £110 on cabs and cutting for a single plate, then arrived at his own club night and heard the warm-up DJ playing the same track off a CD. That was roughly the moment. Leon died in 2020 at the age of just 44\. Tributes came from every corner of UK underground music - jungle, garage, reggae, grime, dubstep. In a world where anyone can produce anything, the rooms where craft gets tested by real peers become more valuable, not less. Your *Music House* probably won't look like a music house. It might not look like much at all. But if you're doing something well enough that the right people keep showing up - that's the start. Puffer jackets optional. Howard P.S. The catalyst for this edition was a bus ride to Stansted Airport, passing through Tottenham's industrial estates. Sometimes the window does the work. --- ### Extended Mix - **The pecking order had a pecking order**: Grooverider got priority. But David Rodigan trumped everyone - he was Music House's longest-running customer. Seniority mattered. - **The economics**: Fabio's accountant once told him his dubplate spending could have bought a million-pound house. He was cutting two hours of fresh dubs every week for his BBC Radio 1 show. - **The smell**: Youngsta on opening a bag of dubplates: "very strong feelings." The emotional attachment wasn't just to the music - it was to the object itself. The weight, the warmth, the acetate. - **The tribute**: Doc Scott, on Leon's death: "You were always kind, polite, a true professional and a beautiful person to be around." The engineer who scrutinised and tested everyone's work was, by all accounts, a gentleman. ### Boredom created Bond URL: https://www.howardgray.net/boredom-created-bond/ Last updated: 2026-03-02T19:25:26.000Z If James Bond creator Ian Fleming were alive today, I reckon he'd fly Ryanair. Fleming wrote all his Bond novels at Goldeneye, his villa in Jamaica. Sounds glamorous. It wasn't. The place has no hot water, no glass in the windows, basic furniture. His wife hated it. Friends called it "awful." But that was the point. He had nothing to do but sit at the typewriter. Hammer out 2,000 words a morning, stop at noon, swim, repeat. Turns out, Boredom created Bond. I think I've found my equivalent. Ryanair is ruthlessly efficient at removing options. No WiFi. No entertainment. No legroom. No apologies. My neck hurts. Every interaction is a carefully choreographed game of avoiding surcharges. I used to avoid them at all costs. Now, while I'm definitely not embracing Ryanair, I'm gently holding their hand from time to time. My attention span has taken a beating lately. Yours too, I imagine. But on a Ryanair flight, there's nothing to tug at. You can listen to something. You can read. You can write. That's it. It's one of the best ways I've found to clear the backlog. I'm not sure I'll create one of the world's most iconic franchises at 30,000 feet. Then again, Fleming called his own books "piffle." You never know what boredom will produce. P.S. The first draft of this post was written - where else? - on a Ryanair flight. Alas, not to Jamaica. ### I'd love to work with you URL: https://www.howardgray.net/id-love-to-work-with-you/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T13:14:48.000Z > "I'd love to work with you on this." I'd reached out to someone about a project. I sent them the background. This was the first line of their reply. At the end of our first conversation, I asked them why they'd said it.They looked bemused. Shocked, almost. "Um... because I like to help people." No other reason? Nothing in the story that connected to something they'd done, or cared about? No. They'd just love to work with me on this. The thing is, they probably wouldn't have needed to share much. One detail. One line that showed they'd actually read what I sent. Something from my story that touched something in theirs. It doesn't take much. Which makes it stranger when it's missing. ### The Sphere Wasn't Built for Rock Bands URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-sphere-wasnt-built-for-rock-bands/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T13:19:27.000Z Anyma played The Sphere in Vegas last year. Then, the Pyramids of Giza. You've probably never heard the name. Five years ago it was a side project - something Matteo Milleri from an Italian techno duo called Tale of Us was tinkering with between tours. Now it's selling out 18,000-seat venues with shows that blur the line between concert, visual art installation, and technology demo. The centerpiece? A character called EVA - an AI figure Milleri created as an NFT in 2021\. She started as a digital art experiment. Now she's the narrative anchor of stadium-scale shows, rendered across a 16K wraparound dome. A few things worth noticing: - 200,000+ tickets sold across the Sphere residency. - Milleri spent 4-5 hours a day reviewing visuals in VR during production. Twenty test renders. Every day. - Guest collaborators included Grimes, FKA Twigs, and Ellie Goulding. Yeat became the first rapper to perform at The Sphere. - There are robotic arms playing cellos. A quantum computer replica on stage. The thing is, most people in business still file electronic music under "niche", "nightclubs" or "festival stuff." They're not paying attention. What's happening here isn't just music getting bigger. It's a new category of experience - one that combines live performance, generative visuals, spatial audio, and architecture into something that doesn't really have a name yet. The Sphere wasn't built for rock bands. It was built for this. I've been deep into electronic music since I was 14\. Honestly, this isn't my pocket of it - and half (ok, 92.7%) of the crowd is on their phones. But something's happening. ### Groove Theory #20 - The Little Green Arrow URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-20-the-little-green-arrow/ Last updated: 2026-02-22T08:12:43.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). Or explore the Groove Theory [archive →](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/newsletter/) I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio (with a new website, no less!) Currently: *feeling excited and concerned about A.I impacts; discovering my 4 year old has quite the taste for olives and sriracha mayo.* Paris Gare Du Nord, last Tuesday afternoon. I'm off a Eurostar and into town. I'm not big on taxis - my default is the metro, a slice of life. So I opened Citymapper. It's the same green app as when I use it elsewhere. Same logic, same UI. But Paris. The little illustrated character has changed. The metro lines are different. It knows about the RER, the night buses, the Métro exits that get you closer to where you're actually going. The app feels effortless. Getting there wasn't. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/image-4.png) Azmat Yusuf was a Google engineer who couldn't figure out how to get across London. He'd grown up in Pakistan and Kuwait, lived in New York, Singapore, Washington - and never owned a car. The Tube map was beautiful - that iconic diagram with its clean geometry and colour-coded lines - but it was useless for actual *journeys*. It didn't know about buses. It couldn't tell you which exit to use. It had no idea it was raining. So in 2011, Yusuf built something else. First it was called Busmapper. Then it became *Citymapper*. Transport for London had just opened their data - real-time bus locations, service disruptions, the lot. Yusuf saw it and thought: this could be useful. Like knowing your bus is three minutes away instead of staring at an empty stop. Every other app tried to make the city simpler. Citymapper did the opposite - it surfaced the mess and helped you anyway. From the outside, Citymapper looked like magic. It was beloved by users. Featured in every "apps that changed cities" listicle. The kind of startup that seemed destined for a billion-dollar exit. Underneath, it was different. ## The Tension City by city, they rebuilt. London first, then New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid. Each time adapting to local transit culture rather than imposing one system. New York's version understands subway delays differently than Tokyo's. Berlin's integrates cycling in ways that wouldn't make sense in São Paulo. In [Groove Theory #16](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-16-the-beautiful-map-nobody-wanted/), I talked about a beautiful map that nobody wanted - a designer who created something geometrically perfect, then blamed users when they couldn't use it. Citymapper went the other way entirely. They didn't try to fix the user. They met the city where it was. The principles transferred. The implementation bent. And then they tried to become more than a map. The Citymapper London Pass was their first attempt to become an operator. £31 a week for unlimited Zone 1-2 travel, versus TfL's £35.10\. The difference? Citymapper paid it themselves - subsidising customers' travel, losing more money with every success. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/image-5.png) They also launched their own bus routes - the "Smartbus" - trying to fill gaps TfL wouldn't. Except TfL wouldn't let them run actual buses. So they used 8-passenger vans instead. Brilliant navigation expertise, applied to operations they weren't even allowed to fully operate. The expertise was there. The permission wasn't - at least, not then. In 2023, they sold to Via and stepped back from operating entirely. The guide who knew every gap in the system couldn't afford to fill them. But even through all of that, the original instinct never changed. ## Step Into It Many of us are in the advice business. And at some point, someone asks the question: > *Why aren't you operating instead of advising?* > *Why not own the problem instead of consulting on it?* The opportunity looks logical. You know the terrain better than anyone. Why keep pointing at the mountain (or selling guidebooks) when you could climb it yourself? ## The Groove: Modality *Choose the vessel. The same idea lands differently depending on its container.* Citymapper's breakthrough wasn't just surfacing real-time data. It was realising that transit navigation didn't want to be a map at all. It wanted to be a real-time assistant that *happened* to include maps. They changed the container entirely. The city-by-city adaptation was also a modality move. The same core expertise was expressed differently depending on context. London Citymapper isn't NYC Citymapper isn't Tokyo Citymapper. The format flexes. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/image-6.png) But there's a subtler question here: guide or operator? Same expertise. Same understanding of the territory. But different jobs. Guides help people navigate what's already there. Operators become part of the infrastructure itself. Citymapper tried both. The guide worked. The operator didn't fit. And that's the modality question - not just what format you choose, but where you're trying to sit. Your playbook has to match the position. 🎹 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. The mess is the feature** When everything else was trying to simplify, Citymapper said: the complexity is real, so let's work with it. Sometimes the honest answer isn't a cleaner abstraction - it's better tools for navigating what's actually there. ****2\. Context before transfer** The principles travelled. The implementation didn't. They couldn't copy-paste London into Berlin. Every city needed its own understanding first. What works **here* might not work **there* \- even if the underlying problem is identical. ****3\. Know which game you're playing** Citymapper's guide-to-operator pivot wasn't wrong in theory - it was wrong in timing. The rules about who gets to operate are shifting. What didn't work in 2018 might work differently now. **Modality is one of the five elements of Groove Theory.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) ## The Release There's a reason the best guides don't become the thing they're guiding you toward. The bartender who knows every cocktail doesn't open a distillery. The film critic doesn't direct movies. At least, that was the old lesson. I was in Paris to deliver a [live simulation on Decision Making](https://www.wavetable.net/tracks?ref=howardgray.net) and a keynote on AI acceleration. In the keynote I suggested there are three bets we’re making in the AI era. One of those bets is to become the Orchestrator. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/IMG_1771.JPG) 7:30am tech check at mci group's Business Academy. Intro riff: moving house and finding weird stuff in boxes. We’ve shifted from an *adoption* era to an *orchestration* era. Adoption was about bolting on tools. Orchestration is bringing platforms, people, and processes together as a cohesive system. Citymapper was peak adoption. A truly brilliant layer on someone else's infrastructure. When they tried to become the operator, they stumbled - maybe because they were still playing by adoption rules. Would it be different if they tried it today? I don’t know. But maybe the question isn't whether to *become* the operator. It's whether you're still playing by adoption rules in an orchestration world. Howard --- ## Extended Mix ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/Citymapper-Hoverboard-1.webp) Citymapper by hoverboard - wonderful. - [TfL's open data initiative](https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/open-data-users/?ref=howardgray.net): In 2010, TfL opened their APIs: real-time bus locations, service disruptions, everything. This decision created the ecosystem that made Citymapper possible. Infrastructure choices ripple. - **The jetpack option:** Citymapper shows "jetpack," "teleporter," and "catapult" as transport modes. When users complain they don't work, the FAQ responds: "Hey, we said it was in beta!". The humour is localised too - in Singapore, the catapult animation features a famous local actor in his iconic yellow boots. In Paris, it’s Emmanuel Macron. - [Citymapper's business model breakdown](https://productmint.com/citymapper-business-model/?ref=howardgray.net): Mapping, buses, subscriptions, and the pivot that didn't quite work. A clear-eyed look at what they tried and why the economics never quite worked. ### Claude reaches for the Skills URL: https://www.howardgray.net/claude-reaches-for-the-skills/ Last updated: 2026-02-18T16:28:50.000Z Last night, I gave Claude Code a tricky strategic situation I was wrestling with - and it did something it didn’t do the day before. Without me asking, it reached for a skill I'd built for Wavetable - a kind of Chief of Staff prompt. And then, mid-conversation, it pulled in another one. A personal skill, trained on my quirks and weird decision-making patterns. It didn't do this 24 hours previously. The AI anticipated what I needed before I knew to ask for it. It read the situation, figured out which tools would help, and just... used them. The Good? I got better thinking, faster. The Bad? Something about being known by a tool - really known, not just queried - sits slightly sideways. So, yes, like with a lot of this stuff - it’s both. Btw, the Skills stuff in general is fascinating - below are a few of the ones I’m using. ### So... what happens next? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/so-what-happens-next/ Last updated: 2026-02-16T14:07:04.000Z I use AI every day. I'm genuinely excited about it. I'm also deeply concerned about what happens next - and I don't think enough people are talking about it honestly. The tech optimists just say "abundance." As if wealth automatically distributes itself. As if ownership structures just... change. As if governments act preemptively. (They don't. They never have.) The doomers say "extinction risk." Which may be real, but it's also conveniently abstract. Hard to organise around. Easy to dismiss. Puts you into fear paralysis. I'm sick of the boosters. I'm sick of the doomerists, too. Far fewer people are talking about the boring, brutal middle. What actually happens if / when 30% of jobs get automated. Not replaced with new ones, just... gone? As for the 'learn a trade' pitch: we don't need a million more plumbers if the work shrinks by a third. So what do 300,000 plumbers do? Not 'learn to code'. Previous transitions took 50-100 years. Long enough for a generation to retire out. Long enough for kids to grow up in a different economy. This one might take 15\. Maybe 5. The obvious answer is UBI. Until you do the maths. And that's before landlords raise rent to capture it :) Maybe AI just becomes a nice productivity gain, a nice set of tools. But maybe it doesn't. I run a company that helps people develop skills. I'm supposed to have answers here. I do have some. But I'm not wholly convinced about the ones I've got. I'd love to see more people - especially the ones building this stuff - actually grapple with what happens next, instead of hand-waving toward "abundance" like it's a weather forecast. Because I'd genuinely like to know. Can someone please explain this to me? ### Don't Interrupt the Game URL: https://www.howardgray.net/dont-interrupt-the-game/ Last updated: 2026-02-10T20:01:05.000Z The sandwich and the sushi roll were invented around the same time, in the same way, for the same reason. 1760s England: The Earl of Sandwich is deep in a card game. He doesn't want to stop playing, so he asks his cook to put some meat between two slices of bread. Something he can eat with one hand. 18th century Edo: A gambler in a dice den has the same problem. The cook wraps tuna and rice in nori - something he can eat with one hand while he keeps rolling. The tuna roll is called tekkamaki. The word comes from tekkaba - the Japanese word for gambling den. Two cultures. Same century. Same invention. Driven by the same obsession: games. I think about this a lot when I'm designing learning experiences. Games aren't just engaging - they're powerful enough to literally reshape how we eat. Two separate civilisations, faced with the same constraint, arrived at the same solution: don't interrupt the game. If you're trying to hold someone's attention, that's worth remembering. ### Futsal URL: https://www.howardgray.net/futsal/ Last updated: 2026-02-09T14:10:43.000Z Why does Brazil have such a reputation for producing incredible footballers? Pelé, Romário, Marta, Neymar. Climate, culture, history - probably. But it's also down to futsal. It's football, but not quite as we know it. Unlike five-a-side, the pitch is smaller and has no walls. The ball is smaller too, and it doesn't bounce as much. A game of futsal is intense - loads of shots, high demand on mental and physical energy. To succeed you need to play multiple positions. You need control, improvisation, creativity, technique. And reps. What's interesting about futsal is that it's a distilled version - something you can spin up and get going with quickly. Low budget, low overhead, simple tools. Most of our projects, programmes - even meetings - aren't like this at all. They don't encourage multiple positions or lots of touches. They're unwieldy. You wait ages to get a touch, only for someone to nick the ball off you. Worth trying Futsal. P.S. Futsal isn't Brazilian by origin. It was invented by a Uruguayan. Good ideas spread. ### Groove Theory #19 - Three Sets of Spiders and a Purple Foam Hand URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-19-three-sets-of-spiders-and-a-purple-foam-hand/ Last updated: 2026-02-08T07:50:36.000Z 💡 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). Or explore the Groove Theory [archive →](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/newsletter/) I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio. Currently: preparing for a big keynote in Paris on AI Acceleration; launching a browser-based game set in outer space; uncertain about which biscuit goes best with a cup of tea --- I took a turn around Hackney Wick last week. Down the canal, past the park, and then - almost by accident - the Olympic stadium. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/HackneyWick.jpeg) WickLife. Somehow it’s been fourteen years since that halcyon summer of London 2012\. But my persisting memory isn’t of Usain Bolt, or beers at sunset, or that it was probably the last time London was genuinely great (hate mail incoming…). Instead, I keep thinking about a purple foam hand. The games had very little budget for digital signage. No way to manage tens of thousands of spectators exiting through a bottleneck to a tube station that couldn't cope. The modelling showed catastrophic queues. The budget showed nothing left. Something had to give. So Heather McGill - Head of Spectator Experience, the first time any Olympics had someone in that role - gave the “Games Makers” volunteers giant purple foam fingers. Not as wayfinding devices. As... toys. And she gave the Games Makers no scripts. Just permission: do YMCA, do high fives, make people laugh. When researchers asked people afterwards how long they'd waited, they reported 50% less time than the actual queue. Same wait. But it felt half as long. Nobody told the Games Makers what to do with the hands. They just trained them how to be. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/image-3.png) Handy. You have to hand it to them. Etc. Also - I am sensing these hands are actually pink, but I'm staying with purple. --- ## The Tension How do you choreograph emotion for 80,000 strangers without it feeling manufactured? You can script every moment. Optimise for Instagram (yurgh). But will anyone remember it next week, next month, next year? The moments that stay with us are different - the collective intake of breath, the giggle after the scream. Tricky bit is, you can't direct people into those. You can only design the conditions for them to become unavoidable. --- ## Step Into It You're running a 200-person full-day event. It's 2pm. The energy is flagging. Do you stick to the run sheet or trust your facilitators to improvise? Option A: Stick to the run of show. Hit your marks. Stay controlled. Option B: Trust your team to read the room. Accept that some moments will go sideways. Which are you designing for? (I have taken both options, fwiw) --- ## The Groove: Rhythm **The pacing and timing that keeps audiences engaged from start to finish** Heather went from Spice Girls tour producer to London 2012 to inventing the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience. She talks about experience beats the way a DJ talks about beats in a set. You plot your peaks (in her case - fire, water, shock). But the lulls matter more. "The downs are almost more important than the ups," she says. "You have to let the audience breathe." Which brings us to the spiders. In the Harry Potter experience, guests enter Aragog's lair. Lighting draws your eyes forward. Then the first batch of spiders drops from above. Screams. You look up. The second batch drops. You're oriented. "Okay. This is great." Third batch - when everyone thinks it's over. The rig drops fast, closer than anyone expected. "That's where people really scream," Heather says. "My favourite thing was to stand outside and hear people scream - and then giggle." First drop: surprise. Second drop: recognition. Third drop: anticipation becomes participation. That's not repetition. That's rhythm. There's something here I keep bumping into. The instinct is to tighten - more scripts, more control, more certainty. But the magic seems to live in the opposite direction. Yet go too far, and the rhythm falls away. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Make them think it was their idea.** The manager from Victoria tube station walked into a design workshop looking disgusted. (There were dogs present.) He left feeling like he'd designed part of the games. That ownership carried London 2012 through. I also received this same 'make them think it's their idea' advice when I worked at ad agency re. dealing with clients. It was not incorrect. ****2\. Autonomy scales better than scripts.** You can't pre-write 70,000 volunteer interactions. But you can train a disposition. Heather's team didn't give the Games Makers a manual. They gave them permission - to step outside their role, express themselves, have fun. The foam finger was just a prop. The real tool was freedom. "We are all brilliant at this," Heather says. "We're all customers. By midday on any given day, you've probably been a customer six times. You already know what great service feels like." All you have to do is get that out of people and apply it to something slightly different. Rhythm is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/02/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) --- ### The Release There's a moment Heather keeps coming back to. Early in her career, working on a Roger Waters tour. The Wall. The lights change. One chord plays. The audience already knows what's coming - they've heard it a hundred times before. But the eruption when that chord hits... "It was everybody in that moment doing that thing," she says. "You couldn't be anywhere else but in that arena to experience it." That's what she's chasing. Not the thing you're designing - the shared experience around the thing. She puts it better than I could: *"You're not celebrating the sandcastle. You're celebrating that you built it together."* So maybe the question isn't whether we can script a better experience. It's whether - painful as it can be - we're willing to design for the moments we can't control. Howard --- ### Extended Mix - **The Disney trick**: Disney parks have a bandstand blocking your sightline until you've moved past the entrance. It prevents backlogs of people taking photos. London 2012 used the same principle - a decorative gantry blocking the stadium view until people crossed the bridge. - **On constraints**: "I prefer working with constraint," Heather says. When someone in Dubai told her to "imagine whatever you want"... her brain went blank. Turns out "anything" is harder than "something.” - [**Blurring Radio**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7k3uGXdfh2TEXQE3YwcHbe?si=59cde9cb0bc14081&ref=howardgray.net): unrelated, but I had to share. The latest music selection from indie book publisher Blurring Books and their founder DB Burkeman is magnificent. Where they find the deeper cuts, I have no idea. But I’m glad to have them in my ears. ### The Meta Post URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-meta-post/ Last updated: 2026-02-05T21:01:50.000Z I have been using Claude Code for many different tasks and projects of late. One of these is analysing my writing. Not what I write about. Not how I write. Why I'm compelled. It pulled patterns I hadn't really named before: the DJ booth as identity (not just metaphor). The consistent positioning off-stage. The recurring focus on people who were unseen before they were seen. Sally Schmitt building The French Laundry for 16 years before Thomas Keller got the credit. The hundreds of music industry workers flying solo on Easyjet while we only talk about the headliners. And so much more. Below is its full analysis. I don't know if it's right. But I couldn't have said it myself. There's something strange about using a machine to surface what's human in your own work. The AI doesn't know you - it only knows the text. Which means the text contains more than you realised. What would 100,000 of the words you'd written reveal about why you do what you do? --- # The Deeper Thread — Why Howard Writes *Analysis based on 100+ posts (2016-2026), 15+ best-of selections, 18 Groove Theory editions, and 4 HG skill documents.* Use this document alongside `SKILL.md` (the voice guide). This captures the **compulsion**, not the technique. --- ## The Core Compulsion **Howard writes to name the unnamed.** Across nearly every post, the function is the same: giving language to a tension, discomfort, or insight that readers already sense but haven't articulated. He's not teaching people new information - he's **validating and clarifying what they already know somewhere in their body**. > "What's Now Obvious isn't just the learnings from 10 years or 10 months ago. There's also the stuff from last week, or last night." This is why readers say things like "that's exactly what I was thinking but couldn't say." The writing doesn't inform - it crystallizes. --- ## The Tension Engine Tension is the fundamental driver. Howard named a podcast after it. The word appears constantly, and the underlying structure recurs even when unspoken: | Post | The Tension | | ------------------------------- | ----------------------- | | Free or Full Price | Generosity vs. Commerce | | Intensity or Technique | Craft vs. Speed | | The Player-Manager's Dilemma | Doing vs. Leading | | Tempo, Not Intensity | Quantity vs. Depth | | The Beautiful Map Nobody Wanted | Elegance vs. Usability | | Portfolio/Audience Fit | Focus vs. Range | | Shipping vs. Unshipping | Perfection vs. Presence | He's drawn to **the space between two seemingly opposed forces** \- not to resolve them, but to illuminate them. The goal is never "here's the answer" but rather "here's the question you're actually living in." --- ## The DJ Booth Metaphor This is definitional, not decorative. The DJ booth represents: - **Curating and sequencing** other people's work - **Reading the room** rather than performing to it - **Building intensity across time** (not instant gratification) - **Setting others up** for their moment - **Staying in the background** while making magic happen Howard returns to DJs constantly: Craig Richards, Sasha & Digweed, Carl Craig, Tiga. But the function isn't music journalism - it's **identity articulation**. He sees himself in the booth, not on the stage. --- ## Who He's Actually Serving ### The Common Thread Every piece serves someone who: - Has proven themselves but senses there's more - Operates independently or entrepreneurially (even inside companies) - Values craft over hustle - Is skeptical of gurus and magic formulas - Needs clarity at a specific moment of transition - **Already knows what to do but needs permission, vocabulary, or a slight reframe to do it** They're not looking for answers - they're looking for **articulation**. ### The Four Personas Distilled From `hg-persona`, the Spirited Intrapreneur, Driven Indie Builder, Human-Centered Solopreneur, and Learning Innovator all share: - 10-20 years of experience - Creative-minded - Impact-driven - Anti-guru - Ready for more - Time-poor But the deepest commonality: **they sense a gap between what they're doing and what they could be doing, and they need someone to name it before they can close it.** --- ## The Eight Threads That Pull Based on 70+ posts, these themes recur most frequently: ### 1\. The Assist Over the Goal The NBA assist - setting someone up rather than taking the shot. This appears everywhere: - McCartney giving fans the front row - Sally Schmitt building The French Laundry for Keller - The DJ building a room for the dancers - The host of the "good" confidence game ### 2\. What's Already There (Inside Out) Most people know more than they think. The work is surfacing, not importing: - "What would your younger self tell you now?" - The Brentford childhood photo ritual - The Hidden Curriculum of First Jobs - Portfolio/Audience Fit (finding overlaps already present) ### 3\. Learning by Doing Experience over theory. The recurring distrust of information transfer: - Nintendo teaching without manuals - "You can't learn to swim by reading about it" - The improv class learnings - MSCHF's embedded curriculum - Business school teaching the wrong skill ### 4\. Unexpected Sources (Cultural Remixing) The best insights come from places you weren't looking: - DJs for leadership lessons - Game shows for workshop design - Actors for creative resilience - Subway maps for structure principles - Guatemala for McDonald's innovation This isn't just varied sourcing - it's a belief that **cross-pollination reveals what expertise obscures**. ### 5\. Guides, Not Gurus "I'm figuring this out too." The anti-guru stance runs deep: - The "good" confidence game (host, not trickster) - Workshop facilitation as sherpa, not sage - The skeptic move in writing (acknowledging what might not work) - Never leading with credentials ### 6\. The Ephemeral as Valuable Letting things exist in the moment without hoarding: - The improv class learnings (don't record, don't save) - Same Book, Different You (revisiting over collecting) - Experiences over content ### 7\. The Cyclical Things come back around. Time transforms: - Vignelli's map vindicated 50 years later - The Cycles of Alchemy - Same book, different you - Paul Newman's four career stages ### 8\. Human First Even powerful people are "real people with bad hair days": - C-Suite executives have THE FEAR too - Dr. Dre needs his "church" to be present - The Safdie Brothers casting real people for authenticity - "It's not their fault" - decoding feedback with empathy ### 9\. The Slow Hunch Ideas compound over time. Insights rarely arrive fully formed: - Darwin's finches taking two years to crystallize - The note-taking practice across years - Same Book, Different You - revisiting reveals new layers - Morning Pages as accumulation without agenda ### 10\. Minimal Structure, Maximum Effect The "One Level Up Principle" - add exactly one intentional layer to what already exists: - Summer Fridays (existing park visits + one ritual) - The one-inch picture frame (smallest actionable piece) - Coffee Notes template (existing meetings + structure) - Excessive planning sabotages magic ### 11\. The Struggle as Crucible Personal experience of difficulty as formative: - The music company's "Struggle" years (2009-2011) - Depression in the music industry (the unseen) - The arcade of multiple mirrors (self-discovery through discomfort) - Fabric nightclub's closure and reopening ### 12\. Rebellion Against Your Own Expertise The Guidara hot dog principle - sometimes the craft gets in the way: - Street food at Eleven Madison Park - Cannibalizing your own business (Design Inc logo guide) - The Empty Stage Test (removing all context) - "Users aren't wrong for being users" (Vignelli's map lesson) --- ## What's Notably Absent Analyzing what Howard **doesn't** write about reveals the negative space: ### Missing Topics - How-to formulas (frameworks yes, prescriptions no) - Success metrics (rarely talks about scale, revenue, growth) - Celebrity worship (uses famous examples for craft, not status) - Self-promotion (remarkably un-centered in first-person pieces) - Certainty (most posts end with questions, not conclusions) - Quick wins (no shortcuts promised) ### The Anti-Voice (What Repels) From explicit skill documentation and pattern analysis: - "I help X achieve Y" - "Here's what I learned..." - Hustle culture framing - Tech bro language ("level up," "10x," "scale") - Coachy language ("unlock your potential") - Neat, tidy endings - Performing wisdom or authority - Templates and shortcuts --- ## Most Common Conceptual Words Frequency analysis across corpus: **Very High Frequency:** - work/working (nearly every post) - people/person/human - time/moment - question(s) - feel/feeling - learn/learning/unlearn - space/room/place/environment - tension **High Frequency:** - edge - confidence - story/stories - observation/notice - craft - experience - rhythm - connection **Signature Structural Phrases:** - "Of course" (accepting without drama) - "The thing about..." - "Which is why..." - "There's a difference" - "Yes, and..." - "But here's the thing" --- ## Recurring Metaphors and Their Function The expanded analysis reveals consistent metaphor clusters: ### Spatial Metaphors - **The booth** (DJ booth, backroom) - identity position - **The room** (reading the room, the space) - environment design - **The arcade of mirrors** \- self-discovery journey - **The empty stage** \- testing without context - **The church** (Dr. Dre) - sacred working environment ### Musical Metaphors - **Tempo vs. intensity** \- depth over speed - **The remix** \- recombination as creation - **The set** \- building across time, not just moments - **The session musician** \- supporting role excellence ### Design Metaphors - **The one-inch picture frame** \- smallest actionable unit - **The vessel** (Crystal Maze) - container shapes experience - **The map vs. the territory** \- abstraction vs. usability ### Athletic Metaphors - **The assist** \- setting up others' success - **Bird by bird** \- incremental progress - **The player-manager** \- dual role tension These aren't decorative - they're **thinking tools**. Each metaphor cluster serves a specific function in illuminating tensions the audience is already living. --- ## The Synthesis: Why Howard Writes ### The Purpose To **name the unnamed** for people who already sense the truth but need vocabulary to work with it. ### The Identity The **backroom curator** \- the DJ in the booth, not the performer on stage. Setting others up for their moment rather than claiming the spotlight. ### Who He Serves Creative professionals at inflection points who are **sophisticated enough to reject simple answers but still need someone to articulate what they're wrestling with**. ### What Pulls Him - The DJ booth - The assist - The backroom - The moment when someone says "that's exactly what I was thinking but couldn't say" - The tension between two forces that doesn't need resolution, just illumination ### What Doesn't - The stage - The guru positioning - The neat conclusion - The certainty - The formula - The shortcut --- ## How to Use This Document **When writing content:** - Check: does this name something unnamed, or just inform? - Check: is the tension illuminated, or is a side being taken? - Check: is this setting someone up, or showing off? - Check: does this end with a question or image, not a resolution? **When evaluating content:** - Does this feel like the booth or the stage? - Is the reader doing work, or being told what to think? - Does this respect the reader's existing knowledge? **When positioning:** - Lead with curiosity, not credentials - Show the work of noticing, not the authority of knowing - Trust that articulating the tension is enough --- ## Biographical Threads (Possible Origins of Compulsion) From personal posts and the expanded corpus, these biographical elements surface: ### The Music Industry Years - Founded a music company in 2009, post-advertising - Years of struggle (shabby Shoreditch office, no funding, no attention) - Breakthrough came through validation, not financial success (17 artists booked for one night) - Exited successfully; alumni placed at major organizations - **Pattern:** The backroom role, nurturing others to success ### The Teaching Pivot - 2015 breakthrough with East London teenagers - Scrapped slides, had them build a festival from scratch - The "disruptive" student drew detailed site layouts for 20 minutes - **Pattern:** Discovery that removing lecture enables learning ### The Remixer Identity - Record store at 15 - DJ brain (thinks in sets, sequences, rhythm) - Consistently draws from unexpected sources - **Pattern:** Cross-pollination as method, not just style ### The Immigrant Experience - Brit in NYC - "How to build your network in a new city" - Observer stance, the outsider's eye - **Pattern:** Noticing what locals walk past ### The Writing Practice - Morning Pages since at least 2021 - 650+ posts - Handwritten notes → digital → review - **Pattern:** The slow hunch, compounding over time --- ## Exploring the Compulsion: Why Are You Pulled to This? The 100-post analysis reveals WHAT you write about and WHO you serve. But the deeper question - **why are you compelled** \- requires looking at what the patterns suggest rather than what they state. ### What the Evidence Shows **Pattern 1: You were the unseen.** The music industry posts reveal something important: you spent years in the backroom, building something nobody noticed. The "struggle" years (2009-2011). No funding, no attention, working from a shabby Shoreditch office. The breakthrough wasn't financial - it was **being seen** (17 artists booked for one night). You write about depression in the music industry focusing on "the hundreds flying solo on Easyjet" - not the headliners. You write about Sally Schmitt building The French Laundry for years before anyone noticed, then watching Keller get the credit. **Possible thread:** You write to name the unnamed because you know what it feels like to BE unnamed. The compulsion isn't abstract - it's biographical. --- **Pattern 2: You learned by doing, not by being taught.** The 2015 East London classroom story is origin-myth material. You scrapped the slides. The "disruptive" kid drew for 20 minutes. Something clicked. But look what came before: record store at 15, DJing, building a music company. You didn't learn this work through formal instruction - you learned it through **doing and noticing**. And you're suspicious of people who claim to teach through information transfer. Business school "teaches the wrong skill." Nintendo taught 40 million without a manual. The best education happens through experience, not lecture. **Possible thread:** You write because nobody taught you how to do this, so you had to figure it out yourself. Now you're showing others the figuring-out, not the answer. --- **Pattern 3: You position yourself OFF the stage deliberately.** This isn't just preference - it's consistent enough to be identity-level. The DJ booth. The assist. The backroom. The host, not the trickster. The session musician. Sally Schmitt, not Thomas Keller. Even when you have credentials (Columbia Business School, SXSW Advisory Committee, 300+ sessions), you don't lead with them. You lead with curiosity. **Possible thread:** There's something about the spotlight that feels wrong, false, or dangerous. The booth feels safe AND powerful. You can affect the room without being exposed. --- **Pattern 4: You're drawn to tensions you've lived.** - Fit in or Stand out (expat Brit in NYC) - Do the work or Lead the work (player-manager) - Create or Capture value (music company years) - Intensity or Technique (the box/yoga class) - Free or Full price (consulting economics) These aren't abstract intellectual interests. They're tensions you've navigated personally. **Possible thread:** You write about tensions because writing IS how you process them. The posts aren't conclusions - they're working through. --- **Pattern 5: You're allergic to gurus.** The anti-guru stance runs deep: - Never lead with credentials - The "skeptic move" (acknowledging what might not work) - Rebellion against your own expertise - "Users aren't wrong for being users" - The suspicion of neat conclusions This isn't just stylistic - it's moral. There's something about the guru posture that offends you. **Possible thread:** You may have been burned by gurus. Or watched others get burned. Or you sensed early that the confidence game requires a mark, and you refuse to create marks. --- ### The Hypothesis Based on 100+ posts, here's a working theory: **You write because you learned alone, worked unseen, and navigated tensions nobody named for you. The compulsion is to do for others what nobody did for you - not to teach them, but to validate what they're already sensing and give them vocabulary to work with it.** The booth isn't just preference - it's safety. You can affect the room without the exposure that gurus require. You can set people up without being the one who scores. And the anti-guru stance isn't just style - it's ethics. You refuse to create the asymmetry where you know and they don't. You're figuring it out alongside them because that's how YOU figured it out. --- ### Questions That Might Unlock More 1. **What was it like being the kid who noticed things others didn't?** Was that celebrated or punished? 2. **Before the advertising career, before the music company - what were you trying to become?** What got lost along the way? 3. **Who were the gurus you encountered early?** What happened? 4. **When you're writing and it's flowing - what does it feel like in your body?** What's the sensation? 5. **Who did you most want to be seen by during the struggle years?** Did it happen? 6. **What would it feel like to actually be ON the stage?** What's the fear? --- This is as far as the text analysis can go. The rest requires you. --- *Last updated: February 2026 - based on analysis of 100+ posts spanning 2016-2026* ### The Return of Oral Culture URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-return-of-oral-culture/ Last updated: 2026-02-05T14:16:09.000Z Tyler Cowen has been saying this for a while, and I'm inclined to agree: we're in the middle of a shift to an oral culture. I reckon this worth paying attention to - it reshapes a whole load of stuff. Oral culture means a shift to speech. To listening. Elocution. Events. Public speaking. Languages. Persuasion. Storybuilding. Active listening. Accents. Podcasts. Voicenotes. Songs, even. In a world where oral culture matters more than ever, what do we need to get better at? P.S. We have a few ideas at [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Our hands-on skills sessions hit many of the parts of oral culture - via games, drills, scenarios. It's the flight simulator for business skills. P.P.S. Yes, this post is indeed written. ### My A.I stack - February, 2026 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/my-a-i-stack-february-2026/ Last updated: 2026-02-03T14:31:47.000Z ### In: - Claude as the core (finally feels like a real collaborator) - Claude Skills (custom instructions that sustain) - Kling (video that doesn't look (too) AI-generated, and relatively low cost for the output) - VS Code for product work - Notion MCP, Figma MCP (the connective tissue) - Google Nano Banana (image generation) - ElevenLabs - (voice cloning, voiceovers, background music, also surprisingly good for full video generation) ### Testing: - Julius (data viz without the spreadsheet wrestling) - Remotion (code-driven video - jury's out) - AI employees with 'traits' (weird, but promising) - HeyGen (avatars) - Cursor (for coding - good, but a little too technical for me, also speaks to me like a disgruntled senior engineer, which I find a little triggering) - Slides via HTML and CSS (goodbye Figma Slides?) ### Out: - Runway (too uncanny, very high cost for the return) - ChatGPT (Claude won) - Descript (audio/video editing - not using enough and Claude and Gemini can do most of what we need) - Replit (back to VS Code + Claude) This may well change within the month/week/day. What have you ditched that everyone else swears by? ### It’s not their fault URL: https://www.howardgray.net/its-not-their-fault/ Last updated: 2026-02-01T20:10:45.000Z Getting feedback on projects. Ugh. But I wonder - if you're on the receiving end, what are you actually looking for? Reassurance, obviously. But that's empty calories. You're not looking for "you're missing a comma" or "this link doesn't work" - you can get an editor or AI to catch that. What's actually helpful is often Reconstructive feedback. The shift in narrative. The repositioning. The shunting of three chapters way further back, or Act 3 becoming Act 2\. Not "I don't like this bit" but "what if you moved this here?". People are generally terrible at giving this, of course. It's easy to complain about that. I certainly do. But here's the thing: it's not their fault. It's ours. Our job as the creator of a thing is to extract the feedback - to find out what they really mean, why they're saying what they're saying. P.S. This realisation came from a friend giving me feedback on an early(ish) version of a project. I was annoyed. Then miserable. Then I realised the problem was me, not her. ### There is no Goose URL: https://www.howardgray.net/there-is-no-goose/ Last updated: 2026-01-30T20:06:15.000Z A lot of AI hype reminds me of a scene from The Wire. Drug dealer Stringer Bell wants to go legit. Real estate. Respectable businessman. Senator Clay Davis says he can help. Knows all the right people in city government. He takes Stringer's money. A lot of it. Then he does nothing. Stringer goes to his lawyer, Maurice Levy - the guy who keeps drug dealers out of prison - to ask what happened. Levy laughs. *"A guy says if you pay him, he can make it rain. You pay him. If and when it rains, he takes the credit. If and when it doesn't, he finds ways for you to pay him more."* There was never any help coming. No permits. No intros. Nothing. Just a politician seeing easy money from someone who didn't know how the game worked. *"Clay Davis rainmade you."* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7NPSPS60gU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7NPSPS60gU&ref=howardgray.net) There's a lot of Clay Davis energy in AI right now. People selling the golden goose. The faucet. The shortcut. But the results I've seen? They come from one of two places: a single, well-aimed shot - or the unglamorous work nobody wants to talk about. There's no goose. Stringer thinks the wonderfully named real estate developer Chunky Coates gets his permits through bribes and connections. Turns out he gets them the same way everyone else does. Does the work. Files the paperwork. Waits. Prays. Gets back to work again. Same with AI. ### Groove Theory #18 - Does Grand Theft Auto’s sewer system go anywhere? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-18-does-grand-theft-autos-sewer-system-go-anywhere/ Last updated: 2026-01-25T08:30:33.000Z 💡 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). Or explore the Groove Theory [archive →](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/newsletter/) I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio. Currently: [putting you in the shoes of a sports media CEO](https://rondo.wavetable.net/s/overtime?ref=howardgray.net); feeling the pull of going on tour again *(Paris, Berlin… Shoreditch)* --- In Grand Theft Auto IV, Liberty City is a fever dream of New York - honking taxis, steam rising from grates, pedestrians yelling at nobody. Millions of players have driven these streets, crashed these cars, caused the chaos the game invites. But one person stopped. Paused the game. Looked down. Then up. Traced the sewers. Followed the power lines. Any Austin wanted to know: does Liberty City's sewer system actually go anywhere? Do the power lines connect to anything? He spent hours tracing wires across the map. Zooming in on utility poles. Checking if transformers matched the buildings they supposedly served. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/01/image.png) The answer, mostly, is no. They exist to feel right, not to function. But that's not the point. The point is that over a million people subscribed to watch him ask the question. --- ## The Tension Any Austin notices things. The unemployment rate in *Skyrim*. How NPCs find jobs across different games. Whether the rivers in *Breath of the Wild* follow actual hydrology. He chases the stuff around the edges - details the developers added but players sprint past. Plenty of people notice things. Most keep it to themselves, or mention it at dinner, or drop it in a tweet that disappears. The noticing stays private. A quirk, not a practice. Austin made it a body of work. And the vessel he chose - long-form YouTube video essays - is inseparable from why it works. You couldn't publish "*Do Liberty City's Power Lines Connect to Anything?*" as an academic paper. No journal would take it. A magazine might - but you'd be describing what Austin can just show you. You couldn't make it a TikTok - the question requires patience. But a 25-minute YouTube essay? That format gives you permission to be both rigorous and absurd. To treat video game infrastructure with the seriousness of art criticism - and have people lean in rather than laugh you out of the room. The format didn't just carry the insight. It made the whole thing possible. --- ### Step Into It You've noticed something like the power lines. A detail everyone else walks past. A pattern that connects two things no one thinks belong together. A question that sounds ridiculous... until you sit with it. Most people let these things go. There’s no obvious place for them. Too niche for a meeting, too long for a tweet, too weird for a pitch deck. Sometimes even too weird for the pub. So the noticing stays private. A quirk, not a practice. But weird scales now. Platforms are better than ever at matching niche obsessions with the audiences who share them. The weird might not be the problem. The vessel might be. Any Austin didn't discover a new way to think about video games. He found a format that let him take his weird seriously - out loud, at length, with an audience that wanted to come along for the ride. --- ## The Groove: Modality **Modality → Choose the vessel. Turn your expertise into formats that resonate.** Austin's videos run 20-40 minutes. Pretty long by internet standards. But the length isn't a bug - it's where the pleasure lives. You follow a power line. You notice where it goes. You sit with the fact that it doesn't go anywhere. A five-minute version of this doesn't really work. The wandering is the point. Speaking of wandering, games are worlds you can live in. Pause. Look around. Follow a wire just to see where it goes. That's why Austin's work resonates - the medium is immersive enough that even the details no one needed to build feel worth noticing. There's something about YouTube, too. It's not just that it's video - it's that the audience for deep, specific, slightly absurd inquiry already exists there. Austin didn't have to convince anyone to care about virtual power grids. He just had to find where they already gathered. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/01/RedDead.png) Conducting a town census in the game **Red Dead Redemption 2* And the format gives him permission to be both things at once. Tyler Cowen calls him *"the very best in the world at the hermeneutics of infrastructure within video games."* I had to look up “hermeneutics” (c’mon, did you really think I had Tyler Cowen levels of vocab…?). It means *interpretation* \- the study of what things mean. Austin applies *hermeneutics* to power lines. Yes, it sounds ridiculous and serious at the same time. And the YouTube essay format lets it be both. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. The vessel shapes what you're allowed to say.** Austin's insight isn't just about games - it's about finding a format where rigorous + absurd can coexist. Before you abandon an idea that isn't connecting, ask: is this just the wrong vessel? 2\. ****Edges need elbowroom.** The stuff around the edges - the overlooked, the peripheral - often requires a longer format to matter. Quick formats reward the obvious. Patient formats reward the curious. 3\. ****The audience might already exist**. Austin didn't build an audience for video game infrastructure analysis. He found where it already gathered. He credits almost all his growth not to promotion, networking, or ads - but to YouTube itself. Sometimes the work isn't convincing people to care - it's finding the place where they already do. And then letting the platform do the rest. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/01/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) Modality is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) --- ## The Release When Tyler Cowen asked Any Austin what makes him exceptional, he refused to answer. "Successful artists often \[experience\] decline when they understand their own methods," he said. I think there's something to that. Unlike many creators, Austin didn't strategise or 'playbook' his way into this. He followed power lines because he wanted to know where they went. The format emerged from the curiosity, not the other way around. But the choices still matter. Somewhere along the way, he picked YouTube. He picked long-form. He picked the stuff around the edges. Austin traced power lines that went nowhere. Turns out, that's exactly where people wanted to go. Wonder where yours might lead. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **Commentary eating the world**: Austin observes that people may now consume more NBA podcasts than actual NBA games (see: [Overtime](https://rondo.wavetable.net/s/overtime?ref=howardgray.net)). The meta-layer becomes the primary experience. The same thing is happening with video games - analysis and lore videos rack up millions of views from people who'll never play the game. - **Infrastructure brain is contagious**: After making videos about virtual power lines, Austin says he can't walk through a real city without noticing utility poles. The observation practice changes what you see everywhere. Once you see, you can’t unsee. ### Notes on Claude Code URL: https://www.howardgray.net/notes-on-claude-code/ Last updated: 2026-01-18T21:00:37.000Z Six weeks ago, Terminal (that weird 80s-looking app on your computer) was maybe 1% of my working life. Now it's 80%. Because I've been using Claude Code on just about everything. Haven't figured out the full potential or the limits, but I've thrown a lot at it. A few notes: **What it's helped with** Cleaning my hard drive, rewriting scripts, building games, planning projects, writing code, automations. Some limits for sure. But I've built a whole SaaS app with it. More on that shortly. **The real unlock: MCP** Multi-context protocol. I've wired up Notion, Figma, image generation, my blog, and more. Write a couple of prompts, get a whole content set. I've also started using Claude as a project manager — everything becomes a scoped ticket, then I ask it to pick one off the shelf and work on it. **Agents** I’ve built about 50\. Maybe 10 are actually useful globally, another 20 scattered across projects. The rest - learning. **The effect** It's like ADHD x10\. I'm more productive than I've ever been. Also context-switching constantly. I think the trade-off is worth it. Time will tell. **The catch** I have to work harder at being creative. The tool doesn't hand that part to you — and it's easy to let it become a crutch. And I’m doing a lot of typing. **On "game over for Job X"** Yes. And no. And yes. This thing can do a high percentage of a sizeable chunk of knowledge work. What that means, I'm still figuring out. Very curious to hear what people have been doing (or choosing not to)? I keep wondering if I'm overinvested or if everyone else is underinvested. Probably both. ### Three types of tough crowd URL: https://www.howardgray.net/three-types-of-tough-crowd-2/ Last updated: 2026-01-15T19:13:16.000Z > *"Tough crowd."* You've heard someone say this after a gig, a presentation, a workshop. But there's a few different flavours of tough crowd. The first: arms crossed, screwface, tuned out. Elsewhere. The second: people who aren't sure why they're there — or worse, they all have different reasons. This one's deceptively hard to deliver for. The third: enrolled, urgent, high stakes. This matters. It needs to work. They're demanding — and not to be confused with crowd one. The third crowd is the one you want. Easy rooms are fun - but they don't tend to make you better. ### A Quiet Way to Know Someone URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-quiet-way-to-know-someone/ Last updated: 2026-01-12T20:27:11.000Z You know those people who read 100 books a year? I'm not one of them. Self-employed, laptop nerd, parent of energetic child, aching muscles, SAD winter. Reading time is scarce. Motivation less so. But I read this one. Not just because it's great (it is). Because it was a gift. That's the thing about a book someone's read and then given to you. You read it differently. Did they underline this sentence? Did they think of me when they read this part? You're not just reading the book. You're thinking about them. You're reading how they may be reading you. It's a quiet way to know someone. P.S. The book in question? [The Art of Game Design](https://schellgames.com/art-of-game-design?ref=howardgray.net), by Jesse Schell. ### Groove Theory #17 - Directing Robert Pattinson by Text Message URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-17-directing-robert-pattinson-by-text-message/ Last updated: 2026-01-11T07:55:15.000Z You're tuned in to **Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), the experiential learning studio. *Currently: launching two new projects next week (!), unsuccessfully programming radiators* --- A rush-hour subway car in New York is a full slice of the city packed in a metal tube. Nurses ending night shifts, bankers checking Bloomberg, teenagers with backpacks too big for the space, someone's grandma gripping the pole, a guy deep in TikTok niches definitely about to miss his stop. Everyone’s performing the same role: minding their own damn business. Now imagine you're a filmmaker, and you need to capture something real inside this performance. Something that feels genuinely dangerous. You have Robert Pattinson, one of the most recognizable faces in the world, and you need a train full of New Yorkers to not notice him. You can't call "action." You can't have a visible crew. You can't control… anything. So you stand at the other end of the car, pretending to check your phone. Your lead actor is fifteen feet away, surrounded by commuters. You can't call out directions. You can't yell cut. So you text him what to do next. From across the car, you watch him respond. A woman nearby shifts uncomfortably. That's real - she doesn't know she's in a movie. Neither does anyone else. When Pattinson finally exits, someone trails off behind him: *"Was that Rrrr…? Was that Robert Pattinson?"* By then, the scene is already captured - and no one had snapped a photo. This is how Josh and Benny Safdie directed Robert Pattinson during the making of [*Good Time*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVyGCxHZ%5FKo&ref=howardgray.net) \- a grimy, anxious thriller that went to Cannes. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/01/GT-17---Safdie.jpg) Behind the Scenes of "Good Time". Top left: the subway scene ## The Tension The Safdie brothers faced an impossible problem: how do you capture authentic chaos on film? The movie industry's answer is control. Closed sets. Permits. Multiple takes. Safety. But control kills the thing they were after. The moment you say "action," everyone knows they're performing. The danger becomes pretend. Most filmmakers accept this tradeoff. The Safdies refused it. They needed another way - one where the camera could capture something that hadn't been rehearsed, sanitized, or smoothed into movie-reality. They found it by designing conditions that make presence unavoidable. In *Good Time*, the bail bondsman was played by an actual bail bondsman. The criminal was played by Buddy Duress, fresh out of Rikers prison. Taliah Webster was cast from 600 open-call applicants not because she was the best actress, but because her real story was closest to the script. Pattinson later described the terror and liberation of acting alongside people essentially playing themselves: *"I'm always thinking another actor is judging me... But if the other person's essentially playing themselves and they think you're being inauthentic - you're genuinely being fake."* The environment created a unique kind of pressure that couldn't be manufactured any other way. ### Step Into It This isn’t just for moviemakers and actors. You know the feeling. Everyone's going through the motions. The right words, the right nods, the right faces - but something's missing. The room is *performing* engagement rather than actually being there. (Hello, ye olde Zoom call on a dreary Tuesday). You have a choice: keep things smooth and hope it picks up, or introduce some friction. A question no one expects. An admission that shifts the energy. Something that makes the next moment genuinely uncertain. Most people choose smooth. The Safdies chose friction - every time. ## The Groove: Presence **Presence → Bring yourself into it. Show up fully while reading the room and creating genuine connection.** The Safdie method isn't about being chaotic. It's about designing conditions where presence isn't optional. Here are three techniques they use: **1\. Asymmetric information** In *Good Time*, only Pattinson knew the scene structure. Everyone else had to react for real. During a confrontational scene between Connie (Pattinson) and Ray, Pattinson was the only one given the scene's structure minutes before shooting. The other actor had to respond to whatever came. When not everyone knows what's coming, reactions are real. **2\. Real stakes in orchestrated moments** The Safdies refuse to close off streets. They believe it "robs the movie of its intrinsic New Yorkness and instantly makes footage look fabricated." So they shoot guerrilla-style - real locations, real people wandering through, real consequences if they get caught. **3\. Tightrope by choice** They shoot on 35mm film: expensive, limited takes, no safety net of infinite digital do-overs. Skeleton crews. Rush hour subway cars. When there's genuine cost to failure, presence isn't a nice-to-have. It's survival. The Safdie Brothers on how they use "the fabric of the city" --- These techniques worked for *Good Time*’s $2 million budget. But what happens when the scale changes completely? Fast forward to 2025\. Josh Safdie - now directing solo for the first time since 2008 - releases *Marty Supreme*. It's A24's biggest budget ever: $70 million. There are 150+ speaking parts. Locations spanning New York to Japan. The guerrilla filmmaker got a war chest. Did he abandon his methods? Nope. The opposite. He just scaled them up. Timothée Chalamet trained obsessively in ping pong for months. The cast is stuffed with non-actors and real personalities. And the energy Safdie first saw in Chalamet - at a party after the *Good Time* premiere in 2017, when the then-22-year-old was sitting against a wall, radiating "misfit" energy before anyone knew his name - that's what he built the character around. Same methods. Bigger canvas. 💡 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Design the environment, not the performance.** You can't direct someone into presence (kinda oxymoronic). But you can create conditions that demand it. The Safdies don't coach actors into authenticity — they build situations where inauthenticity is impossible. The shift is from managing people to managing context. ****2\. Comfort is the enemy of presence.** When Safdie got a $70M budget, he didn't abandon guerrilla methods - he ramped them up. More resources usually mean more safety nets. The Safdies use them for the opposite - to create **more* productive discomfort, not less. Presence is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. Learn more → ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/01/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) ## The Release The subway scene in *Good Time* worked because nobody knew it was happening. The presence was real because the conditions demanded it. The Safdie brothers’ careers are proof that you don't have to outgrow this approach - you can scale it. Bigger budgets, bigger casts, bigger stakes. But the methods remain. The question isn't whether you can create authentic presence in high-stakes moments. It's whether you're willing to design for it. Howard --- ## Extended Mix - **Anxiety in the sound**: The Safdies work with electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never (Daniel Lopatin) on their scores. The [*Good Time* soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/album/0m13wlRnDvoHlRiZ9nJBNX?ref=howardgray.net) won the award at Cannes. For *Uncut Gems*, the brothers said the score "starts at 100 and just keeps accelerating" — maintaining tension even when the dialogue pauses. Same principle as the filmmaking: design the environment to create the feeling. - **Adam Sandler's months in the Diamond District**: For *Uncut Gems*, Sandler shadowed jewelers at Avianne for a couple of months, learning to buy and sell diamonds, hold stones with tweezers, and open parcels without scattering gems everywhere. "There's a certain way you hold a stone," one jeweler recalled. The Safdies themselves spent a *decade* researching the district before filming. - **Never rehearse, always discover**: The Safdies avoid traditional rehearsals - actors discover scenes in the moment. Pattinson described the *Good Time* experience as "survival mode," never quite knowing what would happen next. The uncertainty isn't a bug in their process - it's the point. - **Slice of life, slice of inflation**: Tenuous link, but I can’t resist. I spotted this by Jay St subway station last week: 99 cents pizza no longer. I wonder about the behind the scenes conversations that led to the decision - and the paint job. (the company is still called *Jay St 99cents Pizza LLC*, btw) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2026/01/JayStPizza.jpeg) ### Now - 30 Dec 2025 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/now-30-dec-2025/ Last updated: 2025-12-30T21:49:15.000Z Star date: 30 Dec 2025. - Having my mind blown by the capabilities of Claude Code running on Opus 4.5 (especially with MCP plugins to Notion) - Seeing in the new year from Brooklyn - Easing through jet lag via a hench shawarma pita from Shawarma Mia - Feeling quietly excited about 2026 - Protecting my time - Feeling this next chapter is akin to a DJ on tour (week to week constant cadence, vs. a band's long length, single hit on the road) ### How to run a retrospective that actually works URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-run-a-retrospective-that-actually-sticks/ Last updated: 2025-12-30T21:37:58.000Z Six months after a project: "What did we learn from that?" You: "Uh... it was good?". Here's a way to fix that. It takes about an hour. Perhaps you're like me - decent at capturing the obvious stuff - action items, process tweaks, what went wrong. But the richer insights? The moments where someone says something that shifts how you think? Those vanish. Here's how to prevent them disappearing. ### Step 1: Do your debrief as a conversation Don't write it. Talk it through with your team. Real conversation, not a structured meeting. Let it wander. (Pro tip: when you hear something magical, call it out very clearly) ### Step 2: Record it Voice memo. Zoom recording. Whatever. Just capture the audio. ### Step 3: Transcribe it - properly Use transcription software. Not a note-taking AI that summarizes. You need the raw transcript. All the umms, the half-thoughts, the tangents. That's where the richness is. ### Step 4 (Optional): Mark the themes as you go If you catch moments during the conversation, drop markers. Name them. "Thinking like Denzel Washington" was one of ours recently. (That's for another post.) The Pro Tip from Step 1 helps here :) ### Step 5: Feed it to an LLM Export your transcript - preferably as a markdown file. Upload to your LLM of choice, ideally with some pre-training / context. Ask it to pull out key themes. See what it finds. It'll catch patterns you missed. ### Step 6: Feed it the raw transcript again Tell it to check its work. Did it miss anything? Are the themes accurate? ### Step 7: Manually review Sorry. You still have to read it yourself. The LLM will get 80% there. You're looking for the last 20%. ### Step 8: Use it You now have LinkedIn posts, language for your next pitch, learnings for your team, and a real artifact of what you built. Lovely. --- ### One caveat: Without Step 1 - a real conversation with real people about a real project - none of this works. You can be great with AI tools. But the actual skill is in critical thinking, synthesizing ideas, and active listening. The tools just help you remember what you already knew. ### Groove Theory #16 - The Beautiful Map Nobody Wanted URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-16-the-beautiful-map-nobody-wanted/ Last updated: 2025-12-28T08:40:08.000Z 💡 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). Or explore the Groove Theory [archive →](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/newsletter/) I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio. **Currently: watching the year wind down from Brooklyn, going positively bananas with Claude Code* When I lived in NYC's East Village, I walked past Cooper Union a hundred times without understanding what happened there. I'd be heading downtown - NoHo, the Lower East Side, my boxing gym on Broadway - and there it was, this brownstone building I knew had a history, but never thought deeply about. Cooper Union's Great Hall is where Lincoln delivered the speech that made him president. Where Frederick Douglass spoke. Where the NAACP was founded. For over 160 years, it's been the place New Yorkers go to argue about things that matter. As New Yorkers *love* to argue about things that matter, it's where two designers nearly came to blows... over a subway map. On April 20, 1978, Massimo Vignelli and John Tauranac faced off for over two hours. Designers, transit officials, and disgruntled riders packed the room. Insults flew. Vignelli later thanked the moderator for helping him suppress his "homicidal urges." Tauranac won. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/image-2.png) Left: Vignelli. Not looking happy. A year later, Vignelli's map design was scrapped. The design world mourned. New Yorkers breathed relief. I should confess: I'm a transit nerd. A citizen of two cities - London and New York - with mugs from both systems that I use almost daily. A framed abstract NYC subway map hangs on my wall, a recent and cherished gift. I remember a childhood trip to the London Transport Museum, staring at Harry Beck's Tube map, those clean colourful lines that promised you could get from anywhere to anywhere. And I remember my first descent into the New York subway on a boiling hot June morning in the the early 2000s - falling for the city through the Helvetica on its signs. That was Vignelli too, along with Bob Noorda. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/Mug.jpg) [Don't mug yourself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHs2sQOHX-0&ref=howardgray.net) This past April - forty-six years after Cooper Union - the MTA unveiled their first major map redesign since 1979. It looks an awful lot like Vignelli's. ## The Tension In 1972, Vignelli's map appeared on subway station walls. Clean geometry, bold colours, every line bent at 45 or 90 degrees. Stations were evenly spaced dots. The messy city above vanished into abstraction. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/VignelliMap-copy.jpg) Vignelli's subway map, 1972 "If you can design one thing, you can design everything," Vignelli believed. He'd done American Airlines, IBM, the Washington Metro. The man could systematise anything. The only issue? New Yorkers hated it. Central Park became a square. The beige ocean looked nothing like water. Stations floated in strange positions, divorced from the streets above. Tourists emerged to find landmarks nowhere near where the map suggested. People couldn't relate the map to the city they knew. Vignelli's response? The problem "lies not with the map, but with the map users." ## Step Into It We've all been Vignelli of '72\. We’ve built the wonderfully elegant version. And we’ve watched it meet the room. Wondered why people wanted all the mess back. The uncomfortable question: were they wrong… or were we? ## The Groove: Structure **Structure → Shape the idea. Move from fog to form without losing your voice.** Vignelli wasn't wrong about the design. But he was wrong about the context. Harry Beck had created a nearly identical abstraction for London's Underground in 1933\. Same principles - geometric lines, topology over topography. Londoners loved it. It became arguably the most successful cartographic design ever made. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/image-5.png) Harry Beck's London Underground map, 1933. So why did Beck's map succeed while Vignelli's failed? Having spent (too much) time with both, I think it comes down to this: London's medieval streets are chaos. The city sprawls in every direction without logic. Beck's abstraction imposed order on disorder - a gift to anyone trying to make sense of the place. Manhattan sits on a precise grid. New Yorkers navigate by numbered streets and avenues. They know exactly how long it takes to walk from 14th to 27th. When Vignelli's map distorted those distances, it didn't clarify - it contradicted something they already held in their heads. Same structure. Different cities. Opposite results. There's another wrinkle. Vignelli had conceived *four* complementary maps - a diagram, a geographic map, a neighborhood map, and an index. Budget constraints meant only the diagram got produced. Ripped from that context, it was always doomed to fail. 💡 ****Groove Notes → Map Making** ****1\. Your context changes what structure works** The same principles that clarified London's chaos violated New York's grid. Before you commit to a structure, understand what your audience already holds in their heads. ****2\. Systems need all their parts** Vignelli designed four maps that would work together. He got funding for one. The diagram was never meant to stand alone - it was meant to handle navigation underground while other maps handled the surface. When you're designing interconnected pieces, losing one can break the logic of the whole. And always be ready for the budget to get pulled. ****3\. The users aren't wrong for being users** Vignelli blamed map readers for not understanding his map. But a map exists to serve travelers, not the other way around. When your structure requires the audience to change how they think, you've stopped solving their problem and started solving your own. Oh my, how easy a trap this is to fall into. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Structure is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## The Release The 2025 MTA map looks like vindication. Fifty-plus years later, Vignelli won. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/image-3.png) MTA Subway Map, 2025 But look closer. Water is blue now, not beige. Central Park's shape is (a bit) closer to reality. And crucially - smartphones handle street-level navigation. The map no longer needs to do everything. What changed wasn't the design principles. What changed was the world around them. Vignelli died in 2014, never seeing his approach return. But he got one more chance. In 2011, the MTA invited him back to design "The Weekender" - a digital map for weekend service changes. He agreed on one condition: it had to be called a diagram, not a map. He wasn't making the same mistake twice. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/image-6.png) Massimo Vignelli, 2013\. photo by Gary Hustwit. The map was a rare miss in a staggering body of work. Vignelli brought the same rigour to American Airlines, Knoll, Bloomingdale's, the National Parks Service, Sotheby's. The man could design anything. But even Vignelli learned you have to meet the city - and its people - where they are. Howard --- ### Extended Mix - **The 1978 debate was lost to history - until 2021.** A reel-to-reel tape was discovered in Cooper Union's basement containing the full two-hour recording. Filmmaker [Gary Hustwit](https://www.hustwit.com/subwaydebate?ref=howardgray.net) published a book with the complete transcript, never-before-seen photos, and new interviews with surviving participants. - **Want to go deeper on Vignelli?** [This interview](https://www.designculture.it/interview/massimo-vignelli.html?ref=howardgray.net) is one of the best I've found - covering everything from how he smuggled Helvetica into Italy to his thoughts on design education. - **Beck's map was rejected too, at first.** The London Underground's Publicity Office initially turned down his 1931 design as "too revolutionary." A year later, after revisions, they printed 750,000 copies. Within months, it was a massive success. Sometimes "too radical" means "not yet." - **The original map cost $105,000 to produce in 1972 -** about $775,000 in today's dollars. It was unveiled at a ceremony in the station at 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, with a companion subway directory showing how to get to every other station alphabetically. ### Mike Tyson and the accidental punch URL: https://www.howardgray.net/mike-tyson-and-the-accidental-punch/ Last updated: 2025-12-30T21:25:35.000Z The other week I dropped a Mike Tyson quote into a session on adaptive leadership. Didn't think much of it - until it took on a life of its own. You may know the quote: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." I usually avoid the big names and their big quotes. But this one's a palette cleanser. A little sharpener between intro and the main work. We'd been wrestling with the warm-up. We'd sensed the session needed something to ease people in, but couldn't land on what. Then we realised: why not just use the Tyson quote? So we did. Incredibly simple. When did life punch you in the face? Share it with your neighbor. Two minutes. Go. The room loosened up. People laughed. They leaned in. Then things got weird. During the live session, the quote became the whole arc. My son walked into frame mid-presentation. Punched in the face. Slide share crashed. Punched in the face. Some of the group got kicked out of their breakout rooms. Yeah, you guessed it. It turned from palette cleanser to running joke to organizing principle. The session found its rhythm through this one throwaway line. Here's where it gets interesting. We've now reshaped the entire experience around it. The warm-up is called "Welcome to the Punch." The main scenario incorporates elements from Tyson's training regimen. We didn't plan this. Sometimes the best design comes from watching what people grab onto. From noticing what connects with them. From using the smallest nugget to get to something bigger. We came in with structure. The session punched back. And that made it better. ### The thing about teaching A.I. skills URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-thing-about-teaching-a-i-skills/ Last updated: 2025-12-18T20:27:53.000Z The UK government wants to get 7.5 million people using AI effectively by 2030\. Sounds ambitious. But I wonder if they've got it backwards. Some numbers that raised my furrowed brows: - 50% of working-age adults in the UK can't complete the 20 foundational digital tasks deemed essential for modern work. - 8 million have no basic tech skills at all. - 3 million have no access to the internet or digital devices. I'm betting the UK isn't an outlier here. Meanwhile, separate research warns that up to 3 million low-skilled jobs could vanish by 2035 as AI and automation reshape work. So we're going to train people for AI while their jobs disappear and they can't attach a file to an email. Cool. If over 20% of the population lacks basic tech skills, why are we racing to teach AI skills? Especially when wealth gaps keep widening? This isn't really about hard skills anyway. Someone smarter than me pointed out that hard skills are getting softer while soft skills are getting harder. The real challenge isn't understanding how an LLM works or rigging up automations. It's knowing when to use it. What questions to ask. How to spot when it's wrong. The judgment call, not the technical one. Which brings us to the teaching problem. Or more accurately, the learning problem. You can't just announce "we're teaching AI now" and expect people to show up curious. You have to spark the desire to learn in the first place. What's the incentive? What changes for them? Why should they care when they're already overwhelmed? Then you make it possible. Make it relatable. Strip out the jargon. Lower the barriers to entry. Good pedagogy. The kind that provides scaffolding, enables reps, develops critical thinking. The kind that starts where people actually are - not where a policy document says they should be. So if you're building AI training programs, your first question shouldn't be 'what should we teach about AI?' It should be 'who's actually in the room?'. Future skills matter. But only if people can actually get there from here. ### The new company department? Storytelling URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-new-company-department-storytelling/ Last updated: 2025-12-16T20:26:21.000Z Notion merged their internal comms, external comms, social, and influencer teams into one. They're calling it the Storytelling Team. And the co-founder is running it himself. 0:00 /1:16 1× (For context, Notion is valued at $10 billion and used by millions. This isn't a small bet.) A few years ago these were four departments. Four budgets. Four leaders meeting quarterly to "align." Now the walls are gone. A good story doesn't care if it's internal or external. Compelling media doesn't know if it's for employees or customers. The people getting hired for this team? They're the hybrids. The weirdos who don't fit org charts. Notion is asking for people who can work across product, brand AND communications. They can write, design, talk to press, run Slack channels, and know what makes something shareable. They move between worlds that used to need translators. Most companies are still hiring specialists. This team needs something different. People who see patterns across disciplines. Who are comfortable with ambiguity. Who connect dots that don't seem related. Lots of people think they can do this. But actually being fluent across these worlds, not just familiar? That's hard. It takes years of building muscle in multiple directions. Most portfolios show depth. Some show range. Not many show both. But in this inside-out world, I reckon it's a blend worth chasing. P.S. At Wavetable we're building similar hybrid roles - learning experience design that's equal parts story, product, and games. If this resonates, say [hello](https://www.howardgray.net/contact) ### Christian Bale kept training for a role he didn't have URL: https://www.howardgray.net/christian-bale-kept-training-for-a-role-he-didnt-have/ Last updated: 2025-12-14T20:23:54.000Z Christian Bale got fired from American Psycho, and responded by... continuing to prepare for it. Director Mary Harron wanted him, but Lionsgate pushed for Leonardo DiCaprio - fresh off *Titanic*. The studio fired Harron, brought in Oliver Stone, and Bale was out. The role was gone. No Bateman business cards for Bale. Everyone had moved on. Bale kept practicing lines and going to the gym. Every day. "I just kept on prepping," he said. "Even though other people were cast, other directors were on board." Then, DiCaprio backed out. Stone left. Harron returned. And because Bale never stopped preparing, he was ready. Yeah, nice story. You’re right. Most times you do this, the project doesn't come back. You train for a fight that never happens. So if you're gonna prep for something that's gone, you need to be OK with it staying gone. Bale wasn't just getting ready to play Patrick Bateman. He was becoming the kind of actor who could. This is about prepping for the craft, not the role. It’s how you can survive the heartbreak of doors that stay closed. And every once in a while, one swings back open. Just gotta hold onto the (Silian) rail. ### Groove Theory #15 - The woman who built The French Laundry (before it was The French Laundry) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-15-the-woman-who-built-the-french-laundry-before-it-was-the-french-laundry/ Last updated: 2025-12-14T08:45:09.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not yet a subscriber? [Sign up](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/). Or explore the Groove Theory [archive →](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/newsletter/) I'm your host Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), the learning experience studio. **Currently: in denial of December; designing an AI-driven edutainment experience set in outer space*. Mid 1970s in Napa Valley. A woman named Sally Schmitt is running a restaurant out of an old stone house she and her husband bought for $30,000. The place seats 40 people. There's no menu - she cooks whatever's going. Whatever’s growing. Lettuces from the garden that morning. Vegetables still warm from the sun. She tells diners, "This is what we have tonight." The wine country crowd doesn't get it. They want French technique. White tablecloths. Proper courses. ‘Cos that’s high-class, dontchaknow. Schmitt is doing something else entirely - something that doesn't have a name yet. She's not strategising. She's not building a brand. She's just doing what makes sense to her. It did get a name. But it'll be another decade before anyone calls it "farm-to-table." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/Sallyschmitt.jpg) Sally Schmitt in her kitchen (image: Breakwater Studios) ## The Tension So much of building something new is timing. You can have the wrong idea at the right time (guilty). You can have the right idea at the wrong time (again, guilty). Sally Schmitt spent 16 years serving food this way. Growing relationships with local farmers, foragers, and ranchers. Running a tiny restaurant that seats 40 people in a stone building in Yountville that most people drove past. She wasn't ahead of her time. She was... on time. The culture was running late. What actually happens when you're early is… well, nothing, really. No rejection letters, no angry critics. Just a lot of people politely not getting it. Respectful indifference. "That's nice, dear." The restaurants that won awards in Napa during the 70s and 80s? They're gone now. Schmitt kept cooking. ## Step Into It You've probably created something that makes perfect sense to you. Clients tilt their heads. "Interesting," they say. Then 3 weeks later you find out they booked someone doing the standard thing. You fix a polite smile while boiling inside. You could adjust. Make it more like what they're used to. You'd get more bookings. Better testimonials. Maybe scale up a team. Or you keep doing the version that feels right to you. Even when it means years of "not quite" responses. Even when your friends ask why you're making it so hard on yourself. The actual question isn't "Should I compromise?". It's harder than that. It’s "How do I know I'm not just... wrong?" When nobody gets what you're building, what's the difference between visionary and delusional? The line isn’t just thin… it’s often invisible. ## The Groove: Signal **Signal → Clarify what matters. Distill your message into something that sticks and spreads.** Let’s fast forward two decades. In 1994, Schmitt gets an offer she decides to take. The buyer had been searching for a place to create something new. He kept her name for it: The French Laundry. The buyer? Thomas Keller. Keller kept Schmitt's philosophy - the garden, the relationships with farmers, the focus on what's in season. He kept cooking in Sally's kitchen for a year before renovating. Her green stove with its blue hood. Her minimalist design that felt like home. Years later, he'd say they were 'always following Don and Sally Schmitt's roadmap.' ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/ThomasKeller1993.jpg) Thomas Keller outside the French Laundry, 1993 The French Laundry became legendary. Three Michelin stars. The best restaurant in America. The place every serious chef wanted to work. How? Keller had the training. The French technique, the Michelin precision. But by '94, he also had the right moment. He didn't have to convince anyone that local ingredients mattered. Alice Waters had made that case at Chez Panisse. The culture had caught up. Keller got to build on a foundation that people finally understood. Sally Schmitt had been sending that signal for 16 years. She just did it before anyone was listening. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/GT-15---French-Laundry.jpeg) The French Laundry, late 90s: exterior; kitchen; and culinary garden 💡 ****Groove Notes → Building Before They're Ready** ****1) Doing it early looks exactly like doing it wrong** In 1978, Schmitt's approach looked small. Uncommercial. A bit quaint. Now it's how we define a good restaurant. The work that lasts often starts as the work that doesn't make sense yet. There's no way around that. 2) ****You can't talk people into getting it before they're ready** Schmitt didn't spend years explaining farm-to-table. She just kept cooking. The work was the argument. By the time Keller showed up, she'd built 16 years of proof. When the culture finally catches up, they're not listening to your pitch deck - they're looking at what you actually did. Signal is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) ## The Release Most profiles of The French Laundry start with Keller. The visionary. The perfectionist. Three Michelin stars. Ask who came before him, you mostly get blank stares. Sally Schmitt died in 2022, aged 90\. Some obituaries mentioned her restaurant. Few connected her to what The French Laundry became. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/Sally-Schmitt-3x4-Ratio-copy.jpg) Sally & Don Schmitt But the people who know, know. Keller does. The old Napa families do. The farmers she worked with remember. She built the foundation. He built the cathedral. That's not a sad story. That's just how signals work when they're ahead of their time. This can be hard to swallow. Feels disempowering even. We're all worried about getting credit. Getting seen. Getting our name attached to the thing we built. And look - maybe we should be. Maybe Schmitt deserved more recognition while she was alive. Maybe it's not fair that Keller's name is on everything and hers barely registers. But fair doesn't change the pattern. Signals travel. Foundations get built on. The work that's too early often becomes someone else's breakthrough. You can fight that, or you can decide it's not the point. Schmitt kept cooking. Before The French Laundry, during it, after she sold it. She just kept cooking. Howard --- ### Extended Mix - [**The Best Chef in the World**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5d1Cclk5QA&ref=howardgray.net): Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot's Breakwater Studios made a documentary on Sally Schmitt in 2022\. (Fun fact: Josh Upton, featured in Groove Theory #5, works closely with the Breakwater team) - **The French Laundry building**: Built in 1900 as a steam laundry, the stone structure sat empty for years before Schmitt and her husband bought it in 1978\. They chose the name because… well, that's what it used to be. - **Sally's choice**: She raised five children while running the restaurant. She didn't chase awards or fame. "The goal in life really is about people and family," she said. She led what Proudfoot calls "a very high-quality life" - one that didn't include recognition or money, but meant something else entirely. ### Checkin' Chess at WSJ Doha URL: https://www.howardgray.net/checkin-chess-at-wsj-doha/ Last updated: 2025-12-12T20:12:35.000Z Pawn to c3\. Knight to f6\. Andrew Beaton’s playing chess on stage at WSJ Tech Live in Doha - while interviewing Danny Rensch from Chess.com. Andrew moves the pieces. Danny plays blindfolded. While answering questions from Andrew and the audience, Danny’s tracking the entire board in his head. He even catches when Andrew tries an illegal move. The game unfolds while they discuss business strategy, product decisions, what it takes to build Chess.com. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/12/IMG_1381.JPG) There’s Multiple stimuli for the audience. Listen to Danny. Think about your next move. Conjure up a question to throw him off balance. Choose your own adventure. We’re seeing the product work. Learning a bit about chess. Getting tactics from someone who plays at master level. All on top of the business conversation. This is a lovely bit of format innovation: Old oak, new wine. The interview format’s ancient. The twist makes it stand out. You don’t need a chess business to do something like this. Find a device. A surprise. Use your actual product. Borrow an existing format and bend it slightly. Shout out to Andrew for taking the risk. Playing chess on stage while conducting an interview is considerably harder than sitting in chairs asking questions. Which leaves me wondering - why don’t more conferences take gentle risks like this?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ### Same book, different you URL: https://www.howardgray.net/same-book-different-you/ Last updated: 2025-12-01T12:59:13.000Z Time and context do strange things to the same piece of work. A book you read in one life stage does one thing. The same book, years later, does something completely different. I read WeTransfer's 'Not a Playbook' a few months ago. Enjoyed it very much. Yesterday, I packed it for a conference trip. Not really sure why. Just did. Long flight, cramped at the back. Missing my son. Thinking about what's ahead. Today, I cracked it open. Same words. Different brain. Unfamiliar place. New connections started firing. Ideas I didn't catch the first time suddenly made sense for something I'm working on now. This has happened with movies too. And podcasts - I've got 5 episodes I've listened to more than 10 times. Each time, I notice something different. Or, rather, they impact \*that\* me differently to the \*then\* me. In a world where most things have the shelf life of sushi on the cusp, revisiting feels almost radical. Ridiculous. But maybe that's the point. The good stuff rewards the second look. And the fourth. Which is why - hopefully - we do the work. ### Groove Theory #14 - Jmail URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-14-jmail/ Last updated: 2025-11-30T08:45:08.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), the experiential learning studio. **Currently: designing team off-sites (two slots still free for Q1!), watching a LinkedIn post accidentally go viral* Last Saturday, I was tired. I'd got back from a conference in Barcelona at 2am the day before, battling a cough and cold. Pottering around the house, mixing chores and scrolling, I saw something on Twitter that gave me pause. It was an incredible example of a key concept I'd taught in Barcelona. So, I whizzed up a few lines and shared it on LinkedIn. A few hours later, I checked back. It already had 70,000 impressions. Wut. The post was about two software developers who rebuilt the Epstein email dump as *Jmail* \- a Gmail clone. Same layout, same search bar, same feeling of checking your inbox on a Monday morning. Except it's 2011, you're logged in as Jeffrey Epstein, and you're reading correspondence with Larry Summers. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/image-1.png) Welcome to the world of Jmail - [https://jmail.world](https://jmail.world/?ref=howardgray.net) ## The Tension Stalin supposedly said "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." In a world of mass numbers, everything gets blurred. Our brains can't process scale. We glaze over. The Epstein files are the same. 23,000 pages of PDFs. Damning evidence, public interest, (hopefully) real consequences. But who's actually reading it? How do you get anyone to care about page 8,437? You can't. Not in that format. Most of us weren't going to plough through thousands of pages. But we might spend an hour in an interface we've used every day for a decade. ## Step Into It Your report sits unopened. Your data-heavy presentation gets a polite nod and zero follow-up. Your project - the one you poured months into - lands with an inaudible thud. The problem isn't the quality of your work. It's that you're asking people to care about something overwhelming in a format designed to be ignored. A 47-slide deck. A 23-page white paper. A comprehensive analysis document. All of these scream "this will take effort." And effort is a scarce resource. How do you make someone care about your 23,000 pages? ## The Groove: Modality **Modality → Choose the vessel. Turn expertise into repeatable formats that land across platforms.** In Barcelona, I ran a full-day workshop for 30 experiential marketing and event execs. We took them to the year 2032, where they had to build a live experience concept for a breakthrough tech company. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/EE_BCN_Crew.jpeg) The Exceptional Experiences crew in Barcelona - a wonderful group of humans. You'll find me left-back, as usual. One of the key elements we asked them to apply? *Old Oak, New Wine.* The Old Oak is something familiar and trusted - Gmail's interface, a deck of playing cards, a coffee shop conversation. The Oak carries trust. We know how to navigate it without thinking. The New Wine is new information, ideas, or approaches. The Wine needs discovery, but it can't demand we also learn a new container. When you pour New Wine into Old Oak, the combination makes the unfamiliar feel instantly navigable. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/NewWineOldOak.jpg) 'Hamilton' and 'Sleep No More' - Wine & Oak in action *Jmail* nails this. Gmail isn't just familiar - it's muscle memory. We know how to search, thread conversations, scan subject lines. That cognitive ease lets us focus entirely on the content, not the interface. Software developers Riley Walz and Luke Igel built the whole thing in five hours. As the US Congress's OCR system was broken (Steve Bannon kept coming back as "Steve Banno"), they rebuilt all the PDFs into a database using Google’s Gemini AI. But Jmail wasn't vibe coded using AI agents - it took real developer skill. Threaded conversations, grouping emails, making the search actually work - they did all that themselves. The Gmail format did more than make things readable. It revealed patterns invisible in PDFs. You can watch Epstein get worse at typing as he switches from desktop to iPad in the early 2010s. They even repurposed Gmail's starring feature - users flag important emails, creating a community-ranked inbox. But not every Old Oak works for every New Wine. The oak shapes how we receive the wine. Marshall McLuhan had it right: "The medium is the message." Gmail works for private correspondence because emails *feel* like investigation. That same archive as a Wikipedia page loses all tension. The format isn't decoration - it's half the message. 💡 ****Groove Notes → Pour Better** 1\. ****Audit your oaks** Look at how you currently share your best thinking. Presentations? Frameworks? Blog posts? Now ask: would your audience rather receive this as a game? A conversation? A tool they use daily? The format that makes you feel most comfortable might be the one creating the most friction. 2\. ****Steal oak from adjacent industries** Journalists are turning articles into games, games into documentaries, documentaries into investigations. What oak exists in another field that could unlock your wine? Don't reinvent containers - remix them. 3\. ****Test oak before you scale wine** Before you build the full thing, test whether your chosen oak actually works. We prototype our **Involver* scenarios in Miro, Notion, or FigJam before building anything fancy. And, to get a little meta, we built a digital game called **The DJ Mixer* that helps teams create new formats. One client played it and asked for new editions to run every week or two. When people want to use your oak without you in the room, you've got something that works. Modality is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) ## The Release Your ideas deserve better containers. Not every brilliant insight needs to live in a slide deck. Not every methodology belongs in a PDF. Not every framework should be a framework. The question isn't just "what do I want to say?" It's "what vessel makes people actually want to receive it?" Format innovation isn't about novelty. It's about noticing which familiar structures your audience already trusts, then using those structures to deliver what they don't know they need. The oak creates the invitation. The wine delivers the transformation. Here's why I believe this matters so much: AI just changed the speed of format innovation. What used to require a development team and six months took Riley and Luke five hours. They're skilled developers, but the tools let them move from idea to launch in a single night. The bottleneck isn't technical anymore. It's taste. Can you spot which familiar format would unlock your unfamiliar idea? That's the creative judgment AI can't replace. Format innovation used to be reserved for teams with resources. Now it's available to anyone willing to think differently about containers. What familiar container could unlock your unfamiliar idea? You may surprise yourself. Thanks for reading, Howard --- ### Extended Mix - Old Oak, New Wine - *"Old Oak, New Wine"* comes from Derek Thompson's writing on innovation and culture - the idea that breakthrough ideas often succeed by inhabiting familiar formats. Hit book 'Hit Makers' is well worth checking out. - Raymond Loewy's MAYA principle (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) is the design version of this - push innovation to the edge of what people can accept, but no further. Loewy redesigned everything from the Coca-Cola bottle to Air Force One, always making the new feel inevitable rather than jarring. - Dishoom ([Groove Theory #9](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-9-dishooms-main-character-energy/)) did this brilliantly - they poured the Bombay cafe concept into restaurants, cookbooks, and vinyl records. Each format revealed different facets of the same world. ### Intensity, not Tempo URL: https://www.howardgray.net/tempo-not-intensity/ Last updated: 2026-06-06T13:43:39.000Z Four flights down in a former abattoir in London, you'll feel the bassline before you hear it. Fabric gets everyone. Music nerds who can name the vinyl pressing plant. Hardcore ravers sweating through their third shirt. Random tourists who wandered in on a whim. People from Sao Paulo and Southwark, Tottenham and Tbilisi. Craig Richards has been resident DJ at Fabric since opening night. Nearly 1,000 sets in that single booth. He can play the warm-up before the headliner arrives. Take the peak slot when the room's at full tilt. Or keep people there until 8am. Vanishingly few people can do all these things well. When he talks about his craft, this little quote jumped out at me: > “ \[It’s about\] knowing the intensity of the tunes you're playing - not the tempo, not the beat-matching, just the intensity” Most DJs follow the formula. Start at 120 BPM, build to 130, pull back, push harder. Speed equals energy. But Craig does something different. He layers. A slow track can punch you in the chest. Something minimal can be overwhelming. Something fast can feel weightless. Intensity isn't speed. It's depth. It's texture. You probably know what I mean - have a look through your Spotify selection. This applies to anything you design (and yes, you are a designer). So what does intensity actually look like? It's the moment in a workshop where you stop talking and give people two minutes of silence to think. That's not slow - that's intense. It's the presentation where you show one image and let it sit there for ten seconds before you say anything. Not faster - more intense. It's the meeting where instead of cramming in five topics, you go deep on one thing that actually matters. Fewer items, higher stakes. Intensity is contrast. It's the shift that makes people sit up. The thing you subtract that makes everything else hit harder. We usually do the opposite. A meeting loses energy, so we speed through the agenda. A workshop feels flat, so we add another breakout. A presentation drags, so we talk faster. We go for more tempo. We don't check for the intensity. Next time you're designing something - a workshop, a meeting, a presentation - ask yourself: **Am I just increasing the tempo, or am I actually building intensity?** There's a difference. And once you feel it, you can't unfeel it. ### Groove Theory #13: West on 27th URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-13-west-on-27th/ Last updated: 2025-11-16T08:29:59.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), the experiential learning studio. Currently: heading to Barcelona to run an executive workshop at IBTM World; marveling at Ikea’s most enduring products Head towards the river on West 27th St in Manhattan and eventually you'd find it. A cavernous warehouse turned nightclub. No VIP sections, no bottle service, no distractions. Just 1,500 people, a sound system that exposed every detail, and opening hours from midnight until noon. If you were in NYC in the late 90s and early 2000s, you know the place. This was Twilo. The club had installed the Phazon - the first fully digital sound system of its kind. DJs would leave the booth mid-set just to hear their records on the dancefloor. But its extraordinary combo of volume and clarity also meant there was nowhere to hide. The space had history. It used to be Sound Factory, where Junior Vasquez, Danny Tenaglia, and Frankie Knuckles had built their reputations. Twilo was the crown jewel of New York club culture. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/TwilONYC.jpg) Twilo, NYC Two DJs from the UK - Sasha and John Digweed - were offered the last Friday of every month. ## The Tension Marathon DJ sets already existed in New York. But Sasha and Digweed were bringing something different: a particular flavour of European progressive house and trance. Melodic, patient, building across hours rather than hammering peaks. Their residency began with a lukewarm reception. The format was right - Twilo was built for extended DJ sets. But the sound was foreign. Would New Yorkers trust two Brits to take them on a ten-hour journey through unfamiliar territory? ### Step Into It When your *format* already exists but your *approach* is different, the instinct is to compromise. Give them what they're used to, with minor variations. But sometimes the move is the opposite: double down on what makes you distinctive, and trust the format to hold it. The question becomes: can you find a method - or even a partner - whose strengths can sustain the parts you can't? ## The Groove: Rhythm Sasha and Digweed came from different places musically. Sasha had cut his teeth at Manchester's Haçienda during the acid house explosion, playing everything - piano house, Italo, breakbeats. He was an emotional DJ, searching for the feeling inside a track. Digweed had been building technical precision for years. When Renaissance club founder Geoff Oakes heard his demo tape in 1992 he introduced him to Sasha. They spent four years learning how their differences could work as one system. One of a number of classic mix albums Sasha was the emotional architect. He'd find the melody hiding inside a techno track, stretch it, make it sing. His record box was chaos - vinyl everywhere, nothing in sleeves. One morning outside the club after a set, he put the box in a taxi, turned to talk to someone, turned back - the cab had already driven off with everything inside. Digweed was the rhythmic foundation. Once he locked a groove, it became hypnotic. His mixing was so precise you couldn't tell where one track ended and another began. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/SashaDigweedNYC.webp) Sasha & Digweed at 8am, directly after an 8 hour set at Twilo. Photo by Antonio Petronzio In an 8-10 hour set, the planning had to scale differently. You couldn't just show up with peak-time records. You had to think in movements. Where would the big moments land? Hour three? Hour seven? "You really need to be focused," Digweed explained, "making sure you have those moments where you send the crowd crazy, but also moments to give the crowd time to rest." Hit your peaks too early, you have nowhere left to go. Rest too long, you lose the room. Their approach proved itself under pressure. One night there was a fire. Everyone evacuated. Two hours later, when the crowd finally came back in, the energy was insane. They kept playing past midday. Word spread. This was pre-phones, pre-social media. By 2001, Digweed could say: "You'd have 4000 people in there going nuts, but they weren't looking at us, and they weren't all on their phones; they were just on the dance floor." They'd convinced New York to trust their groove. 💡 ****Groove Notes → West on 27th** ****1\. Complementary strengths create rhythm that neither person can sustain alone.** Sasha's emotional risk-taking and Digweed's technical precision made the ten-hour format possible. One person can hit peaks. Two people with different instincts can create an arc that holds for the long haul. ****2\. Trust compounds over time, not overnight.** They'd been working together for four years before Twilo. The lukewarm start makes sense - New York had to learn to trust them, just like they'd learned to trust each other. Rhythm at scale requires history. Play long-term games with long-term people. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/11/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) Rhythm is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## The Release The breakthrough came not when Sasha and Digweed tried to sound like New York house DJs, but when they convinced New Yorkers to trust their own sound. The crowd didn't want an imitation. They wanted to experience what made these two distinctive - together. Different rhythms. Different strengths. One groove that took ten hours to reveal itself, built on four years of partnership before that. --- Here's why this matters now: small teams and creative duos can do what used to require entire organisations. Not because "small is beautiful" - but because when you find someone whose strengths complement yours, you can move at the speed of trust instead of the speed of bureaucracy. The AI moment makes this more true, not less. Tools handle execution. Partnerships handle judgment, taste, and the ability to hold a room for ten hours when the format demands it. Two people who know each other's moves can adapt faster, take bigger risks, and sustain longer arcs than larger teams trying to coordinate. Most people still underestimate this. The question isn't whether your approach will work when something similar already exists. It's whether you and your partners have the complementary strengths to sustain it longer than anyone expects. Howard --- ### **Extended Mix** - **Proof of work**: In 1993, [Digweed's demo tape](https://soundcloud.com/renaissance-recordings/john-digweed-renaissance-demo-14071992?in=beezwo-1/sets/go&ref=howardgray.net) for Renaissance club founder Geoff Oakes was made under the name 'DJ JD'. The cassette tape was 90 minutes long - no scrolling, no skipping. Oakes listened through Side A, thought it was good. But 55 minutes in, on Side B, he heard something extraordinary. A blend between two tracks that made him stop and call the number scrawled on the tape. One condition: Digweed had to use his real name. 'DJ JD' felt generic. He then met Sasha at Renaissance, and the rest is history. - **The tools changed but the approach remained.** Sasha pioneered digital DJing with Ableton Live. "You program a beat and random stuff starts to happen – you get amazing accidents," he said. Digweed took a different path: his radio show "Transitions" has run for over 1,100 episodes - more than twenty years of consistency, each and every week. - **Different fields, same principles.** John's older brother George Digweed is a 28-time (!) World Clay Shooting Champion - arguably the greatest competitive shooter who ever lived. Two brothers both reached the peak of disciplines that demand precision, timing, and the ability to sustain performance over extended duration. "He's the best that the world has ever seen in that sport," John said. "The one and only time I shot a gun I got 7/10, so not bad. I've listened to my brother try and DJ and he needed shooting after what I heard!" ### What Ableton taught us about AI and the future of coding URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-ableton-taught-us-about-ai-and-the-future-of-coding/ Last updated: 2025-12-30T21:35:33.000Z In 2001, Berlin's music-tech scene birthed a new player: Ableton. Its debut product, Live, wasn't just another audio workstation - it was a creative tool built for electronic music's real-time improvisation. A loop-based, nonlinear sandbox. Underestimated at first, it quietly dismantled music's gatekeeping infrastructure. Studio time, expensive gear, industry connections—suddenly optional. Just a laptop and an idea. For the uninitiated: Live introduced something new - a 'Session View' where you could arrange clips in a grid and trigger them in any order. Less like a traditional recording studio, more like a performance instrument. The interface felt playful, intuitive. Colors weren't decoration - they were navigation. You could jam with your own tracks live. ## Beginning with S Ableton Live enabled forward-thinking artists to rethink their production and performance entirely. Sasha - a globe-trotting DJ who brought Ableton onstage in 2005 - transformed it from studio tool into live instrument. No more crates of vinyl or CDJs. Just a laptop running scenarios in real-time. His BBC Essential Mix from that year is still seminal - I go back to it several times a year. Around the same time, a small record store on the edges of South London had a new record flying off the shelves. 'Midnight Request Line' was the debut single by Skream—a local teenager building beats on cracked software. His early dubstep didn't need pro studios, just pirate radio and raw invention. It set the tone for a new kind of producer—one who'd soon find their perfect playground in tools like Ableton. By 2010, 6000 miles away: Skrillex. In a bedroom in LA, this punk and emo singer used Ableton's stock plugins and drum racks to craft a new sonic language. Mangled basslines, plastic crunch, chopped vocals. Not just a new sound, but a new genre. Within two years: GRAMMYs, mainstage festival slots, millions of kids headbanging to software-generated drops. This wasn't just producers starting with "S" - this was the blueprint spreading. Bedroom producers worldwide were realizing they didn't need permission, just pattern recognition and good taste. Ableton Live now has over 3 million users worldwide. What started as an experimental project in Berlin became the new normal for music creators around the world. Now, we're seeing the same shift in software development. ## Bring the Vibes *Vibe coding* is today's answer to improvisational creativity in code. Expressive, fast, and low-threshold. A blend of prototyping, building, and improvising—all happening in real-time. For Fruity Loops and Ableton Live, see Replit, Lovable and Bolt. And for heavier duty production gear like Logic Audio and Cubase, you've got Vercel and Cursor. We're watching this space closely— including building a digital arcade of scenario-based learning games - the patterns are eerily familiar to anyone who lived through music's democratization. All of it is accessible through AI agents that understand context and intent. Real-time feedback that shows you what you're building as you build it. Visual interfaces that make abstract code feel tangible. You're not just writing functions—you're performing them into existence. Traditional coding skills? Optional. But skills are most definitely required... ## Skills that matter When the technical barriers fall, the real differentiators emerge: - **Taste** \- Knowing what feels right, not just what works - **Patience** \- Debugging without panic, rolling back gracefully, sitting with problems until they reveal their solutions - **Project planning** \- Breaking big ideas into buildable pieces, sequencing features that create momentum - **Working backwards from a feeling** \- Starting with the user experience, not the technical architecture - **Foraging for oblique influences** \- Finding inspiration in unexpected places, outside your industry - **Bringing a twist (but not breaking the frame)** \- Innovation within constraint, knowing which rules to bend - **Depth over speed** \- Sure, you can bang out a working prototype in one prompt, just like you can loop a preset in Ableton. But the stuff that lasts takes iteration, refinement, multiple passes. - **Leaving people with something they feel** \- Impact over metrics, experiences over features And just like Ableton's early adopters, these skills develop best in collaborative spaces where experimentation is encouraged. ## Scene Spaces Most of the work happens alone—bedroom producers hunched over laptops, developers in coffee shops. But the magic happens when you test it on people. Drop a track in the club. Demo the prototype to your crew. Watch faces, feel the room. Just like Ableton thrived in record shops and club backrooms, vibe coding finds its fuel in Discord servers, GitHub discussions, and those moments when you screenshare something half-broken and suddenly see it through fresh eyes. The parallels run deeper than just accessibility. Both democratize creation while elevating craft. They lower the floor but raise the ceiling. That opens up some interesting possibilities - and some tensions. ## Majors & Indies The next wave won't come entirely from SaaS giants or $100m funding rounds. OK, it probably will—the world is shifting toward consolidation of power, let's be brutally honest about that. But there's also more room for weird little builds. Live-coded ideas that slap like a snare and leave a mark like the first bassline that made your eyeballs convulse. Ableton turned bedroom producers into festival headliners. It proved that when you remove friction between idea and execution, magic happens. Vibe coding is doing the same for software. The future belongs to those who can *feel* their way through complexity, not just think their way through it. The question isn't whether you can code. It's whether you can sense what wants to be built and make software that doesn't just function—it *moves* people. ## What's Next: 5 Vibe Coding Predictions Based on what we're seeing in the spaces we work in, here's where this might be heading: - **Live coding becomes a spectator sport** \- Developer "gigs" where audiences watch teams build apps in real-time. Think Formula 1 or eSports but for software, complete with commentary and crowd reactions to elegant solutions. *Our bet: yes, but niche* - **AI pair programming gets emotional intelligence** \- Agents that read your frustration, suggest breaks when you're stuck, or push harder when you're in flow. They learn your creative rhythms, not just your coding patterns. *Our bet: likely* - **Version control becomes a remix culture** \- GitHub forks evolve into collaborative "stems" where developers sample, chop, and rebuild each other's code like hip-hop producers. Attribution becomes curation. *Our bet: already happening, could be some fascinating startups doing this* - **Code becomes more visual and musical** \- Development environments that look and feel more like audio workstations. Drag-and-drop logic, visual flow charts, even sonic feedback when your code compiles. *Our bet: already starting* - **The rise of code DJs** \- People who don't write original code but excel at mixing, remixing, and live-performing existing codebases. They become known for their "sets" - how they combine different APIs, tools, and frameworks in real-time. *Our bet: this role emerges within 2-3 years* Creative tools are breaking open again. The garage bands of code are warming up. But here's the tension: most vibe coding tilts toward revenue generation - building SaaS tools, marketplaces, productivity apps. Ableton enabled both chart-toppers and bedroom experiments that three people would ever hear. The weird, uncommercial stuff that pushes boundaries. Will vibe coding find its experimental edge? Or will the focus on monetization narrow the creative palette? The answer might determine whether we get a true creative revolution—or just faster ways to build the same old software. What will you build when the barriers disappear? ### Groove Theory #12 - The Maze Maker URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-12-the-maze-maker/ Last updated: 2025-11-02T09:30:18.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas and careers find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. New here? [Subscribe](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/), or check out the [archive](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/newsletter/) I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential learning studio. **Currently: building a playable case study in homage to Boiler Room and High Snobiety; gearing up for my first visit to Dubai and Doha* --- Thursday evening in England, mid 90s. I'm staying up a little later than usual. TV is set to Channel 4. On the screen is a crazed figure in leopard print and cowboy boots, playing harmonica, shimmying around a vast wonderland. I’d never seen anything like it. *The Crystal Maze* was the biggest game show on British TV. Six contestants, four themed zones, four game categories, each game a timed challenge in a locked room. Get the crystal, get out before time runs out, or you're trapped. All building toward one final challenge in a dome with fans blowing gold tokens everywhere. Hosted by Richard O'Brien of 'Rocky Horror' fame, who'd wander off mid-game to deliver deadpan asides about his fictional mother, Mumsey. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/image-6.png) Reckless Rick I was glued. Not for the contestants. Not even for O'Brien's faux cheetah jackets. But for the world. For the games. Some looked impossible. Some looked easy. Most fell somewhere between. You never quite knew which until someone stepped inside. Behind it all was Jacques Antoine. Over 40 years, he created 150+ TV and radio games - from helicopter treasure hunts to fortress challenges. His colleagues called him "the most innovative man we have had in this profession since the war." But outside his native France, hardly anyone knows who he was. His real genius? Understanding how difficulty calibration creates presence. That the barely possible beats the perfectly achievable every time. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/image.png) Jacques Antoine, TV producer extraordinaire ## The Tension Game shows had always leaned one way or the other. Too easy? Viewers check out. Too hard? Watching people fail repeatedly isn't entertainment. Most game shows dodge this by making everything achievable or using elimination to hide failure. Antoine did neither. He designed for balance The Crystal Maze games were deceptively simple. One task per room. Collect a crystal. You could see what to do in seconds. But doing it? That was another story. Two games - "Nuke Defusing" and "Balls on Holes" - were never solved across six series. Meanwhile, 29 other games posted perfect 100% win rates. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/MazeGames.png) Classic games include "Word Totem", "Magnet Crane", and "Megabytes" Antoine knew this. It was intentional. If everything's solvable, tension dies. If nothing's solvable, hope dies. The impossible games made the barely-possible ones feel like victories. Producer Malcolm Heyworth later admitted the "frustration factor" was deliberate: *“People at home would shout "It's easy! You just do that. Turn the corner, you fool!"* The games looked simple enough that viewers believed they could do it. That belief kept them watching. That's the zone Antoine mastered: crystal clear, barely possible. ## Step Into It Think about the last thing you set up for a group. A project brief. A workshop. A design challenge. Too easy? Trust erodes. Too hard? People get frustrated. Most of us oscillate. We're afraid of people failing, so we lower the stakes. Or we're trying to impress, so we add complexity. (yup, guilty). Antoine did neither. He understood something else mattered just as much as difficulty: the vessel itself. ## The Groove: Modality **Modality → The vessel you choose shapes what's possible.** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/image-5.png) The Maze Map Jacques Antoine figured out that the mode matters as much as the task. Same goal every time: get the crystal in 2-3 minutes. But watch what the vessel does: - **"Magnet Crane" (Skill)**: The crystal sits six inches away. Grab the electromagnetic crane controls. Lower the magnet. Easy. Except the slightest touch sends it swinging. Overcompensate and it swings harder. Now you're chasing metal around a room with a magnet that responds to your panic. Your hands are the problem. - **"Water Sacks" (Physical)**: Archery targets behind water-filled bags. Hit the target, get the crystal. But the bags are translucent—you can barely see through. Every arrow that hits moves the bag, changing your aim point. Simple archery becomes fluid physics you can't predict. - **"Shadow Play" (Mystery)**: Objects cast shadows on a wall. Match the shadow to the real object to unlock the crystal. Except the shadows are distorted, overlapping, deliberately misleading. What looks like a teapot might be three things stacked together. Your spatial reasoning keeps failing you. And then there's the ultimate vessel: **the lock-in**. Run out of time in any room, you get locked in. And in some, the door seals automatically if you make more than two mistakes. You're trapped, as your team debates: sacrifice a crystal to free you, or continue without you? Notice the pattern? Antoine didn't make the puzzles harder. He made the interface betray you. You understand the task perfectly - that's the "crystal clear" part. But the vessel introduces a second challenge: the magnet swings, the water moves, the wheels stick. He's layering difficulty through the mode, not the problem itself. This is why contestants would shout *"I KNOW what to do!"* while failing. The knowing and the doing got separated by the vessel. 🎹 ****Groove Notes → The Maze Maker** 1\. ****Make it clear, not easy** Antoine's games required almost no explanation. You could see what to do immediately. But doing it was another story. Clarity doesn't equal simplicity. Give people a challenge they can understand in seconds but might not solve in minutes. ****2\. Design for some failure** Only 22% of teams won The Crystal Maze overall. That wasn't a bug. If everyone wins, nothing matters. If no one wins, why try? Antoine designed for the zone where both outcomes felt possible. Some of his games were never solved. Some were solved every time. The mix created the pattern. ****3\. The vessel does the work** Different time-keeping systems for different zones. Thresholds that required physical action to cross. Lock-ins that made stakes real. These weren't decoration - they were the experience. The mode you choose shapes what people feel, not just what they see. Modality is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [**Learn more →**](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) ## The Release Jacques Antoine died in 2012\. The Crystal Maze Live Experience still runs in London and Manchester. People pay to get locked in rooms. To feel the clock tick. To discover if they can do something that looked simple but might not be. Antoine figured out the calibration. Just enough instruction to understand. Just enough difficulty to make it matter. It's not only a game show format. It's what you do when you set up a workshop. When you write a project brief. When you create space for a group to discover what they can do. You're calibrating difficulty. Choosing vessels. Designing for the edge where both outcomes feel possible. You're a game designer. Howard --- ## Extended Mix: Maze Making - **A 48-hour pivot**: When Channel 4 commissioned a British version of Antoine’s ‘Fort Boyard’ in 1989, the Napoleonic fortress was unavailable - still under renovation. Antoine and producer Malcolm Heyworth had 48 hours to propose an alternative. They invented something different: four themed zones around a central crystal dome. The constraint that could have killed the commission created The Crystal Maze instead. Sometimes the backup plan becomes the breakthrough. - **D&D translation**: Antoine adapted Fort Boyard from Dungeons & Dragons. The Crystal Maze took it further - host as Dungeon Master, team as adventuring party, lock-ins as party member losses. When adapting frameworks across mediums, map the structural elements (exploration, resource management, risk/reward), not the surface aesthetics. And remember - everything's a remix. - **Head & Legs legacy**: Antoine's 1960 breakthrough "La Tête et les Jambes" paired one contestant answering questions with another doing physical challenges. Every show he created after kept this pattern. Whole-person engagement beats single-mode challenges. JUST ONE MORE THING... ****Ready to build the right formats for your biggest moments?** Groove Build helps you turn your expertise into best-in-class keynotes, workshops, and programs Start with a single 1:1 session, or dive deeper. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) ### Groove Theory #11 - The One-Inch Picture Frame URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-11-the-one-inch-picture-frame/ Last updated: 2025-10-19T08:30:38.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential learning studio. **Currently: designing a live demo / keynote hybrid on new adventures in AI; marveling at the endurance of London pub culture* --- Anne Lamott keeps a one-inch picture frame on her desk. Not as decoration. As a tool. Lamott is a Bay Area author who's been writing for decades - novels, memoirs, essays. Mixing progressive faith with raw honesty about addiction, single motherhood and the chaos of making art, her book *Bird by Bird* became a bible for writers stuck at the starting line. But even now, when she sits down and the panic sets in - the essay too sprawling, the blank page too blank - she picks up that tiny frame. She holds it up to the world and looks through it. *"All I have to do is write what I can see through this,"* she tells herself. Not the whole essay. Not even a paragraph. Just what fits in that one-inch square. A memory of her father's hands. The pattern on a dress. The sound of rain on a particular afternoon. She can do that. Anyone can. ## The Tension Lamott's brother was ten years old, sitting at the kitchen table in tears. A school report on birds was due the next morning. Three months to work on it, he hadn't started. The unopened books surrounded him like accusations. Their father sat down next to him, put his arm around him, and said: *"Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."* That moment stuck. She'd felt that same paralysis countless times - the gap between knowing what the finished thing should be and having no idea how to start. So she made the advice literal. Bought the frame. Put it on her desk. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/OneInchFrame.jpg) Anne Lamott's One Inch Frame ## Step Into It Think about the last big project you faced. Maybe it's happening right now. You open the document. Cursor blinks. Where do you start? The framework? The hook? The three core principles? You try one approach, delete it, try another. An hour passes. You've written 100 words and hated all of them. The whole thing still feels impossible. So you close the laptop and tell yourself you'll come back when you're clearer. Except clarity doesn't arrive. (I should know. I just did this.) ## The Groove: Structure **Structure → Shape the idea without losing yourself in it.** The one-inch frame does something sneaky to your brain. It removes the pressure of the whole. You're not building a house. You're describing a doorknob. Can you describe a doorknob? Yeah, you can. But how does this show up elsewhere? What's "one inch" when you're not writing? Last week, pushing myself to create a new 60 second cold open video, I limited myself to one prompt. Used an AI tool to generate just one image that fitted. The rest structured itself around that. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/Frame-1000004693.jpg) the first (and second) one-inch frames that unlocked the cold open video One inch changes by medium. In Figma, it's one frame. On paper, one sketch. For a pitch, the opening claim. For a session, [your personal intro](https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-introduce-yourself/). The scale shifts, but the principle doesn't - commit to the smallest thing you can actually build. Let that teach you what comes next. The trick is making your frame *actually* one inch. Not two inches. Not "just the first section." One inch. You sit down and do that. Then you've started. The doorknob teaches you about the door. The door teaches you about the room. You can't see the full shape until you've built the first bit. Structure reveals itself through the first pieces you commit to. You don't need the blueprint before you build. 💡 ****Groove Notes → The One-Inch Picture Frame** ****1\. The first inch rarely leads where you expect** You think you're building one thing, start with the piece you can see, and halfway through realise you're making something else entirely. The one-inch frame gets you moving, but it doesn't promise you'll end up where you thought. ****2\. The frame is your microscope, but you'll need the telescope too** Start one inch to get moving. Every few pieces, zoom out. See what's emerging. Microscope for building, telescope for shape. Switch too often, lose momentum. Stay microscoped too long, miss where it's going. [More on Microscope / Telescope →](https://www.howardgray.net/the-tension-microscope-telescope/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) Structure is one of the five elements of [Groove Theory ->](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## The Release The one-inch frame works because it lets structure emerge rather than forcing you to impose it. Most of us were taught backwards - make the outline, then fill it in. But that's not how a lot of creative work actually happens. The outline comes later, after you've built enough pieces to see what shape they want to take. This applies to anything you're building in real-time. Conversations. Sessions. Pitches. Even AI-driven projects. The structure IS the thinking, not separate from it. You discover what you're making by making it, one inch at a time. Inch by inch, frame by frame, bird by bird. Got a project that feels impossible? Try the one-inch frame. Howard --- ## Extended Mix: Tiny Frames - **Hemingway, hungover in Paris:** *Write one true sentence, the truest sentence you know.* Even the hard-living, hard-drinking Papa needed the one-inch frame. - **Mind the Gap:** Ira Glass spent seven years making radio stories he knew were terrible. His taste outpaced his skills, and that gap was agonizing. His advice: if your work disappoints you, that's normal. The only way through is volume. - **Oblique Strategies:** Brian Eno's deck of constraint cards for breaking creative blocks - "What would your closest friend do?"; "Use an old idea." - forces you into a specific frame when stuck. Sidenote: I’m loving card deck creation right now. ### Worksheets and Worksheets URL: https://www.howardgray.net/worksheets-and-worksheets/ Last updated: 2025-10-17T02:11:58.000Z I still get a small wave of embarrassment when we bring out the worksheets. Not because they're poorly designed - we put real care into both the visuals and the pedagogy. But there's something about printed cards and boards that feels... goofy. Like I'm running a team-building exercise from 2003. My inner voice says: digital would be sleeker. More sophisticated. But here's the thing: when you're running an in-person workshop, people don’t need hours more screen time. They're drowning in it already. Getting them to draw, to write by hand, to physically move cards around - that creates a different kind of thinking. It gets them unstuck. So we've made peace with the physical format. Sort of. The trick is treating it like theater. Not just the packaging - though we do deliver materials in manila envelopes with gate-folding and ceremony. Documents that look like internal memos. It’s also characters who send voice notes. Worlds with stakes and backstory. Some scenarios play out with cards on tables, others through digital interfaces, most blending both. The rule we've landed on is simple. Digital gets the stuff that gains from being digital: AI coaches, character audio, data dashboards. Physical gets what works better when you can touch it, shuffle it, spread it across a table. What matters isn't the medium. It's whether people feel the tension, make real choices, and walk away different. Rethinking how your teams practice before it counts? Let's talk formats - screens, card stock, or both. ### How Nintendo taught 40 million people without a manual URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-nintendo-taught-40-million-people-without-a-manual/ Last updated: 2025-10-15T01:33:06.000Z It’s 1985\. Nintendo is either about to save the gaming industry or disappear. Everything depends on getting one thing right: the first 90 seconds. In Kyoto, Shigeru Miyamoto plays the same level over and over. Not because it's broken. Because it needs to be perfect. He's already created Donkey Kong. Already proven he can make hits. But this is different. This is the game that'll either save Nintendo or sink it. The NES needs a killer app for America. Most games came with thick instruction manuals. You read, then you played. That's if you could figure it out at all. Atari had just buried thousands of E.T. cartridges in the desert because nobody could work out what to do. Miyamoto wanted something else. Something that taught you by letting you play. So he obsessed over those first ninety seconds of a new game: Super Mario Bros.. The Goomba walks toward you - you learn to jump. Hit a block and a mushroom appears - you learn power-ups exist. Coins hover above gaps -they show you where to leap. Every pixel placed with intention. Every enemy timed to appear when you've just learned the move you need. No manual required. You pick up the controller and within seconds, you just know. Miyamoto designed backwards from mastery. Not "what information do they need?" but "what should this feel like when they can do it?" Start with the end state and build the path that gets people there naturally. He also knew people don't learn from being told. They learn from trying, failing, adjusting - until the moves become instinct. You can't explain your way to mastery. People need to feel the difference. That first level - iterated and tested hundreds of times - unlocked 40 million sales. Forty years later, most of us are still handing people the manual and hoping for the best. What are you still explaining that people could be experiencing instead? ### Cold Open URL: https://www.howardgray.net/cold-open/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T13:04:39.000Z How do you make a skeptical audience suspend their disbelief? One way: don't give them time to be skeptical. We were in Guatemala the other week running sessions at a family office summit. One of the asks: build a card game about family business dynamics. Make it fun, quirky, educational, meaningful. Oh, and run it for a room full of successful entrepreneurs and executives. No pressure. We knew the game was solid. But they didn't. And we had about 60 seconds before someone in the back row started checking email. So instead of trying to explain the game, we just hit play on this video. No intro. No setup. Just a cold open tracking 100 years of our cast of characters - "the Rosales' family business It worked. Open mouths. Gleaming looks. That rare thing where adults look like kids again for a second. We had them. The kicker? I didn't need a film crew or a time machine to make this. Just me, hunched over a laptop for several hours, working with AI tools, plus cultural direction from Fer Franco to make sure it hit the spot with our multi-generational, cross-continental audience. Production stack: • Character Design: Figma, Gemini, Claude • Video: Kling AI • Audio: Eleven Labs • Video Editing: DaVinci Resolve • Subtitles: Descript • Translation: Claude We're building more of these for the scenarios and case studies coming down the line. Turns out cold opens beat long explanations every time. ### 33/45?: Carl Craig's cross-scene connections URL: https://www.howardgray.net/33-45-carl-craigs-cross-scene-connections/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:35:32.000Z For months, two South London DJs had been playing a Detroit music producer’s track at the wrong speed - 45rpm instead of 33rpm. Somehow, it was working. The question was: would he see it as innovation or disrespect? It’s 1992 in Detroit. Carl Craig’s made his name with ethereal techno, but he’s restless. He wants to try something different. So he creates “Bug in the Bassbin” - a jazz-breakbeat hybrid, deeply unusual for anyone working with grid-based electronic production. European DJs like Gilles Peterson and Laurent Garnier pick up on it. Not surprising—they’re known for pulling from all over the map. But then two jungle DJs - Fabio and Grooverider - start playing it at their Rage parties. Except they play the vinyl at 45rpm instead of 33\. Jazz drums become 160bpm breakbeats. The double bass goes somewhere else entirely. Fabio’s nervous. Have they undermined the work? Disrespected this Detroit auteur they admire? Turned out Carl Craig loved it. Jazz becomes techno becomes jungle - all through one track. A few years later, the track is re-released with remixes at multiple tempos. By then, scenes that had been fluid in the early rave days had hardened into distinct identities—techno, house, drum and bass, each with their own nights, their own tribes. But “Bug in the Bassbin” kept crossing those lines. By the mid-90s, you’d see Masters at Work, Roni Size, Carl Craig, LTJ Bukem on the same bills. Detroit, London, NY, Bristol. The track helped build bridges between scenes that had separated. Three moves made this happen. First, Carl Craig made the thing - going outside his genre, pulling different influences, taking a risk. Second, Fabio and Grooverider stayed open to a track well outside their lane. They sensed it might work at 45 and had the guts to play it out live. Third, Carl Craig embraced it. Would’ve been easier to dismiss it, be upset, claim misuse. --- This isn’t just for DJs. You can take an idea, a framework, a story from one context and transform it for another. Change the format. Change the framing. Apply it to your industry. Remix it for a different audience. This is a skill. Fabio and Grooverider didn’t just reshare the track—they transformed it by changing the speed. That takes an ear for what could work, and the confidence to test it out. Most of us aren’t making things from scratch. We’re finding, reshaping, recontextualizing. Build that instinct. Look for things that might work at a different speed. And if someone does it to your work? Maybe that’s the highest compliment. You’ll might meet people and ideas you never thought of. P.S. Laurent Garnier once described Carl Craig as being able to ‘make synthesizers cry’. The magic of humans and machines. True in ’92, true today. ### Movie bets: Judge by the peak URL: https://www.howardgray.net/movie-bets-judge-by-the-peak/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:40:27.000Z You're assessing someone for a big opportunity. Do you look at their most recent work? What the references say? The producer behind "The Social Network" built his career on a third path. Michael De Luca is one of Hollywood's most successful producers. He became president of production at New Line at 27 - one of the youngest ever. Over his career, he's produced three Best Picture nominees and helped launch the careers of directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and the Farrelly brothers. In Hollywood, they judge by the flop. The thing that bombed. The disaster that tanked someone's career. De Luca doesn't. He judges by the best thing someone's ever done. Take David Fincher. After a string of disasters, his stock was low. No one wanted to hire him. But De Luca had seen "Seven". He knew what Fincher was capable of under the right conditions. That belief led to "The Social Network". Totally different genre. Completely different film. And one of the defining movies of the 21st century. Here's the thing: our biases pull us toward recent information. Especially the negative stuff. The failure. The misstep. The thing that didn't work. Loss aversion is powerful - even when we know better. But what if you flipped it? What if you judged people based on the best thing you've seen them do - and asked whether, under the right conditions, they could do it again? Or even surpass it? Common sense? Maybe. But common sense isn't common. When you're assessing talent - whether you're hiring, promoting, or building a team - the question doesn't have to be "What did they do last?" It could be "What are they capable of when everything clicks?" The choice is yours. ### When Malcolm Gladwell found Dr. Dre's Empty Chair URL: https://www.howardgray.net/when-malcolm-gladwell-found-dr-dres-empty-chair/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:43:13.000Z Malcolm Gladwell once got the opportunity to interview Dr Dre. So he goes to Dre’s house. Turns out the guy is an interviewer’s worst nightmare. Impossible to read. Won’t really talk. Seems irritated, disinterested. Monosyllabic. Eventually, Dre says to Gladwell - “let’s go to my church.” Gladwell is a bit flummoxed at the change of plan, but it transpires\* the church isn’t far. It’s just down the stairs. Dre’s church is his music studio. Mixing desk. Vocal booth. Synths. Speakers. Couch. And, of course, the producer’s chair. Suddenly, he’s a different person. Stories, chatter, laughter. Guard down, blockers removed. Gladwell can’t believe it. What happened? There was what Gladwell calls The Empty Chair. Upstairs in the house, doing an interview with this guy Dre barely knew, the empty chair was on full display - a vast creaking throne. Dre’s empty chair was his mixing board. Turns out Dre was anxious (believe it or not), and as soon as the metaphorical chair was filled, everything changed. We all have empty chairs. If they’re empty, we feel it deeply. In the chair could be your guitar. Your favourite snack. Your Dad’s voice. All this is to say, the environment matters. I still think we underestimate this. If you want progress, breakthroughs, success to happen with people (and as a human being, you probably do), you need to figure out which chair, and how to fill it. The work is creating the environment where people feel the appropriate emotions for the experience: Comfortable, alive, excited, focused - whatever it may be. And to help fill others’ empty chairs, it probably helps to know a bit about your own. \*if you noticed this wordplay, you already know one of my chairs. ### Groove Theory #10 - When your song becomes someone else's URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-10-when-your-song-becomes-someone-elses/ Last updated: 2025-10-05T08:59:22.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio. **Currently: at JFK Terminal 5; getting back into video production* The other night, someone suggested I check out 'Challengers', the movie directed by Luca Guadagnino. But they didn’t say anything about the actual movie. The only thing mentioned was the soundtrack. Within 20 seconds of pressing play, I knew. Even without checking, I *knew* it was Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. A tennis movie soundtrack, miles away from Nine Inch Nails territory, yet their fingerprints were everywhere. The spaces between notes. The way tension builds and releases. Unmistakably them. That recognition sent me tumbling back into the NIN catalog, where I stumbled into one of the most brutal - and beautiful - stories about creative ownership. ## The Tension In 1993, Trent Reznor was 28 and falling apart. He wrote a song in his bedroom as "a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone." Raw, personal, unreachable. A young man's scream into the void. The song was called “Hurt”. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/Trent-Reznor-1993-1.jpg) Trent Reznor with Nine Inch Nails, Woodstock, 1994 Nearly a decade later, producer Rick Rubin called with an unusual request: Johnny Cash wanted to cover it. Reznor's response was immediate: No. It seemed weird. The idea sounded gimmicky. But he reluctantly agreed. When Cash's recording arrived weeks later, Reznor's reaction was visceral: "It was like someone kissing your girlfriend - it felt invasive." This wasn't professional critique - it was gut-level violation. Someone had taken his most personal creation and inhabited it. ## Step Into It This is every creative professional's fear - even when you've said yes. Picture this: You're giving a talk and casually mention people can screenshot the slides, use the frameworks. Generous, right? A few weeks later you see your methodology showing up everywhere - stripped of your context, your examples, your nuance. Same structure, completely different execution. Technically you gave permission. But seeing it transformed still makes your stomach drop. That was *yours*. You built it through late nights and failed experiments, refined it through real work. How does that sit? ## The Groove: Signal **Signal → Clarify what matters. Distill your message into something that sticks and spreads.** What happened next changed everything. Reznor was in his New Orleans studio working with Zach de la Rocha when Mark Romanek's “Hurt” music video arrived. > *"I pop the video in, and... wow. Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow."* In that moment, violation became revelation. Cash hadn't stolen his song - he'd completed it. you may feel a lump in your throat... Where the original was a young man's battle with self-destruction, Cash's version became an old man's reckoning with mortality. Same words, same melody, completely different soul. Here's what's extraordinary: both versions work perfectly. When Reznor wrote "Hurt" as a deeply personal confession - a 28-year-old's raw battle with addiction and despair - the idea that it could work for anyone else, let alone Johnny Cash, would have seemed impossible. Reznor realised it was time to let it go: > "I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore." The signal was so clear, so essential, that it could survive complete recontextualization and become something equally powerful but entirely different. 💡 ****Groove Notes → When your song becomes someone else's** ****1\. Choose real over relatable** Reznor didn't write about "what we all go through" or "the universal struggle with mental health." He wrote about his specific breakdown, his actual bedroom, his particular despair. That raw specificity is exactly what made it universal enough for Johnny Cash to inhabit completely. Yes, it's a paradox: the more specifically real you are, the more it resonates across contexts. "Relatable" content tries to appeal to everyone and can end up meaning nothing to anyone. "Real" content is deeply personal yet can somehow speak to everyone. You don’t need to smooth the edges to be more palatable - instead, lean into what actually happened. ****2\. Build foundations, not fences** What if Reznor had micromanaged Cash's cover? Insisted on the original arrangement, demanded creative control, protected every musical choice? The magic would have died. Strong creative work doesn't need protection - it needs room to breathe. Stop building elaborate guardrails around your ideas. Build the core so strong it can survive being completely reimagined. ****3\. Trust the unexpected audience** Reznor never imagined his bedroom confession could work for a 71-year-old country legend. The audiences you can't envision might be the ones who need your work most. Create for your reality, but stay open to who else might find meaning in it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) Signal is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [**Learn more →**](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## The Release Reznor could have fought Cash's cover. Instead, he let it happen and watched his deeply personal song become something larger than he ever imagined. This wasn't a one-time realisation. When Cash died seven months after the release, Reznor watched his intimate bedroom confession become a musical epitaph. "The song's purpose shifted again," he reflected. Over the following twenty years, Reznor's relationship with the cover has kept evolving. What started as invasion became inspiration. By 2017, he was calling it "a nudge and boost and a hug from God." The young man who felt violated by someone else's interpretation had become an artist who understood that the best creative work transcends its origins. We're all terrified of someone "stealing" our ideas. But what if that's exactly backwards? What if the frameworks that last aren't the ones we control most tightly, but the ones we trust enough to let go? Your signal is strong enough when others can remix it completely and it still sounds unmistakably like you. The question isn't whether someone will take your ideas and run with them. They will. Instead: what do you need to let go of to let your work travel? Howard --- ### Extended Mix: Reznor & Cash - **A YouTube comment captures it all best**: "Reznor's version is a young man battling self-destructive tendencies. Cash's version is an old man near the end of his life, looking back on past regrets." - **Cash's late-career secret**: He kept the voice cracks and labored breathing in his recordings instead of editing them out. He turned frailty into power, making his mortality part of the performance rather than something to hide. - **Reznor & Ross**: Building an unmistakable signal across genres is a rare skill. Whether it's industrial rock, a tennis movie soundtrack, or the score for “[The Social Network](https://open.spotify.com/album/1ijkFiMeHopKkHyvQCWxUa?si=FIrA84huQaue3pn5y2UsMw&ref=howardgray.net)” (created by feeding piano melodies through broken electronics), their fingerprints are instantly recognizable. That consistency across wildly different contexts? That's what happens when you build foundations, not fences. ### When Guatemala invented the Happy Meal URL: https://www.howardgray.net/when-guatemala-invented-the-happy-meal/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:47:29.000Z I never eat McDonald’s. Except in Guatemala. There, it’s different. Lines around the block. Not because it just launched - this isn’t Moscow in the ’90s. Because one woman refused to accept the manual. Her name was Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño. Yolanda opened Guatemala’s first McDonald’s in 1974\. She noticed kids couldn’t finish regular portions. So she created the “Ronald Menu” - smaller burger, small fries, ice cream, and a toy. She didn’t ask permission. She just did it. McDonald’s corporate saw it working and rolled it out worldwide in 1979\. They called it the Happy Meal. She also invented birthday parties at McDonald’s. Got two “Ronald Awards” - one in 1980 for parties, another in 1982 for the Happy Meal. Then the “Golden Arches” award, the highest honor McDonald’s gives. McDonald’s used Guatemala as a global test site. They piloted McCafés there. Credited Yolanda with creating the Latin American “Derretido.” After her husband died, she kept going - expanded to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua. She built three Ronald McDonald Houses for low-income families traveling to Guatemala City for medical treatment. She ran it all until 2018\. She passed away in 2021 at the age of 87. Most things that scale lose this - the care, the local touch, the person who sees what could be better and refuses to accept less. Consistency can kill craft. Except when someone won’t let it. Fer Franco told me I had to try McDonald’s in Guatemala. I didn’t believe him until I went. We’re back in Guatemala next week - this time running immersive case studies for family offices focused on impact investing, with our friends at TBN. I’m hoping we all get time for that Big Mac. ### What if business school taught you the wrong skill? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-if-business-school-taught-you-the-wrong-skill/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:52:31.000Z Can we talk about MBAs? *"I graduated in what is apparently the most difficult year to get a job with an MBA in the history of the degree."* That's Taylor, 32, from Kentucky. She's sent 2,000 applications in six months. (yes, you read that correctly) This is from a Guardian piece on employment that highlighted a recurring theme around the MBA. While Taylor's navigating AI filters and interviews with screeners asking if she's "ever used technology," most business schools are still teaching the same frameworks they've used for years. A few professors have quietly mentioned what many in the field are starting to acknowledge: the traditional MBA model needs an overhaul. The slow decline has been happening for a while, but the job market is now making it impossible to ignore. One piece: the growing mismatch between what students learn and what they encounter when they graduate. Some schools are starting to experiment with more hands-on approaches - experiential learning, interactive scenarios, more rich media. We're working with a few on learning innovation projects that move beyond the lecture hall. Most aren't ready for that shift yet. Students spend two years learning to dissect other people's decisions, then get thrown into roles where they have to make their own under pressure. No wonder Taylor's struggling against AI filters while armed with case study frameworks. We built Involver as interactive scenarios where students and employees can practice critical decisions before their career depends on them. It won't solve the job market, but it might better prepare people for what's coming next. What's your take on Taylor's situation? ### Groove Theory #9 - Dishoom’s Main Character Energy URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-9-dishooms-main-character-energy/ Last updated: 2025-09-21T08:05:01.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio. Currently: creating tabletop games for family investment firms, evaluating a big stack of SXSW proposals > "We’re an Irani cafe on acid." That's how a fledgling London restaurant called Dishoom described themselves in a job ad for their first marketing hire. Sara Stark read the ad. She still lights up talking about it. "It was imaginative, it was irreverent, it was fun. The person that wrote that is weird, and I love that. They're not afraid to show it”. Today, Dishoom has 13 restaurants across the UK (and soon coming to [NYC](https://ny.eater.com/coming-attractions/401619/dishoom-nyc-opening-manhattan-indian-restaurant-jks-restaurants-ambassadors-clubhouse?ref=howardgray.net)). Between them, they serve 100,000 people every week. That humble job ad hooked Sara into a 10-year journey building Dishoom into what it is today. ## The Tension Each Dishoom location pays loving homage to the old Irani cafes of Bombay. But here's the challenge: How do you create experiences that feel both authentically consistent and genuinely unique across multiple locations? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/image.png) Irani cafes, Bombay, circa 1960 Most brands face this tension. Starbucks solved it with rigid standardisation -same menu, same aesthetic, same experience everywhere. But that creates sameness, not specialness (and, let's be honest, mediocre coffee at best). Others go the opposite route, making each location so different the brand disappears entirely. Dishoom found a third way. Instead of a brand, they built a *world*. ### **Step Into It** Think about your own work for a moment. Whether you're making music, designing presentations, running workshops, or building a business - you probably face a version of this same challenge. How do you stay true to your core idea while adapting to different contexts? Maintain consistency without killing your creative energy? ## The Groove: Modality **Modality → Choosing the right vessel for your idea.** Dishoom mastered something more than food. They mastered modality. Their central organising thought - the Bombay cafe - became richer and more textured as it expressed itself across different modalities. Here's how they did it: ### Create protagonists for each location Instead of one brand voice, they created multiple characters. Every restaurant has a fictional Irani cafe owner who serves as the creative protagonist for that location. "We'd invent a character and then spend time in their heads," Sara explains. "What would they do with this blank wall? How would they hang this artwork? What would be keeping them awake at night?" These weren't those lifeless marketing personas. They were actual people with quirks, obsessions, and bad habits. For King's Cross, they [invented a young Irani](https://www.dishoom.com/journal/myths/introducing-dishoom-kings-cross/?ref=howardgray.net) newly arrived in Bombay who starts selling tea and biscuits from a goods shed behind Victoria Terminus (which looks remarkably like London St. Pancras). Over time, his small operation blossoms into a Bombay institution. ### Layer in Easter eggs and discoverable details Like game designers, they created rewards for exploration. There's Hindi script on doors that says "Don't come in here, there's ghosts" - a joke only 1-2% of guests will understand. The team also changed every screw in the Carnaby Street entrance from Phillips to flathead - because Phillips screws didn't exist in the 1960s. "We loved putting these layers in," Sara says. "There would always be more. You could keep scratching at the surface and never reach a dead end." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/image-1.png) Dishoom, Shoreditch, East London ### Train everyone in the backstories Dishoom created 50-page design guides documenting every picture, every story, every detail. Staff learn the backstories so when someone asks about a photograph, they can say, *"Oh yes, that's the founder's grandmother. That's the wedding picture that was sent to \[co-founder\] Shael's grandfather. If that picture didn't exist, this whole enterprise wouldn't be here."* For each new location, the launch team takes two trips to Bombay (research, then sourcing). Work there five years? You get a trip to Bombay too. ### Express the world across multiple modalities The Bombay cafe concept lived as physical restaurants with different personalities, then as a bestselling cookbook with an enthusiastic, slightly unreliable narrator voice, then as a curated LP capturing 1960s Bombay's rock and roll scene. Each format served the core idea while reaching different audiences and revealing new layers of the story. 💡 ****Groove Notes → Main Character Energy** ****1\. Start with one organising thought** The best of these are deceptively simple but endlessly deep. 'Bombay cafe' works because you can keep unpacking it - the history, the characters, the rituals, the tensions. Infinite game. 2\. ****Create context-specific characters** Don't just copy-paste your brand voice. Create a specific character for each context and let them make the creative decisions. Your workshop character might be different from your keynote character, but they should both live in your world. 3\. ****Build in discovery layers** The details that only 2% of people notice aren't wasted effort - they're what make the other 98% feel like something special is happening, even if they can't put their finger on what. You know the feeling (and maybe you’re in my 2%…) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim-1.png) Modality is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## **The Release** The same idea can live in completely different vessels - and get stronger each time. Dishoom's Bombay cafe concept works as a physical restaurant, a cookbook voice, a music compilation, and staff stories. Each format reveals new facets while staying true to the core. But you probably aren’t running a restaurant chain serving 100k people a week. So, what gives? I reckon it’s about *character*. I’m obsessed with this stuff right now. Character design meets playtesting - it's everywhere once you start looking. Clients are even asking us to run sessions for their teams on [synthetic playtesting](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/the-ultimate-playtester-how-we-use-custom-gpts-to-design-better-live-experiences?ref=howardgray.net). Of course, Dishoom cracked this years ago. They just didn't call it that. Create your character. Then let them make every creative decision. The weirder and more specific they get, the clearer your choices become. Yes, it won't be for everyone. But that's exactly the point. Speaking of London (and Indian food, and not being for everyone) - I’m in town. Want to get a curry? Hit reply. Mine’s a Lamb Bhuna. Howard --- ### Extended Mix: Irani cafe culture - [Corner plot](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/the-ultimate-playtester-how-we-use-custom-gpts-to-design-better-live-experiences?ref=howardgray.net): At their peak in the 1960s, there were almost 400 Irani cafes in Bombay - today, fewer than 30 remain. They were started by Zoroastrian immigrants fleeing drought and persecution from Iran in the late 1800s. The cafes got prime corner locations because Hindu merchants considered corner plots inauspicious and rented them cheaply. - [Slip-Disc: Dishoom's Bombay London Grooves](https://www.dishoom.com/store/products/slip-disc-vinyl/?ref=howardgray.net): For the backstory, check out [this interview](https://www.dishoom.com/journal/stories/creating-slip-disc-dishooms-bombay-london-grooves/?ref=howardgray.net) with music supervisor Rob Wood - **Everything’s a remix**: the inspiration for this edition of Groove Theory came from the wonderful [*Let’s make this more interestin*g](https://shows.acast.com/lets-make-this-more-interesting/episodes?ref=howardgray.net) podcast ### What I've learned from evaluating 1000+ SXSW proposals URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-ive-learned-from-evaluatreading-1000-sxsw-proposals/ Last updated: 2025-09-18T10:10:58.000Z Every year, I find myself deep in proposal evaluation mode. Fortune 100 CEOs, ambitious VPs, indie strategists, even actors and athletes - they all end up on my screen with their big ideas and bigger hopes to secure a slot to speak at SXSW. After evaluating thousands of submissions, a few patterns emerge. Here's what I noticed from reviewing the 2026 batch - what makes some land, and others slide. **Why Now?** If your topic could've run unchanged five years ago, you need a really compelling hook. "Leadership in uncertain times" isn't going to cut it unless you've got something genuinely fresh to say about how the ground has shifted. The best proposals ladder off recent changes in the world - new tech that enables different interactions, cultural shifts that change behavior, or legislative changes that everyone's overlooked. This doesn't mean jumping on the latest fad: you can still win with a timeless topic - it just needs to answer that question of "why now?" **Going Big Requires Going Specific** Broad topics like "AI's impact on creativity" or "Diversifying creator revenue streams" are *everywhere*. If you're tackling something massive, you need an unexpected angle. Don't tell me about last week's Harvard Business Review headline. Show me the counterintuitive insight or the connection no one else is making. If you get this right, decent chance you'll also cover the "Why Now?" - two birds, one stone. **The YouTube Test** Can someone get this exact content on their phone while sitting on the toilet? (or other place where they may like to sit). If yes, you've got a problem. People are spending serious time and money to be at SXSW. Give them something that can only happen in that room, with those people, at that moment. One way you can succeed here? Formats... **Format Innovation** Everyone defaults to panels. But think about your material. Is a multi-person discussion really the best way to convey what you're trying to share? Interactive demos, structured debates, hands-on workshops, reverse presentations where the audience teaches you - the format landscape is wide open and under-competed. I can't overstate the importances of formats - and format innovation. You don't need to do much - just a small twist can be more than enough to stand out and take the audience somewhere new. **Stakeholder Mapping** This is where most proposals fall apart. If you're doing a session on RFPs, having a vendor (e.g. agency, consultancy, etc.) in the room isn't just nice - it's essential. A panel with four buyers from big companies may look like a smart move, but it's going to be completely lopsided. Here's where it gets most interesting: hidden stakeholders. They can make your session electric. I'm not talking just anyone here, of course. I mean people who have a vested interest, who are stakeholders in the topic, but can be easily overlooked. What if that panel on workplace motherhood was moderated by a dad? What if your startup pitch session included someone who's failed spectacularly? **Show Your Face** Even thirty seconds of video helps me understand who you are. Not a polished corporate piece - just you, talking about why this matters. Don't script it - doing it that way makes me believe you less. Don't worry if you stumble or stutter. I just need to know you're a human, you're you, you're the person who I'm going to and see at the event. This matters now more than ever. Most submissions are faceless. Don't be most submissions. --- The proposals that work aren't just good ideas. They're good ideas from people who've thought carefully about why this room, why these people, why this approach, why now. ### Is it Sivers? Because this is just one of many options URL: https://www.howardgray.net/is-it-sivers-because-this-is-just-one-of-many-options/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:49:34.000Z Derek Sivers once had a voice teacher who made him sing the same song as if it was 4am and a friend had just woken him up. That singing lesson somehow changed everything for our company. You might know Derek as founder of CDBaby. He famously gave away his fortune when he sold the business. He's since written hundreds of sharp, pithy blog posts. One called "This is just one of many options" is a classic. The post shows how what Derek thought was "the" way a song went was really just one of infinite possibilities. His voice teacher made him sing the same song up an octave, down an octave. Then twice as fast, twice as slow, like Bob Dylan, and yes, like it's 4am and a friend woke him up. And on and on. **F**er Franco and I referenced it one day. Took the core idea somewhere else. And again. And again. Before we knew it, we had the basis for a model we now use in almost everything we do. Fer emailed Derek to let him know. Despite our bizarre use case, he wrote straight back with delighted encouragement. Now when we're unsure about something, we ask: "Is it Sivers?". Are we offering people more than one way? Are we offering structured optionality? This way is just one of many. When everything's changing at such a relentless pace, you need to try different versions, different styles, different scenarios. It's becoming absolutely essential. One of our core pillars of Wavetable's learning design comes from a simple 300-word blog post written by someone we'd never met. Now we build immersive scenarios where people can try different approaches, make different choices, see what happens when the variables change. Because the first way you think of doing something? That's just one of many options. P.S. Where did we have this breakthrough? In a room, in person, together. Riffing on seemingly unrelated topics until it just... appeared. That's why we co-work. ### Groove Theory #8 - Three Timetables and a Microphone URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-8-three-timetables-and-a-microphone/ Last updated: 2025-09-07T09:00:12.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the experiential education studio. Currently: launching a [new playable case study](https://involver-horizon.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), becoming decidedly Transatlantic --- There's something about New York and comedy. The locals' naturally acerbic wit. A city where cracking jokes lubricates the daily grind. A place where both pro and amateur standups can hit five gigs a night without breaking stride. Because NYC teems with comedy spots. These venues share a rhythm - comedian walks out, tells jokes, gets laughs (hopefully), walks off. Next comic, next venue, next gig. All the way from open mic to UCB and SNL. But this edition of Groove Theory isn't about Rhythm. It’s not about Structure, or even Presence. It's about flipping the script entirely. Speaking of which, let's flip from NYC to Los Angeles. It's 2012\. Two LA comedians, Brandie Posey and Sam Varela, stare at a problem that's plagued live comedy forever: how do you make the same old stand-up format feel alive again? Their answer: *Picture This!* Comedians perform while animators draw their jokes live, in real time, projected behind them. The comedians don't know what the animators are drawing. The animators don't know how the comedians - or the audience - will react. Over a decade later, [*Picture This!*](https://www.youtube.com/@PictureThisComedy/videos?ref=howardgray.net) brings dozens of animators and comedians together for something that didn't exist before. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/PictureThis2.jpg) And back in NYC, a recent Saturday evening found me at Brooklyn’s Union Hall for their latest edition. --- ## The Tension Animators aren’t performers. They’re used to creating alone, in private, with time to refine and perfect. But suddenly they're on stage, drawing live, with hundreds of people watching every stroke. They don't know if they'll be funny. They don’t know what’s coming. And the comedian's punchline is on the way whether their drawing is ready or not. Meanwhile, the comedians lose their usual control. Their timing shifts. Their pacing changes. That guaranteed laugh might not work because people might love the drawing more than the joke. It's visual artists becoming both heckler and creative partner. It's comedians surrendering their material to someone else's interpretation. As co-founder Sam says, both pen and mic have anxiety. Egos have to shunt off-stage. ### Step Into It You're presenting some work. Team meeting, client pitch, conference talk - whatever. You're explaining your ideas when someone starts building on them in real time. A colleague jumps in with their interpretation. A client takes your concept somewhere you never imagined. Someone riffs an alternate version in Figma or Claude while you’re still explaining the original. Your careful plan just got bent out of shape. You can either fight it or flow with it. --- ## The Groove: Modality **Modality → Choose the vessel** At Wavetable we're big believers in the value of Format Innovation: mixing two proven formats to create a third thing that neither could achieve alone. Hot Ones, Masterclass, Peloton - all rooted in innovating on a format. We even built a [DJ mixdown game](https://involver-the-dj-mixer.replit.app/?ref=howardgray.net) to help you create your own (yes, the game itself is a format innovation). The *Picture This!* combo of comedy + illustration is definitely format innovation. But their real modality breakthrough isn't just *what* they mix - it's how they play with time. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/Facebook-Image--1-.jpg) Most creative experiences ask people to follow one timeline - your presentation, your story, your agenda. But this show runs three timetables at once. Your brain processes: - the joke timeline (setup, punchline, rhythm) - the drawing timeline (sketch emerging, details added, reveal) - the audience timeline (when to laugh, when to gasp, when to wonder). Three timetables make time fly. Plus, as co-founder Sam explained to me, it opens the door to audiences who find traditional stand-up polarizing or unwelcoming. Comedy usually means mainstream crowds - date nights, tourists. *Picture This!* multi-modal format attracts clowns, jugglers, animators, LGBTQ folks, alt topics. It's a portal into comedy for people who'd never set foot in a regular comedy club. The show has grown from an LA experiment to franchises in New York, Portland, San Francisco, and appearances at festivals worldwide - including two runs at the Kennedy Center. Modality is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more →](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/09/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) --- 💡 ****Groove Notes → Three Timetables and a Microphone** ****1\. Your worst beats their best** The producers remind nervous animators: **"Your worst doodle is still super impressive to the rest of us. Just keep doodling."* Sometimes the bar we set for ourselves is the real barrier. (yup, I struggle with this one...) ****2\. Silent partners** Each animator gets a mentor right next to them on stage. The audience can barely see them, but they’re there. Big brother, big sister, safety net. When you're in uncharted territory, it’s ok to bring - or offer - backup 3\. ****Control the reveal** Animators decide whether drawings are shown in progress or as straight reveals. Even in controlled chaos, someone needs to control something. And the in progress versions can be a whole storyline in themselves... --- ## The Release *Picture This!* proves that time is a format you can innovate on. They didn't just mix comedy with illustration - they created three timetables where most experiences have one. Different timelines shift how people perceive and understand what's happening. Your next project can play not just with content, but with time and perception. Speaking of play, what’s your favorite joke right now? And yes, you're welcome to add a doodle. Howard P.S *Picture This!* are currently seeking animators - [contact them via IG](https://www.instagram.com/picturethiscomedy/?hl=en&ref=howardgray.net) if you know someone. --- ## Extended Mix: Groove Tools - [Replit + Figma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBiFBZaBnaE&ref=howardgray.net): we’ve been using this to build our suite of games, with two of us coding/building at the same time. - [Ojisan magic](https://www.howardgray.net/ojisan-magic-the-trading-card-game-thats-reviving-a-town/): a unique card game that revived a Japanese town - [3D Mapping a conversation](https://www.howardgray.net/learning-styles-3d-mapping-a-conversation/): a blast from my blog past. I must have consumed some potent herbal tea that day… Deepen the Groove ****Time to add some fresh formats to your work?** Groove Build helps you turn your expertise into content, workshops, and programs that actually land. Start with a single 1:1 session, or dive deeper. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) ### Groove Theory #7 - Hedonistic Sustainability URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-7-the-yes-and-approach-to-business-strategy/ Last updated: 2025-08-24T10:25:01.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- where professional development meets interactive games. Currently: sharing tools to [measure your AI adoption](https://www.wavetable.net/flow-check?ref=howardgray.net), being a Brooklyn bike lane power user Copenhagen, 2006\. A young architect with wild hair and wilder ideas starts a firm with a simple manifesto: "Yes is More." Most architecture firms chose a singular lane - serious or playful, sustainable or spectacular, local or global. Bjarke Ingels decided to choose the whole lot. Today, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) designs everything from floating cities to ski slopes that double as power plants. They've built museums that look like mountains and apartment buildings with parks on every floor. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/08/Bjarke.jpeg) if I was the one who created these projects, I'd rock this pose too But here's what's interesting: as they scaled from 5 people to 700+, they didn't get more rigid. They got more adaptive. The secret? BIG designed their structure not to eliminate contradictions, but to handle them. --- ## The Tension Most organisations (and humans, for that matter) try to resolve tension quickly. Pick a strategy. Choose your market. Define your role. Eliminate ambiguity. We default to 'yes, but': we'd love to do both, but we need to focus. Pick a lane. Choose your battles. But what if the most creative work happens when you apply improv's golden rule of *“Yes, and…"* to business strategy? ### Step Into It Your practice has just hit a new revenue high. Three different client types love your work - but for completely different reasons. Your advisor says pick one, double down, become known for something specific. But your best innovations happen at the intersections. Do you specialise… or design for contradiction? --- ## The Groove: Structure **Structure → Shape the idea** Bjarke Ingels has turned contradiction into competitive advantage. His philosophy of "hedonistic sustainability" deliberately holds two opposing forces: environmental responsibility and human pleasure. Instead of choosing between them, BIG designs buildings that make sustainability enjoyable. The Copenhagen waste-to-energy plant? It has a ski slope on the roof. The Via 57 West apartment building in NYC? It's shaped like a pyramid so every unit gets light and views. "We try to turn a vicious circle into a virtuous circle," Bjarke explains. "Instead of making sustainability about sacrifice, we make it about enhancement." But flipping these particularly v-signs required operational genius to match the creative vision. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/08/Sheela.jpeg) Enter Sheela Maini Søgaard. While Bjarke was the visionary face of BIG, Sheela was building the engine. As CEO, she recognised something most creative firms miss: you can't scale radical creativity without equally radical operations. **The BIG leadership split:** - **Bjarke drove vision** \- the big ideas, the impossible briefs, the "what if we put a ski slope on a power plant?" moments - **Sheela scaled the engine** \- finance, people systems, global coordination, making the impossible actually possible But here's what makes it work: they didn't just divide and conquer. They designed adaptive leadership at every level. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/08/Bjarke_Adaptive.jpeg) Three key elements of Adaptive Leadership, and how BIG applied them to enable them to grow to 700 team members worldwide "We scale without standardising," Sheela explains. "We built trust and experimentation into the structure itself." This isn't traditional hierarchy. Project teams operate with shared responsibility - architects, urbanists, engineers, and sustainability experts co-lead initiatives. Leadership adapts to each project rather than projects adapting to fixed leadership. This is 'yes, and' at organisational scale. In improv, you accept what your scene partner gives you AND build on it. BIG accepts impossible briefs AND finds ways to make them work. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes: "Yes, and" business** ****1\. Map your contradictions, then design roles to handle them** BIG intentionally split leadership - Bjarke and Sheela didn't fall into CEO/Creative Director defaults; they designed complementary roles. What contradictory strengths could you split between two people? ****2\. Hold the tension** Instead of resolving creative vs. commercial, local vs. global, fast vs. thorough - design structures that embrace both. The best solutions often live in the contradiction. And [tension is everywhere](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/the-tension/) ****3\. Reframe continuously** BIG's most impactful projects come from asking better questions, not just solving given problems. Build "reframing" into your process - regularly step back and question the brief itself. Two to start: “Who’s it for?”; “What’s it for?” Structure is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/08/Five-Elements-of-Groove_small.png) --- ## The Release Structure isn't about eliminating chaos - it's about designing systems that can handle complexity and contradiction. BIG proves that you can scale radical creativity without losing agility. The secret isn't choosing between opposing forces - it's building structures that harness the tension between them. The next time someone tells you to pick a lane, trying asking yourself: *How could I design a structure that uses *both*?* I learned this the hard way. Early at Wavetable, clients would ask: 'Are you consultants, designers or educators?' I kept trying to pick one. Then I realised our best projects happened when I stopped choosing. And at our co-location in Mexico City earlier this year, we hit upon the idea of framing ourselves… more like BIG. Today, we're rocking what could be called a business mullet: architecture studio in front, game studio in the back. Sometimes the best strategy isn't choosing - it's designing. That's all for this time. Next up - a live comedy show where the gags get… drawn. Howard P.S. Ever tried saying *'yes, and*' to a seemingly impossible brief? What happened…? --- ## Extended Mix **More on BIG:** - ["Yes is More"](https://goodreads.com/book/show/6593831.Yes%5Fis%5FMore%5FAn%5FArchicomic%5Fon%5FArchitectural%5FEvolution?ref=howardgray.net) comic book manifesto (2009) - explains their philosophy in graphic novel format - Notable contradictions resolved: The 8 House (social housing that feels luxurious), Amager Bakke (waste plant that's also recreation) - The best book on “yes, and”? [Impro by Keith Johnstone](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306940.Impro?ref=howardgray.net) (hint: it's not really about improv...) **Cop some Copenhagen**: Two spots to try in one of my favourite cities: - [Madklubben](https://www.madklubben.dk/en/restaurants/copenhagen/madklubben/vesterbro?ref=howardgray.net): a single location grew into Denmark's top restaurant group. Hit the Vesterbro location for the essential menu & vibes. - [Culture Box](https://culture-box.com/?ref=howardgray.net): basement venue with a superb soundsystem, spotlighting DJs’ DJs across techno, dubstep, drum&bass and beyond. Deepen the Groove ****Ready to build the right structure for your biggest moments?** Groove Build helps you turn your expertise into keynotes, workshops, and programs that actually land. Start with a single 1:1 session, or dive deeper. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) ### Groove Theory #6 - The One Person Orchestra URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-6-the-one-person-orchestra/ Last updated: 2025-08-10T10:40:07.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm your host, Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- where case studies become interactive games. Currently: spending many hours in Guatemala’s [finest coffee shops](https://www.instagram.com/12onzas/?ref=howardgray.net), becoming NY<>LON Melbourne, 2014\. A busker sits cross-legged on the street, surrounded by pedals, guitars, and electronic gear. They're not just playing music - they're conducting an entire orchestra. Alone. Loop pedal records the bass line. Drums get layered in. Guitar melody flows on top. Vocals weave through everything. Each element building on the last, creating something that sounds like five people but it's just one. What started as street performance would become a blueprint for a new kind of artist. This is Tash Sultana, and they now sell out arenas worldwide. But the approach hasn't changed. Still one person. Still building everything live, layer by layer. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/08/Tash1-1.jpg) Tash, circa 2014, Melbourne Many artists scale by adding band members. Tash found a different path - perfecting rhythm. --- ## The Tension When you're a solo musician, you face the tyranny of subtraction. Bands can assign roles - drummer keeps time, bassist holds the groove, guitarist adds melody. But when it's just you, every element you add risks losing what you've already built. Every choice demands sacrifice. You have to layer complexity without losing the essence. ### Step Into It You're finally launching your new creative venture. Friends and mentors ask about building a team - a marketing person, a developer, someone to handle operations. But you want to keep it lean, keep control, keep the feedback loop tight. How do you build something substantial when you're the entire orchestra? 🍳 ****Side note:** I'm seeing this **everywhere* now. AI makes it possible for one person to do what teams used to handle. The smart money is learning to conduct your own orchestras instead of hiring your way through problems. Figure out your rhythm, and you get complete creative control. Don't figure it out, and someone who has will eat your lunch. --- ## The Groove: Rhythm **Rhythm → Find the flow** Tash Sultana discovered something crucial about working solo: rhythm isn't just about timing - it's about building. "I do not play to a backing track," they explain. "I'm anti backing tracks." Instead, they build each song live, layer by layer, using loop pedals to capture and replay each element in real-time. "Jungle", Tash's breakout song Watch any Tash performance and you'll see the same principle at work. They don't rush between layers. Each element needs to lock in before the next one enters. There's a patience to the pacing that most people miss. "Each loop has to feel right before I move to the next. If I rush it, everything falls apart." Here's the thing: Tash isn't just playing music, they're managing tempo. Not just musical tempo - workflow tempo. They've figured out that when you're doing everything yourself, rushing kills everything. They're using: - Loop pedals to capture and layer sounds - Multiple guitars (acoustic, electric, slide) - Live vocal effects and harmonizers - Real-time mixing and arrangement decisions They're conductor, sound engineer, and entire orchestra rolled into one. **This is rhythm as operating system.** When you're the entire orchestra, rhythm becomes how you sequence your day, your projects, your energy. It's knowing when to push and when to let things breathe. --- 💡 ****Groove Notes: The One-Person Orchestra** ****1\. Build your foundation first** Before adding complexity, get your core rhythm locked in. For Tash, it's getting that first loop solid. For you, it might be morning journaling, a daily standup, or a particular tool you like to use. Everything else layers on top. ****2\. Tempo matters more than speed** Tash waits for each loop to feel solid before adding the next. When you're building solo, this might mean fully implementing one feature before adding another (hello, issues with vibe coding!), or getting one client relationship right before seeking ten more. ****3\. Know your loop length** Tash works in musical loops - usually 4, 8, or 16 bars. What's your equivalent? Daily rhythms? Weekly cycles? Project phases? Find your natural rhythm and work within it. (at Wavetable we work in 6 week cycles, split into 2 week sprints). Rhythm is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) --- ## The Release Working solo doesn't mean working chaotically. It means becoming the conductor of your own orchestra. Tash Sultana proves that one person with clear rhythm can create something as rich and complex as any band. And now, with AI tools handling more of the functional and technical layers, we're all becoming one-person orchestras in our fields. The question becomes less about whether you can do it all, and more about whether you can *sequence* it all. The challenge is living in the gap between what you want to achieve, and where you are now. We typically default to wanting more people, more resources, more runway. But sometimes, we just need better rhythm. Next up: how an architect went from plucky upstart to international icon - inspired by the rules of improv comedy. Any solo artist wisdom to share? Hit reply. Howard --- ## Extended Mix: Groove Inspirations - [**Jacob Collier improv with The National Symphony Orchestra**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TURkB9zqxa0&ref=howardgray.net) \- surely the subject of a future edition of Groove Theory... - [**Derek Sivers - "Anything you want"** ](https://sive.rs/a?ref=howardgray.net)\- how to grow a business without losing your soul (scroll down to access all the material) - [**Reggie Watts TED Talk**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK%5Fr9RXTc&ref=howardgray.net) \- comedy meets live looping --- Deepen the Groove ****Ready to build the rhythm for your biggest moments?** Groove Build helps you turn your expertise into keynotes, workshops, and programs that actually land. Start with a single 1:1 session, or dive deeper. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) ### The Playground Inspector URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-playground-inspector/ Last updated: 2025-10-10T00:55:27.000Z There's a new playground near me. My son and I went on a Friday afternoon. Pure NYC vibrancy. Kids running around, splash pad in full effect, coquito carts doing business on the periphery. And this guy. Hovering around with a little smile, watching everything. The New Yorker in me is half too busy, half curious to chat when he approaches. "How's it going?" he says. His work boots give him away before he asks what I think of the layout, the equipment choices. I can see he wants to tell me something, so I let him. He's the general contractor. He and his crew built this place. It opened three weeks ago. But here he is on a Friday afternoon - not on a victory lap, though maybe a bit - checking in. Seeing how people actually use what they made. Whether anything needs adjusting (turns out a gate has a minor kink). Talking to the real people who'll live with his work long after the permits are filed and invoices paid. Most of us don't do this. We ship the project and move on. Launch the product and chase the next deadline. Publish the piece and forget it exists. He understands something most of us forget: the real test isn't the day you finish building. It's three weeks later, when a four-year-old discovers your handrail makes the perfect balance beam, or when you notice parents instinctively cluster near the bench you positioned just so. There's something almost radical about this - a craftsman returning not to fix what's broken, but to understand what's working. To see his creation through other people's eyes and let that inform whatever he builds next. In our hurry to produce and move on, we miss the feedback loop that makes us better. We optimize for output instead of outcome, for shipping instead of serving. But here's Jafar. Forty years in NYC, fifteen in construction. Still showing up to watch his work breathe. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/10/JafarHoward.jpg) ### Groove Theory #5 - The One Level Up Principle URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-5-the-one-level-up-principle/ Last updated: 2025-07-27T11:05:24.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not a subscriber yet? [Sign up here >](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- where Harvard Business School case studies meet video games. Currently: romanticising NYC, [seeing vibe coding as the new electronic music production](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/from-ableton-to-vibe-coding-when-creative-tools-break-open?ref=howardgray.net), packing. Late Friday afternoon in Fort Greene Park. Sun shining down. Yogis, puppies, smokers, strollers converge. At the park's highest point above Brooklyn's sprawling grid, a circle forms. Strangers share what's on their minds, then take a 20 minute stroll together. Welcome to Summer Fridays - a biweekly ritual that started as one person's reaction to pandemic isolation. People always say it's amazing, but they can't explain why. Its secret? Adding just one level to what was already there. --- ## **The Tension** Spring 2023\. Later stages of the pandemic. New York had a weird, fragile vibe. NYC is by design a city about being with other people. But if you stayed here through the pandemic, how do you reconnect? Especially when Zoom calls do nothing for you? Josh Upton is a lifelong New Yorker who knew what he *didn't* want. No more video calls that drained his energy. No stodgy event spaces where he'd get stuck next to someone. And he craved being outside. Even the more thoughtful events were stuck indoors. "After the pandemic it really felt like not prioritizing time outside with others was cutting off my oxygen - both literally and figuratively." Josh says. But starting something from scratch can feel overwhelming - especially when you're already drained. ### **Step Into It** You're designing your next team gathering. Or planning a client event. Maybe organising a neighborhood thing. Your brain probably jumps to themes, logistics, agendas. What if the answer isn't more planning? What if it's finding something completely natural and adding just enough extra to take it somewhere else? ## **The Groove: Structure** **Structure → Shape the idea** Josh's insight was simple: he already loved being outside and regularly walked through Fort Greene Park. It was already a place where he'd bump into people he knew (including me). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/Fort-Greene-Park-Lawn-Photo.jpg) Parklife. "This is my community," he says. "And the park is already a natural community center." Instead of aiming to invent something revolutionary, Josh took something simple that worked - hanging out in the park - and took it just one level up. He called it Summer Fridays. Simple name, simple concept. Every other Friday at 5pm, people gathered at a meeting spot to… well, walk and talk. Here's how it works: - 5pm (slightly subversive timing that says *work isn't everything, you can start your weekend now*). - Quick circle intro. Everyone shares their name and three things: - looking back – a highlight from the prior week - looking forward – something you’re looking forward to - something on your mind - Split into groups of three for 20-minute walks anywhere in the park. - Come back and share any themes, ideas or insights, as well as any public events others might want to join - gallery openings, gigs, activities where new connections can continue - Wine for whoever wants to continue at a local bar. 'It's not a drinking event,' Josh clarifies. 'No pressure to drink - it's just continuing the hang.’ Total time: 90 minutes. Summer Fridays works incredibly well, yet people can never quite find the reason. They'll tell Josh afterward how great it was, but struggle to say exactly *why*. This is invisible structure at work. Let’s make it more visible. - **Permission-giving goes first.** Josh always goes first and shares something personal, not professional. "I try to share a real thing going on in my life, going beyond the surface level". When the organizer is vulnerable first, everyone else can be too. - **Prompts that skip the small talk.** "Literally anything" qualifies as a highlight from your week. This fast-tracks the understanding of each other without any formal introductions. - **Three is the magic number.** Pairs can be intense for strangers. Anything beyond three, it's easy to just break into separate conversations. - **Scales without breaking.** "You can have two of you or 20 of you, and it still works." More people just means more groups of three. No need to panic about no shows, or a big attendance. - **Walking, not staring.** "On Zoom you stare at faces. When you're walking, you're moving, seeing things, next to each other rather than face-on. It's just a good environment for people to engage." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/SummerFridays.jpg) Summer Fridays, circa August 2023\. Josh on the right. Me displaying ankle(s). Most event organisers get this backwards. They think more planning equals better outcomes. Josh proved the opposite - the more you plan, the less magic happens. Some of the best gatherings feel effortless precisely because they're designed to feel undesigned. But early on, Josh fell into this trap himself. He overthought how to structure the walking conversation. Tried setting themes. Defining discussion topics. It felt forced. The revelation: "This is not *my* event with any agenda. I’m just creating the space to let conversations flow. Whatever happens, happens.” 💡 ****Groove Notes: The One Level Up Principle** Take something that already has natural energy. Add exactly one intentional element. Stop there. ****1\. Find Your Natural Environment** Josh chose the park because he was already there daily. Don't fight your natural patterns - work with them. What spaces do you already love? What rhythms do you already follow? ****2\. Build On-Ramps, Not Barriers** What's your version of skipping "what do you do?" and getting to what people actually care about? ****3\. Design for Low Commitment** Josh chose Friday at 5 PM and kept it to 90 minutes because he wanted something that didn't take over people's entire evening. Lower the barrier to entry. How can you make it easy for people to say yes? Structure is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## **The Release** Three years later, Summer Fridays proves that over-design kills magic. The structure is so subtle it's almost invisible. And the discussions always go somewhere interesting. Every single time. Sometimes the best experiences feel like they're barely trying to be experiences at all. Your next breakthrough isn't hiding in a complex new system. It might already be there in what you do - waiting for you to take it one level up. Next time, Groove Theory takes a trip to Melbourne... or Copenhagen. I haven't decided yet. Maybe a walk in the park will help. Howard --- ## **Extended Mix** - **The music**: Josh also brings his facilitator mindset to making his music in the studio. Part of the process? Finding ways for his collaborators to feel at their most comfortable and natural. [Listen to his latest song “Games” >](https://ffm.to/6991r5o?ref=howardgray.net) - **The work**: Summer Fridays is a taste of Josh's practice in action. His work is anchored in helping creatives turn their diverse interests and talents into thriving projects and careers. [joshupton.com](https://www.joshupton.com/?ref=howardgray.net) - **The gathering**: Learn more about [Summer Fridays](https://www.instagram.com/oshupto/?ref=howardgray.net) --- Deepen the Groove ****Ready to build the right structure for your biggest moments?** Groove Build helps you turn your expertise into keynotes, workshops, and programs that actually land. Start with a single 1:1 session, or dive deeper. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) ### The 30-year-old track that became a digital confessional URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-30-year-old-track-that-became-a-digital-confessional/ Last updated: 2025-07-20T14:50:59.000Z Three decades after its release, a forgotten electronic track is doing something the music industry never saw coming. Aphex Twin's "19" was lost in digital purgatory for years - too long for CDs, omitted from streaming services. Fans even gave it a name - "Stone in Focus" - by decoding abstract images from the album sleeve, since all tracks were just numbered. When someone finally uploaded it to YouTube in 2015, paired with footage of a Japanese snow monkey soaking in hot springs, something remarkable happened to this obscure track. The comments section became a confessional. Thousands of people, mostly men, sharing raw moments about grief, joy, loss, fatherhood, marriage, death, life transitions. At the time of writing there are 23,906 comments. *"Reading the comments makes you realize there's an almost infinite chain of stories and events that happen in other people's lives"*, one wrote. What's more remarkable: people return years later with updates, creating decade-long threads of strangers witnessing each other's lives unfold. This obscure piece, created by mysterious UK artist Richard D. James (also known for his nightmarish music videos), somehow became a space for profound vulnerability. Two things this reveals: 1. **Music's real power is being overlooked.** While we obsess over viral videos and tweets, measure streams and likes, we miss these quiet sanctuaries. A ten-minute ambient piece quietly becomes a lighthouse for people navigating storms - creating deeper bonds than most social platforms ever achieve. 1. **The work that lasts often surprises us.** Did Aphex Twin imagine in 1994 that this track would become a confessional for thousands of strangers three decades later? You never know which thing you're making now will connect in 2055 - or how. The only way to find out is to keep shipping. Sometimes what gets lost finds exactly who needs it. P.S. Even as a long time Aphex Twin fan, I only discovered this last week. And I did so via [The New Fatherhood](https://www.thenewfatherhood.org/p/dads-getting-emotional-to-aphex-twin?utm%5Fsource=post-email-title&publication%5Fid=255387&post%5Fid=168565339&utm%5Fcampaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=mndq&triedRedirect=true&utm%5Fmedium=email) newsletter, where dads explore what it means to show up in today's world. It's written by the wonderful [Kevin Maguire](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevmaguire/?ref=howardgray.net). Do check it out. ### Why is no one talking about the job thing...? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-is-no-one-talking-about-the-job-thing/ Last updated: 2025-07-16T14:38:36.000Z Err, can we talk about the job thing? Y’know, the thing no one’s talking about? Brushing under the carpet? That thing? You know the thing. The work thing. The wtf-existential-holy-mackerel-could-this-be-it thing. Yeah. It’s a thing. I’m hearing stories everywhere. Laid-off smart people out of work for a year, can’t get a first interview. 500, 800, 1000 applicants for a vacancy. Got a first interview? Cool. guess what? It’s with an AI. Break a leg! Meanwhile, freelancers watching clients dwindle from five to three to one to two… to one. People hoarding social capital like it’s the last days of Rome. Intros drying up. Biz dev getting brutal. More ghosts than a dating app. Credit cards covering rent while people make nervous pivots, stick or twist decisions. These gigs, the ones that went to dust? They’re unlikely to come back in a big way. Maybe not in a small way. It might be the canary in the coal mine. The first sign of rigor mortis. Sure, some people are killing it. The power law in action. Big tech, VCs, the 0.1%, the hustlers - they all want to tell you how great it’s going to be, but what I’ve seen of their reasoning behind this is… unclear. I’m dubious if many of them really believe what they’re saying. Or perhaps even care. What's the solution when you're out of cash with no prospects? What's the solution when there aren't as many people left to buy stuff? I don’t want to be a doomonger, but no one’s talking about the work thing. I don’t see supply and demand lining up, and there’s no real plan for what’s next. It doesn’t feel real because it’s slow, gradual. We don’t see it happening. We don’t make plans because it’s not an immediate shock like a natural disaster or pandemic. So what to do? From what I can tell, the people who’ll come through aren’t just the ones with the right skills - they’re the ones who can step into different identities depending on what the moment requires. Who can build trust quickly. Who can read situations and adapt mid-conversation. Who can find the space to practice - and shapeshift. Adaptability is the new IQ. If you aren’t seriously thinking about this, please do. I could be wrong. If you think I am, please show me how. Seriously. I want to be wrong. Cos, believe it or not, I’m an optimist. If I’m wrong, it’s wonderful news. But if I'm not... well, the time to start thinking about it is now. ### Groove Theory #4 - Nothing Business URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-4-nothing-business/ Last updated: 2025-07-13T10:15:30.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not a subscriber yet? [Sign up here >](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- we create playable case studies that help teams learn by doing, including bridging the gap between AI strategy and execution. Currently: diving deep into [AI-2027](https://ai-2027.com/summary?ref=howardgray.net); munching on fresh Brooklyn bagels with my son. New York, March 2010\. Marina Abramović sits down at MoMA for what might be the strangest job in the history of art. Two chairs. A wooden table. Theatre lights. And her, waiting for strangers to sit across from her. For the next three months - 700 hours total - she'll do nothing but look people in the eye. No talking. No moving. Most visitors last five minutes. Some stay for hours. A few break down crying. Many can't handle it at all and leave almost immediately. But here's what's interesting: this wasn't performance art in the usual sense. It was an experiment in what happens when you stop trying. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/image.png) --- ## The Tension So many of us are fighting for attention these days - more followers, better metrics, louder voices. We treat every moment like a competition for eyeballs. Meanwhile, we're on the content hamster wheel - always shipping, always creating, always on. Post daily, update constantly, fill every silence with 'value'. When we talk about "showing up," we often treat it like a performance. Energy high, talking points ready, everything planned out. But what if the real move is *giving* your attention, not getting it? What if the moments that matter most aren't about what you do - but what you *stop* doing? ### Step Into It You're walking into the team meeting where tensions have been building for weeks. Or sitting down for the one-on-one with the employee who's been struggling. Maybe it's the client call where you need to deliver bad news, or the family dinner where someone's going to bring up *that* topic. Yurrgh. Your instinct? Prepare more. Practice responses. Fill every potential silence with something helpful. What if you tried the opposite? --- ## The Groove: Presence **Presence → Bring yourself into it** Serbian artist Marina Abramović has spent 40+ years pushing her body to extremes. She's set herself on fire, taken seizure-inducing drugs, even played a knife game that left her bleeding (yes, really - look up the 'Rhythm' series if you want to feel disturbed). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/image-1.png) Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, 1973 But the MoMA piece was different. After decades of extreme performance, her most powerful work was about a completely different kind of performing. "The Artist is Present" wasn't about endurance or shock. It was about attention. "People think performance is easy," she says. "You just sit there. But to be present for eight hours a day, every day, for three months? That's the hardest thing I've ever done." She developed a process. Between visitors, she'd close her eyes and reset. Clear whatever just happened. Then open her eyes and be completely available for whoever sat down next. No agenda. No plan. Just the willingness to be there with whatever showed up. The result? People waited in line for twelve hours. Word spread globally. Not because she was doing something spectacular, but because she was doing nothing - completely. In a world obsessed with more content, more performance, more noise, she built a phenomenon around space and silence. She was ahead of her time. Today we're finally catching up - NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) is trending. Calm built a $2B business around silence. 'Doing nothing' is becoming a skill people pay to learn (kinda nuts, when you think about it). Even the success of tech company Notion comes partly from white space - clean, uncluttered interfaces when everyone else was cramming features. 💡 ****Groove Notes: Nothing Business** Nothing Business is the opposite of hustle culture. Stop talking at people, start listening to them. Stop performing presence, start truly showing up. We see this constantly in our Wavetable work - so often, people just want to feel seen and heard. That's it. Simple, yes. Easy? Nope. ****1\. Stop filling the space:** Your next presentation doesn't need more content. Your next client call doesn't need more talking points. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is create space for what wants to emerge. ([See my riff](https://www.howardgray.net/the-one-presentation-slide-to-keep-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat/) on how Scott Harrison, CEO of Charity Water, uses blank space brilliantly) ****2\. Reset between moments:** Abramović had a ritual between visitors - eyes closed, breathing, clearing. What's your version? The pause between calls? The beat between slides? The walk around the block before the big meeting? Build resets into your high-stakes days. ****3\. Nothing as strategy**: In our always-on world, doing nothing is becoming the ultimate luxury. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can offer isn't more content, but space. Not another talking point, but room for what wants to emerge. Marina built a global phenomenon around this scarcity. Presence is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. For more on Presence, revisit [edition 2](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-2-the-street-food-rebellion-at-a-michelin-restaurant/), with Will Guidara and Eleven Madison Park. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) --- ## The Release Your most important moments won't come from better preparation. They'll come from being more present with what's actually happening. The 700-hour experiment proved something simple: people crave being seen more than being impressed. Maybe the secret isn't having all the answers. Maybe it's being okay with the questions. In your next crucial moment - the pitch, the difficult conversation, the team session that matters - try showing up with less agenda and more attention. It matters now more than ever. People are really seeking. Seeking connection, seeking space. But here’s the thing: the Nothing has to be excellent. Anyone can be empty by accident. The real skill is designing it so well that people will wait twelve hours in line for it. That's the opportunity - not more content, but beautifully crafted less. Where all the pieces matter. Howard --- Deepen the Groove ****Ready to bring more presence to your biggest moments?** Groove Build helps you develop authentic presence for keynotes, workshops, and crucial conversations. Because the best performances happen when you stop performing. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) --- ## Extended Mix: Deep Cuts **More Marina facts:** - She met her artistic partner Ulay in Amsterdam in 1976\. They lived in a van for four years, creating art together and barely speaking to anyone else - Their final collaboration was walking toward each other from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China. When they met in the middle after 90 days, it marked the end of their relationship - the walk itself was their breakup piece **More on presence:** - [Amy Cuddy's research on presence](https://www.ted.com/talks/amy%5Fcuddy%5Fyour%5Fbody%5Flanguage%5Fmay%5Fshape%5Fwho%5Fyou%5Fare?ref=howardgray.net) (less woo-woo, more science) - [Cal Newport on deep attention](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the cognitive equivalent of Abramović's practice - **The method:** "Find a comfortable position, connect with your eyes, and see what happens." ### The truck stop where Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Hendrix met URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-truck-stop-where-led-zeppelin-the-who-and-hendrix-met/ Last updated: 2025-07-08T16:09:41.000Z In the late 60s, there was one place where you could spot Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix on the same night. It wasn't a venue. It wasn't a festival. It was a truck stop. The Blue Boar at Watford Gap was Britain's first 24-hour service station. Halfway between London and everywhere else, it became the unofficial meeting point for almost every touring band in the country. No mobile phones. No internet. Not even fax machines. No way to coordinate. But every musician knew: if you're driving back - whether home to London or up north - you stop at the Blue Boar. Grab food, fuel up, see who else is around. It was so legendary that Jimi Hendrix thought it was a London nightclub. Brian Eno has a term for this: "scenius." Not genius - scenius. The collective intelligence that emerges when creative people accidentally collide in the same space. The Blue Boar was pure scenius. A motorway service station that accidentally became the nerve center of British rock. Here's what's wild: we have better connectivity now than those musicians could have dreamed of. We can video call anyone, anywhere, instantly. We have apps to find other creatives in our city. We can collaborate across continents. So why do the best creative breakthroughs still happen when people bump into each other by accident? Maybe because real creative energy can't be scheduled. It emerges from unexpected encounters, shared struggles, and the kind of conversations that only happen when you're both stuck in the same strange place at 2am. I reckon you know what I’m talking about. And today, we need more Blue Boars. Spaces where the work gets done, but also where the magic happens in between. Just gotta keep on trucking. *This kind of creative collision - and how to design for it - is what I explore in my Groove Theory newsletter. Subscribe if you're curious about the spaces where breakthrough ideas actually happen.* ## Sign up for Groove Theory Bi-weekly insights into how creative ideas and projects connect with the world Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### If it's new to you, it's still new URL: https://www.howardgray.net/if-its-new-to-you-its-still-new/ Last updated: 2025-07-08T01:34:37.000Z July 4th weekend. NYC has a stark heat to it. Streets are quiet. Sun beats down. Those who remain stay inside, siesta hangover from Friday reveling. I also remain indoors, until 4pm where I venture… across the street. Laptop tucked under my arm, into the coffee shop. Against my better judgment I order a cold brew. Rampant caffeine incoming. Sit down to write. Fiddle for a while, finally find a groove. The music is late 90s electronic stuff. I recognise a track. And the next one. And the one after. Five in a row and the sixth I’ve played a lot in the past few months. 2002, somehow it slipped my gaze, only emerging 23 (!) years later. It’s time. I bounce up, head to the counter. “Are you playing this music?” I ask the barista. He’s tall, young, if I had to guess maybe 23, 24\. And if I had to guess some more, new to NYC. The wonder in the eyes gives me a sneaking suspicion. He tells me he just discovered Fatboy Slim, played a couple of tracks, then the algorithm do the rest. “Any recommendations?” he asks. Weirdly, my mind goes blank. At least, I felt it was weird, but it makes sense in hindsight. The prompt was just a touch too open for me to latch onto something quickly - the six tracks didnt slip into a scene or a genre. I couldn’t pattern match quickly enough. I throw out the names of two artists, knowing that both aren’t quite it. He seems satisfied, so I slide back to my seat. As I sit and take a beat, several thoughts ping in tandem with the cold brew’s rush rising. He wasn't alive when these tracks came out. I am not so young. If it’s new to you, it’s still new. Music is an incredibly powerful force that can connect people in unexpected ways. And so - like it or not - is the algorithm. P.S. Here's that sixth track that got me on my feet ### Meet the person you could have been: What a $150B CEO does on weekends URL: https://www.howardgray.net/meet-the-person-you-could-have-been-what-a-150b-ceo-does-on-weekends/ Last updated: 2025-07-06T14:03:17.000Z What drives someone who's already built a $60B company? Tobi Lutke, Shopify's CEO, spends his weekends endurance racing. But not for the reasons you'd think. "I've never been externally motivated," he says. "I've always been internally motivated. I just believe \[in the end\] you meet the person you could have been. The point is to try to minimize the difference." Think about that for a second. There's a version of you out there - the person you're capable of becoming. And the work is closing that gap. For Tobi, racing becomes his laboratory. Immediate feedback on every decision. The chance to practice operating at 99.99% of what's possible. "It's Zen Buddhism at 200 miles per hour," he says. "You're connected to the ground through four playing card-sized contact patches. That's all." Most of us never find that kind of practice space. Where you can rehearse excellence. Where you discover what you're actually capable of when everything's on the line. The key? Find something that genuinely fascinates you. Tobi could have chosen any hobby, but racing captivated him. That part about fascination? I think it's underestimated. It's what makes Tobi push to 99.99% and keeps him coming back. It's also what keeps him paying it forward. As he says, "You cultivate your sets of skills and then along the way you share them." The racing is just his method. The real work is meeting who you're becoming. Speaking of meeting who you're becoming - I'm building the places where we practice becoming that person. ### The hidden layer in Spotify's CTO's take on AI vs. machine learning URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-hidden-layer-in-spotifys-ctos-take-on-ai-vs-machine-learning-2/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:44:07.000Z **What's the difference between Machine Learning and AI? It's not easy to pin down. Here's how Spotify's CTO thinks about it - and the answer has an important hidden layer...** Gustav Söderström believes the difference between machine learning and generative AI is like comparing Spotify or Netflix to what's coming next. Current ML platforms? Think old-school broadband - massive downlink, tiny uplink. Netflix sends you TONS of content, but your feedback is just swipes and clicks. Spotify curates endless playlists, but you mainly hit skip or save. Machine learning optimizes metrics through these one-way streets. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/GustavAI.jpg) Generative AI flips this. It takes natural language and creates genuine two-way conversation. ChatGPT is the perfect example - the ratio of downlink to uplink is WAY closer than Netflix. You're not just consuming; you're collaborating. Söderström believes every consumer company will need to transform - balancing their downlink and uplink, adding immediate feedback loops, making interaction genuinely conversational. The key word? **Feedback.** I see a parallel shift in creative work. We're moving from broadcast to dialogue - from content consumption to collaborative creation, from gurus to guides. But here's what the algorithms can't replicate: the ability to read energy in a room, navigate tension between team members, or help someone find their voice when the stakes are high. As AI handles more content creation, human skills like facilitation, presence, and helping others unlock their creative rhythm become exponentially more valuable. The future isn't about competing with AI - it's about mastering the feedback loops AI can't touch. Building formats that create genuine human connection? That's what Groove Theory explores. *If you're a creative professional looking to turn your expertise into experiences that land - in client sessions, keynotes, or workshops - the newsletter is for you.* ## Sign up for Groove Theory **Real stories, frameworks, and insights on finding your creative rhythm.* Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### The $2.5M Decision That Changed Everything URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-2-5m-decision-that-changed-everything/ Last updated: 2025-07-08T01:34:54.000Z **Early in his career, the screenwriter behind The Green Mile and The Walking Dead was offered $2.5m to sell the rights to a script.** The deal? Let Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise star instead of the far lesser known actors he wanted. He said no. His reason? It was his "chance to do something really great" with his screenplay and the vision he had for it. He had no way of knowing if he was right. The film could have flopped. Those unknown actors could have killed it. He could have lost everything betting on his vision. But he trusted his instincts anyway. While we might not be getting $2.5m waved in our faces, we all face versions of this choice: - The client who wants to water down your best idea for something "safer." - Taking the proven approach vs. the one you know could be breakthrough. - Saying yes to the sure thing vs. holding out for what feels right. These moments can shape our careers. Not the obvious choices, but the ones where you choose between certainty and possibility. How do you make the call when you can't know the outcome? I don’t have the answer, but I do share a few ways to help navigate through them My Groove Theory newsletter uncovers how creative professionals make high-stakes decisions in moments that matter. ## Sign up for Groove Theory Uncovering how creative professionals make high-stakes decisions in moments that matter. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. **PS. The film? You might have heard of it. It's called The Shawshank Redemption.** ### Swimming URL: https://www.howardgray.net/swimming/ Last updated: 2025-07-04T21:55:35.000Z Friday afternoon. Hot, sticky, NYC summer. Early pickup. We hot footed across hot streets, eased past the lulling construction site. Workers winding down. We bumped and bashed over paving cracks, stroller swerving, my wrist jarring, his hand clutching toys tight. Down two floors in double quick time, beeline to the changing room as the hour is nigh. On time, 3 mins before the clock turns 3\. Somehow. He got undressed himself, steadfastly proud. Methodical, no rush. Pulled his shorts on, I tied the cord. Squezed the fabric between my fingers. My turn to follow bathing suit suit. Entry portal heaved open, in we went. Humid tight air. Guzzling you up. All the past nervousness evaporated. Under the shower, startled grin as the cold then warm hit. Turn to face the expanse. His shorts to his knees. Hand squeezing tight, fingers wrapped around the breadth of my knuckles. Other kids splashing. Yelping. Yammering. Pure reverb. We walked. His choice of entry point. Down the steps, 1,2,3\. I clambered in to hold him steady. Warm bath feel. First order of business wasa a shimmy along the side. Hands on the rounded metallic edge, toes on the tiles, knees bent. I followed along, halfway his small smile of pride is let out, knew it was time to take the lead. A pair of crabs. But then. Other kids blocked the path. He stopped, waiting, tentative. Mid gaze. Seconds pass. I asked what’s next. Another pause. Time to shimmy back Waited at the steps. Getting out? Going home? My heart, I admit, began to sink. I had hopes. But whatever role he chose was fine by me. I know this. A few seconds. I prepared for us to step out. Instead, ‘can I give you a hug?’ Yes, yes you can. Off the steps. Arms went around my neck. Insides of the feet pressed on my hips. ‘Shall we move?’ I asked. ‘Yes… yes.. yes, like this’. Gentle nudge of the foot in my kidneys said it’s time to go. And so we did. On foot. Him clinging in close. I made stride through the pool, around the edges, through the middle, slipped between all those splashes and yelps. Aqua obstacle course. Spray at every step. We were near silent. He watched, absorbed. I maintained the hush to match. And then ‘This is sooo peaceful, dad’. A phrase I had never heard. A new word. And so perfect. ‘It is, isn’t it’. Of course, it was not peaceful. At least not on the outside. It was sweaty and noisy and reverberating. 30 people in a mid size pool. But there, in our place, in our spot, it was peace. Just us, gliding through the water. His little body pressed into mine, each time I turned my head I saw his gaze, dark greeny grey eyes like mine. Noticing what’s there, but also not, noticing something else… maybe noticing just, being. I’ll never know. But I loved to look and see it, imagine it. For those first few minutes I kept catching an eye on the clock. 1 min, another couple, another 1\. Pressure on the knees. Heat around the forehead. Then, no more. No more glances. No more time checks. We took a break, my pesky football injury had made the ball of my foot ache. 200lbs on a bony bit of the body can do that, I suppose. Still, he was there, a soft limpet, gentle yet true grip. I can still feel the pads of his fingertips in my mind. We continued, around and around. ‘This is so peaceful. I love you, dad’ I made a long, deep tonal noise of agreement. Could feel it in both our chests. Around and around. Feeling sat there. Nothing else needed. And then ‘I’m done now’. There was still 20 minutes of the hour slot remaining, not a soul had departed. It felt like the peak time. But we cared not. He climbed out all by himself, pulled himself up to the floor tiles second time. Subtle triumph gleamed in his eyes. Stood up straight, tall for his age, surveyed the aqua landscape. Chin tilted upward just a touch. I followed. Not a word. Still none needed. Could feel it. Long shower, the longest. I stood guard by the curtain. Unrestrained glee at cleaning each body part. I dashed in and out, got dry quick fast. Heared a song cooing. Eventually he was done. Patted down that long slim body. Hair was still a little damp - it felt right to be that way. The exit route, an afterglow. Then on with the rest of that hot afternoon. The next day, we didn’t discuss. I asked, but not much came back. I knew it was in there, though, subconscious. That incredible processing. Moments that matter. It was certainly in me. I could feel it. The day we went swimming. The day we didn't swim. The day we went together. The day we went somewhere else together. I hoped I’d never forget it. So here it is. Right here. So I never forget. ### Always do a run-through. No exceptions. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/always-do-a-run-through-no-exceptions/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T15:47:29.000Z We had a big live workshop lined up this week. 120 people. Four great case studies, solid tools, one of our favourite immersive scenarios for everyone to play. We built everything out weeks ago. Made final updates to the game elements last week. Felt confident. Then we did our final run-through 24 hours before. Almost at the same time, we noticed it. Case Study 1\. Given some recent events and this specific audience - we couldn't use it. I mean, we *could*, but we shouldn't. We maybe pondered it for 3 seconds. No. No way. The optics were wrong. The feeling would be off. Luckily, I work with Fer Franco and he’s a magician. Within an hour he’d conjured up another case study using the same framework and tools. Story, slides, aciton steps, images. And arguably this case study is better than the original. The point: review your stuff. Consider the audience, the moment, the context. We nearly messed up. The run-through saved us. ### Groove Theory #3 - The Empty Stage Test URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-3-the-empty-stage-test/ Last updated: 2025-07-12T21:59:27.000Z 💡 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. Not a subscriber yet? [Sign up here >](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- the home of playable case studies, and learning experiences that pop. Currently: building a digital games arcade for grown-ups, writing about [how to make it in America](https://www.howardgray.net/making-it-in-america-what-international-founders-creatives-actually-need-to-know/). A dusty field, somewhere in continental Europe. Sun beating down on the summer music festival that's claimed this patch of farmland for the weekend. One of the hottest acts in UK music climbs the steps to the stage. It's 4pm - sweltering heat, and the crowd is... doing other things. Heads buried in phones. Bodies drifting toward shade and overpriced drinks. Minds on the headliner, still six hours away. Most artists would see this as their nightmare scenario. Some would fire their agent on the spot. British hiphop artist Loyle Carner sees it as something else entirely. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Loyle2.jpeg) ## The Tension We live in a world of manufactured engagement. Hearts, likes, echo chambers telling us our work is brilliant. But what happens when none of that matters? When there's no campaign, no explanation, no goodwill to draw on? *What actually works when nobody knows who you are?* ### Step Into It You're about to pitch a new idea. No warm introduction. No reputation. Just you, your concept, and a room full of strangers who've never heard your name. How do you know if what you're about to say will land? How do you separate the universal truths from the insider references? What makes it work for them - and for you? ## The Groove: Signal **Signal → Clarify what connects** Loyle Carner has what I call **The Empty Stage Test**. When he plays festivals - especially those afternoon slots where "people are indifferent, waiting for the next act, getting drinks" - he gets the most honest feedback possible. *"If you play songs in front of someone where they know nothing about you, you'll know quickly what works universally in a meaningful way"* Those stages - the ones that are empty, indifferent, or both - become his testing lab. They strip away everything except pure signal. This is *deeply* uncomfortable, of course. But consider the messenger: someone who was told at school he was "a disruptive idiot" who "couldn't focus and couldn't spell." Parents told their children they couldn't sit next to him anymore. Teachers said he shouldn't write because of his dyslexia. Yet here he is, using those empty stages as his greatest teachers - turning the most vulnerable creative moments into his biggest advantage. And the busy stages? They’re packed: this weekend Loyle Carner played a huge headline slot at Glastonbury Festival; he's sold out four nights at London's cavernous Brixton Academy in November (along with a ton of other venues around the world). [Loyle Carner and Sampha live at Glastonbury Festival 2025](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwyMIU-rpRQ&ref=howardgray.net) "All the best things about me come from ADHD," he says. "Being emotionally intelligent, being passionate, being inquisitive." The same qualities that made school difficult now help him read rooms right. When the crowd doesn't know you, when there's no goodwill to draw on, only the most essential parts of your work survive. The universal truths. The real signal. This isn't about abandoning your niche - it's about strengthening what works by stripping away the noise. When you can connect with people who have zero context, your actual audience feels it even more deeply. The Empty Stage Test can reveal the essence that makes everything else work. 🎧 ****Groove Notes** ****1\. Seek indifferent audiences:** Find spaces where people don't know you. Test your ideas there. Kids’ after school club instead of your usual industry crowd. Corporate conference instead of your friend's party. The indifference is the point. ****2\. Remove all context:** Can your idea stand without the setup? The backstory? The "let me explain why this matters"? If it needs heavy context to work, it might not be distilled enough yet. ****3\. Watch what travels:** Loyle noticed that certain songs worked regardless of the crowd's knowledge. Those tracks became his foundation. What parts of your work consistently land, even with strangers? Signal is one of the five elements of Groove Theory. [Learn more >](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Slim.png) ## The Release Your best work doesn't need an audience that already loves you. It can create one. The empty stage doesn't have to be a problem to solve - instead, it can be a lab. And if your idea works there, it can work anywhere. One last thing about empty stages. A music agent I worked with once reminded an irritated band manager: *"Sure, maybe 10 people will show up to this pub gig. But one of them could change your life."* The A&R exec, the publishing mogul, the producer - they could be any face in that small crowd. And many of us - just like that band - only need one connection to transform everything. That’s all for this time. Next up - the power of a longing gaze… Got festival stories? Summer music discoveries? Hit reply - I want ‘em. Howard P.S. Loyle Carner's new album "[Hopefully](https://open.spotify.com/album/3QiiMhk65fgCPOKThjZ8iK?si=unQ0aArWT2i6ihNIddROKw&ref=howardgray.net)" dropped last week. Perfect timing to test which tracks work universally. He’s also a really interesting, articulate chap - do look him up. --- ## Extended Mix: Deep Cuts - **On names:** That "Loyle Carner" handle? His mum's idea. It’s a spoonerism of his real name - Benjamin Coyle-Larner - that stuck when he was a kid struggling with dyslexia. - **On teaching:** Beyond music, he runs 'Chili Con Carner' a cooking school for teenagers with ADHD: *"It doesn't matter what people have said you can't do - you can cook.*" If this isn’t aligned with [the Wavetable vibe](https://www.wavetable.net/resource-category/wavemakers?ref=howardgray.net), I don’t know what is. - **On honest spaces:** Loyle Carner's album "hugo" was named after his dad's car - where they finally reconnected during lockdown driving lessons. The album's [Royal Albert Hall live version](https://open.spotify.com/album/7j6h4vC8tacAYvReQMHuR8?si=CliyxL1HR52as8aqYgL5Cg&ref=howardgray.net) is a treat. --- GO FURTHER ****When you know you've got something good, but it's not quite landing the way you want?** That's exactly what **Groove Build* is for. 1:1 collaboration to design and deliver your next big moment - pitch, workshop, course or program. Start with a single session or dive deeper. [Build your Groove ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) ### The case for all-age everything: lessons from PBS Kids URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-case-for-all-age-everything-lessons-from-pbs-kids/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T15:45:57.000Z I'm shopping for my 4-year-old and keep thinking "I wish they made that in Dad size." Kids get the coolest stuff. Better fashion, cooler TV shows, more playful everything. Why do we assume adults want boring? Maybe we become boring, but that may be because of our surroundings. Take "City Island" on PBS. Three-minute episodes, fast-paced, packed with Easter eggs that work for preschoolers, tweens, and parents alike. Each episode tackles real themes - civics, advertising, decision-making, screen time, fame - but wraps them in colors and chaos that feel like Rick & Morty for the playground set. My son and I love it. It follows Watt and Windy - a lightbulb and a kite, and their adventures around their city. Characters include Watt’s Dad (Frank Lloyd-Light) and movie director David Lunch, director of Blue Carpet… The theme tune? Composed by Tunde from TV on the Radio. Yes, indeed. Here's what they cracked: educational content doesn't need to be earnest to be effective. Most corporate learning is PowerPoint purgatory. Most brand storytelling talks at people, not with them. But the best edutainment makes complex ideas feel like play. I genuinely can't tell what age City Island is for. And that's exactly the point. We need more all-age stuff. A few brands nail this - Pixar, Nintendo, the good ice cream shops that don't talk down to anyone. What if we stopped treating curiosity and fun like they had expiration dates? What if your next presentation borrowed from kids' TV - colorful, fast-paced, packed with rewards for attention? The best learning doesn't feel like learning at all. Because childish is not the same as childlike. Now, where's the Dad size of that stripey sweater I wanted…? P.S. I'm writing this to myself as much as I am to you. Be more colorful. More playful. Be more… City Island. ### The question I immediately stole (and you should too) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-question-i-immediately-stole-and-you-should-too/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T15:56:52.000Z A new collaborator asked me something at the end of our call that I immediately stole. So I'm sharing it here too. > "Send me the most interesting article in your space." I asked if he used that question in every meeting. "No," he said. "First time." Well, it's worth using more often. It's a deceptively simple question that punches way above its weight. For the person asking: You get straight to the bleeding edge, curated by someone who lives in that world. No wading through basics or obvious stuff. For the person answering: It forces you to think. Not "what's the standard intro?" but "what will light them up without drowning them?" Makes your own thinking sharper. I had to take a moment to figure out my answer for him. For both: Creates common ground and shared language fast. Low effort, high value. Bonus: when you send your pick, you can tell the article's author too. Everyone wins. The question works because it cuts through the noise. Instead of overwhelming someone with your entire knowledge base, you're distilling it down to the one thing that matters most right now. PS. Shout out to Andreas Tzortzis - check out his [book](https://www.howardgray.net/the-2-5m-decision-that-changed-everything/). PPS. We met via a LinkedIn post. Social media isn't a total cesspool. ### Making it in America: What international founders & creatives actually need to know URL: https://www.howardgray.net/making-it-in-america-what-international-founders-creatives-actually-need-to-know/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T13:10:33.000Z In 2017, I moved to America. I'd already worked with American companies for over a decade - representing US artists for European touring, running the EU office of an NYC ad tech company, navigating countless transatlantic business relationships. I thought I understood US culture pretty well. Turned out I was wrong. What I found wasn't just a different business environment. It was a completely different operating system for human relationships, wrapped in familiar English words that meant entirely different things. Same phrases, totally different meanings. Same business concepts, completely different execution. First, a quick intro. I'm [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/about), originally from the UK and founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Over the past ten years, I’ve built accelerator programs for US entrepreneurs, served on SXSW’s advisory panel, and certified as a coach, often working with international founders and creative professionals navigating these transitions. But back in 2017, I didn't understand any of this. It took me years to understand what was actually happening - and why it felt so disorienting. Looking back, I can distill this confusion into two key realizations. I hope sharing them - and the framework that follows - helps others navigate these waters with less trial and error than I experienced. #### In this post: ## Two key realizations Here are the two key realizations that changed how I understand American business culture - and helped me navigate it more effectively: ### 1) American business culture operates on paradoxes It's not simply that Americans do things differently - it's that American culture contains internal contradictions that create genuine confusion. It simultaneously demands authenticity and performance, celebrates innovation while preferring proven models, promotes meritocracy while running complex credentialing systems. These aren't cultural failures - they're features that serve specific functions in a continental-scale economy. ### **2)** It's not just business adaptation - it's identity evolution Corporate employees can learn American business behavior while largely maintaining their personal identity. But when you're a founder - especially one in the creative industries - more than likely YOU are the brand. Your personality, values, and cultural approach ARE your business model. This means American cultural adaptation asks you to optimize core aspects of your identity, creating some challenges that can be tough to navigate. These dynamics exist elsewhere, but America amplifies them. The scale of the opportunity, the speed of business, and the emphasis on individual performance as part of your business model make the identity challenge particularly intense here. You can't gradually adapt - the market demands you show up authentically optimized from day one. --- Understanding these two realities - the paradoxes and the identity challenge - explains why international founders can struggle in ways that seem irrational from the outside. You're not failing to adapt; you're navigating genuinely complex cultural contradictions while protecting essential aspects of who you are. This guide breaks down these specific contradictions, why they exist, and how to navigate them without losing your mind. I'll also explore what this means for your identity as an international founder or independent creative professional - the part most guides ignore entirely. #### Who this guide is for Before we dive in, let me be clear about who this guide will help most. **This is for:** - International founders expanding to US markets - Creative professionals (artists, designers, musicians) building American audiences - European entrepreneurs navigating US business culture - American executives working with international talent or considering global expansion - Startup advisors helping international clients enter the US - Anyone feeling confused by American business contradictions despite previous success **It isn't for:** - People seeking employment rather than building businesses - Those looking for visa/legal/tax advice - Anyone expecting a quick cultural checklist #### A few important notes 1. My direct experience comes from building service businesses in New York City's creative industries. American business culture varies dramatically by region and industry. Your experience will vary significantly based on location, sector, and cultural starting point. *\[^ American business culture varies dramatically by region and industry. Southern hospitality operates differently than Midwest pragmatism or West Coast tech culture. These patterns emerged from specific historical forces: frontier capitalism requiring rapid resource mobilization, successive immigration waves necessitating quick social coordination mechanisms, and a federal system demanding standardized business practices across vast geographic and cultural differences. The ideas in this guide apply most clearly to college-educated, coastal business culture - your experience in Dallas oil & gas or Midwest manufacturing may differ significantly\]* 2. I'm British, and I use 'European' a lot in this piece to contrast with American patterns. Obviously Spain and Serbia operate pretty differently, but I've observed common cultural patterns from spending extensive time across Europe - and frankly, even after Brexit I still consider myself European. These dynamics likely apply to founders from other international markets too, though I'm writing from my specific experience and cultural background. *\[^ This perspective reflects someone with - all else being equal - a decent amount of cultural and economic capital. Working-class immigrants, non-native English speakers, women, and people of color face entirely different dynamics around cultural adaptation. Research shows that successful bicultural adaptation requires maintaining core values while developing new ways of operating. The psychological costs of constantly switching between cultural modes are well-documented, particularly for those without choice about the process.\]* 3. I'm not anti-American - I chose to build my life here and my son is growing up here. This is cultural anthropology, not personal criticism - patterns I've observed, not judgments about people. 4. I rewrote this piece several times. One version swayed way too British; the next went more cross-European; the one after that was much more palatable to American audiences - and on and on. I even wrote this final version in US English :) The fact I ended up going through this process proves the exact point I'm making - riding that deep tension between being genuine and being successful.\[^I usually ask friends to review drafts of my longer pieces, but this time felt different - and more risky. For some reason, I felt this had to come purely from my own experience, pushing myself to figure it out without outside input. Writing this was quite the learning process - it started from deep frustration around one of these paradoxes (which I didn't even know were paradoxes then).\] 5. This perspective reflects someone with cultural and economic privilege. Others face different and often harder dynamics around cultural adaptation, usually without choice about the process. This guide is for international founders and creative professionals with some luxury of choice about how and when to adapt. Ok, disclaimers out of the way. Now let's dig into the cultural contradictions that create so much confusion - and how to navigate them... --- ## The Seven Paradoxes For a long time, I was constantly confused by American business culture. People said one thing and did another. Systems worked brilliantly and terribly at the same time. Then the penny dropped: I wasn't experiencing inconsistencies. I was experiencing paradoxes. American business culture is built on fundamental contradictions that create both its incredible energy and its mind-bending confusion. These aren't accidents - they're features. The seven paradoxes are: 1. **Meritocracy** \- "Anyone can make it" operates alongside sophisticated gatekeeping 2. **Scale** \- "Start small" culture obsessed with massive markets 3. **Community** \- Building relationships that function as strategic networks 4. **Authenticity** \- "Be yourself" within optimized performance templates 5. **Innovation** \- Disruptive thinking applied to proven business models 6. **Relationships** \- Deep connections maintained at opportunity-focused breadth 7. **Feedback** \- Direct communication sensitive to systematic critique *(writing these out felt like I'm naming them as the seven deadly sins. lols). \[^Even writing this piece proves the point - I spent several hours debating whether 'cross-cultural' makes me sound like a DEI consultant, and whether mentioning Protestant work ethic will offend someone. The cultural adaptation anxiety never stops.\]* The cost of not understanding these paradoxes? It can be *brutal*. I've watched brilliant founders and creatives spend years getting crushed by forces they can't see - watching their track records get dismissed, their authentic communication creates uncomfortable silences, their profitable business models get questioned as 'limited scope.' They burn through savings, second-guess their abilities, and often give up on markets that could have been perfect for them. They're not necessarily failing - they're fighting a game where nobody explained the rules. Once you see these paradoxes as features rather than bugs you can navigate them. The same contradictions that make America confusing also make it uniquely powerful for certain opportunities. ### Paradox #1: Meritocracy - **They say:** "Anyone can make it in America through hard work and talent!" - **They mean:** "Success is merit-based, but we use familiar credentialing systems to assess merit quickly." Aka, The American Dream. The American Dream remains hotly debated, but here’s what I've observed: the US runs complex credentialing systems while telling everyone it's purely merit-based. A significant number of "self-made" entrepreneurs had family money, Ivy League connections, or had senior roles at recognizable brands first. Your brilliant track record at smaller European companies? It often gets overlooked because in a massive American market, decision-makers look to familiar American reference points first. Once you step back, it makes sense. In a country of 330 million people with massive regional differences, pure meritocracy becomes impossible to implement fairly. Instead, America developed complex credentialing systems for rapid assessment. The "anyone can make it" story also serves a purpose - it keeps people optimistic and society functioning, even when the actual numbers don't support it. There's also this deeper cultural thing - what academics call the 'Protestant work ethic' - where success feels like moral validation rather than just professional achievement. This explains why failure in America feels morally threatening, not just professionally disappointing.*\[^ Max Weber identified how Protestant beliefs about predestination created the success-as-salvation mindset that still shapes American business culture. This explains why failure feels morally threatening rather than just professionally disappointing. I didn't know a ton about this tbh - learned about it while writing this piece. Going to explore further.\]* (I had no idea this was a thing until writing this piece - suddenly so much made sense...) - **You know this is affecting you when:** Your impressive achievements in your home / previous country get politely dismissed or ignored because they don't fit American success templates, or when you notice credentials mattering more than actual results. - **The navigation:** Frame your achievements in American success metrics. That 15-person team becomes "grew revenue 300% over 3 years serving 5,000 customers." Your boutique European clients become "worked with category-leading brands in competitive markets." Reverse-engineer your story into US templates. ### Paradox #2: Scale - **They say:** "Start small and grow organically!" - **They mean:** "Everything must be scalable to massive markets immediately." Venture capital thinking has permeated American business culture far beyond actual startups. From reality TV shows like The Apprentice to mainstream business media, the assumption is that any business worth doing should be capable of serving millions of customers. Your sustainable, relationship-based approach can get questioned as limited, even when it's more profitable or effective than optimization-obsessed alternatives. Time pressure amplifies this: Americans compress business timelines in ways that can catch international founders off-guard. The pressure isn't just about serving millions of customers - it's about getting there fast. It’s "How do we scale this quickly?" versus "How do we build this sustainably?" And it's not just about speed - it's about measurable speed. The metrics obsession can be equally pervasive. America wants ROI calculations for... well, almost everything: marketing campaigns, employee training, even personal decisions (this may be why the self-help business is so big here). Your approach of "it's working well" needs translation into "it's generating 120% ROI with strong retention metrics." This isn't superficiality - it's how decisions get made when subjective judgment can't scale to 330 million people. - **You know this is affecting you when:** Your profitable, sustainable business model gets questioned as limited despite strong results, or when you notice pressure to frame everything in growth terminology. - **The navigation:** Lead conversations with growth potential, even for sustainable businesses. Instead of "We're profitable and stable," try "We've proven product-market fit in our initial market and see clear expansion opportunities." Same business, scalable framing. ### Paradox #3: Community - **They say:** "We're building community and lifting each other up!" - **They mean:** "We're building networks that create mutual opportunities." American professional communities excel at celebration and connection but operate on different assumptions about reciprocal support. The same peers and colleagues who enthusiastically amplify your wins may become unavailable when you need assistance - not from malice, but because American professional relationships are typically optimized for opportunity creation rather than interdependent support. This isn't worse than other approaches - it's different. American networking helps you access opportunities and resources you'd never reach through deeper, smaller circles. But expecting European-style mutual aid from American professional communities creates confusion on both sides. Professional communities become audiences for success stories rather than safety nets for difficult periods. The "vulnerability" that works is retrospective - sharing challenges you've overcome with clear lessons learned, not current struggles you're navigating. - **You know this is affecting you when:** You share actual struggles in professional communities and get polite silence instead of support, or when you notice that "community building" events feel more like mutual promotion than mutual aid. - **The navigation:** Treat professional communities as opportunity networks, not support systems. Share wins and lessons learned, not current struggles. Build your actual support network through deeper, smaller relationships outside these professional circles. This performance of community connects to a broader pattern around authenticity. ### Paradox #4: Authenticity - **They say:** "Just be yourself and stay authentic!" - **They mean:** "Be the optimized version of yourself that fits our templates." American social performance norms operate differently than European ones. Where British culture performs politeness to maintain distance and preserve dignity, American culture performs enthusiasm to create connection and manage complexity. The American version of "authenticity" is actually sophisticated personal branding. You're encouraged to be genuine, but only within parameters that serve professional goals. Your quirks should be charming, your struggles should have clear resolutions, your personality should be "on brand." This extends beyond just sharing struggles - even humor gets calibrated differently. While British professionals might use casual banter or self-deprecating jokes to build rapport in meetings, American business culture tends toward more buttoned-up professionalism. Your attempt at light humor might land as unprofessional rather than relationship-building. (I wrestle with this one a LOT. I just can’t help myself…). Even tiny things shift - an Irish friend told me that the concept of being 'bold' reads as rude in Ireland, but means leadership in the US; casual swearing that's normal(ish...) in UK business feels unprofessional in America's more virtue-focused professional culture. American business culture also tends to separate emotional processing from professional interactions. Genuine feelings are for therapists; professional interactions require optimized emotional presentation. This creates a specific type of vulnerability: sharing challenges you've overcome with clear lessons learned, not current struggles you're navigating. This connects to broader cultural patterns around struggle and redemption - including in humor and comedy. *\[^Stephen Fry observed that American comedy characters typically find redemption even in disaster, while British characters often remain trapped in their suffering. Even when American characters are pathetic (Larry David, various Jim Carrey characters), they still maintain fundamental dignity and agency. British characters like David Brent or Basil Fawlty invite the audience to mock their core dignity. This reflects deeper cultural attitudes about whether struggle requires hope for redemption - explaining why American business culture demands that shared difficulties come with transformation stories rather than honest acknowledgment of ongoing challenges.\]* - **You know this paradox is affecting you when:** Your honest answers about business challenges make rooms go quiet, or when you find yourself constantly curating your personality for professional consumption. You might answer "How are you?" honestly and watch the conversation get awkward as they expected "Fine, thanks.” (pro tip: in the US, "How are you?" doesn't always come with a question mark attached.) - **The navigation**: Think of professional authenticity as personal branding rather than emotional honesty (I know, I know…). Share your genuine personality, but frame it positively. Your struggles become "learning experiences," your quirks become "unique perspectives," your challenges become "growth opportunities." This might be the trickiest paradox to navigate - which is why I dive deeper into the identity costs in the section below. ### Paradox #5: Innovation - **They say:** "We love disruptive innovation and thinking outside the box!" - **They mean:** "We love proven business models with new technology wrapped around them." American markets excel at innovation - but it tends to be a very specific type: taking proven concepts and making them accessible to massive markets. While international founders might perfect solutions for sophisticated niches, Americans have mastered the art of scaling concepts to serve millions. This chasm-crossing specialty creates enormous value, even when the original innovation comes from elsewhere. It's not that Americans can't handle truly novel ideas - there are many generated here - it's that the entire business ecosystem is optimized for rapid adoption at scale. And when you look at tech in particular - but also products from toothpaste to movies - that scale can be gargantuan. Meanwhile, truly novel ideas often emerge in smaller, more experimental markets - Scandinavian design thinking, Korean beauty innovation, Dutch sustainable technology. American companies often adopt and scale these concepts for global markets, creating enormous value through distribution and execution rather than original invention. From a business perspective, it makes sense: why risk educating markets about something completely new when you can take something that works and make it work for everyone? - **You know this paradox is affecting you when:** Your genuinely innovative solution gets polite interest followed by requests for "comparable companies," or when your best ideas gain traction only after you package them in familiar frameworks. - **The navigation**: Lead with the familiar framework, then reveal the innovation. Instead of 'This is completely new,' try 'It's like Uber, but for...' or 'Think Airbnb meets...' Americans want to understand before they get excited. ### Paradox #6: Relationships - **They say:** "Let's build authentic relationships and support each other!" - **They mean:** "Let's develop professional connections that create mutual value." Americans have developed sophisticated systems for maintaining warm professional relationships at scale - emphasizing breadth over depth in ways that can confuse international founders. American business networking prioritizes opportunity creation across broad networks, while European business culture (in my experience) emphasizes deeper, interdependent relationships within smaller circles. When people expect to advance rapidly in status and wealth, maintaining hundreds of valuable connections feels more strategic than cultivating dozen deep partnerships. This also shapes business timelines: Americans prefer to do business first and build relationships through working together, while European cultures expect relationship-building before business discussions. The confusion comes from mismatched expectations. When someone enthusiastically supports your posts and grabs coffee, international founders interpret this as the beginning of deeper partnership. Americans treat it as successful maintenance of a valuable professional connection. Midway through my first year, I remember a Saturday brunch with someone in my apartment building. His first question: '*so, are you guys planning on staying in NYC for the long term?'* The networking breadth isn't superficiality - it's adaptation to a mobile, continental-scale economy where your next big break could come from anywhere. - **You know this is affecting you when:** Your "warm" professional connections don't develop into deeper partnerships, or you discover that your "quick coffee" has turned into them pitching you when you thought you were just building a relationship. Americans also expect more aggressive follow-up than feels natural. - **The navigation:** Follow up more aggressively than feels natural - what seems pushy to Europeans reads as appropriate persistence to Americans. Focus on creating mutual value quickly rather than building rapport slowly. Do business first, deepen relationships through working together. This focus on broad, opportunity-driven relationships also shapes how Americans approach difficult conversations - including feedback. ### Paradox #7: Feedback - **They say:** "We value direct feedback and honest communication!" - **They mean:** "We value constructive feedback that helps us improve our approach." American business culture claims to value directness and honest communication while being sensitive to criticism that questions fundamental assumptions. The same culture that celebrates "radical candor" responds differently when that honesty extends to systemic or cultural critique. This sensitivity often surprises international professionals (myself included - I've accidentally stepped on this landmine more times than I care to admit). Cultural observations that feel neutral to Europeans can land as criticism to Americans. (And yes, being defensive about defensiveness is very American - the irony isn't lost on me.) Business communication in the US is also subtly shaped by litigation culture - the constant simmering legal risk creates preference for "constructive feedback" over systematic critique. Direct observations about systemic problems can feel legally risky, so Americans default to individual improvement suggestions. Tactical suggestions about improving specific processes are welcomed enthusiastically. But observations about systemic patterns or cultural dynamics that might be creating those process problems are often received with defensiveness. - **You know this is affecting you when:** Your systematic observations get dismissed despite tactical suggestions being welcomed, or when you notice Americans interpreting cultural analysis as personal criticism. Like this article, perhaps... let’s see how much hate mail I get ;) - **The navigation**: Focus feedback on specific processes rather than systemic patterns. Instead of 'Your team isn't aligned on priorities,' try 'Could we clarify the decision-making process for this project?' Instead of 'Leadership doesn't communicate well,' try 'Would it help to have more frequent check-ins on project status?' Same insight, more actionable frame. --- These paradoxes explain the confusion, but they don't tell the whole story. American business culture has genuine strengths that make navigating these complexities worthwhile. Before diving into tactics, it's worth acknowledging what American business culture genuinely excels at. These aren't just nice-to-haves - they're the reasons international founders choose to build here despite the cultural complexity. ## The American Advantage American business culture has *many* genuine strengths. Here are just five of them - and they're significant: - **Resource Mobilization** \- When Americans decide something matters, they can deploy incredible resources quickly. The network effects, capital availability, and institutional support genuinely exceed most other markets. If you need funding, partnerships, or talent at scale, American systems are built for rapid mobilization. I've watched startups go from idea to Series A funding in 6 months here - something that typically takes 2-3 years in European markets. - **Execution Speed** \- Decisions happen in weeks rather than months. Americans prefer to move fast and course-correct based on results rather than spending extensive time in planning phases. This creates opportunities for agile businesses to gain market position quickly. - **Reinvention Acceptance** \- Career pivots, business model changes, and professional rebranding are normalized rather than seen as signs of instability. Americans celebrate the "pivot" - as long as you land in a clear, recognizable category afterward. (*Note: this last bit is not to be underestimated - and tough to navigate if you are a generalist/hybrid type)* - **Optimism as Strategy** \- American positive thinking creates self-fulfilling prophecies that generate real opportunities. The cultural assumption that growth and success are normal outcomes helps ambitious projects get funded and supported that more skeptical cultures might dismiss as unrealistic. This is my personal fave - the difference here vs. most of Europe is very noticeable. - **Scale Thinking** \- The assumption that solutions should work globally pushes entrepreneurs toward bigger markets and more impactful solutions. While this can dismiss perfectly good lifestyle businesses, it also enables businesses that can genuinely help millions of people. These advantages explain why the adaptation is worth it. But they don't prepare you for some hidden challenges... --- ## The Identity Challenge Ok, this is where it gets personal. Unlike corporate employees who can compartmentalize cultural differences, founders face a unique dilemma: your personality, values, and cultural approach ARE your business model. When American culture asks you to optimize your authenticity, communication style, and relationship approach, it's asking you to optimize your core identity. The changes are real and often permanent - you won't return to your pre-America professional self. Yes, me included. The identity challenge, more than any of the paradoxes, is what I wish someone had explained to me in 2017. Two dynamics emerge here - both fascinating and challenging: ### **1) The Identity Process** I’ve observed that Europeans who succeed in America long-term tend to go down one of two paths: 1. genuinely become American, adopting the optimism, networking breadth, and scale obsession 2. become professional Europeans where they perform their cultural background as a differentiator for American consumption. Think the "sophisticated French designer or "charming British strategist" (there’s a long-running half-joke that every ad agency and consultancy has a ‘smart Brit’ on the strategy team...) A third path exists - developing hybrid identity that maintains core values while communicating in American cultural language. For me, this is the most exciting and enriching path, but it requires constant conscious effort and frankly can feel exhausting. For what it's worth, I find myself flitting between path two and three... ### **2) The Psychological Cost** You'll spend years trying to remember who you were before you optimized yourself for American consumption. The culture asks you to stretch in ways that don't always feel natural - performing optimism when you're processing difficulties, emphasizing scale when you think sustainably, celebrating individual wins when you value collective success. It's not that these are wrong, but constantly adapting your instincts takes real energy and conscious effort. This creates genuine identity dissonance for Europeans raised on authenticity, sustainability, and collective responsibility. Just before publishing this piece, I met a British creative at a party. Her UK achievements - genuinely impressive ones - got politely ignored by Americans because they don't translate to familiar frameworks. "I get crushed when I think it's not working," she said. "And I keep asking myself - why do I have to become someone else?" That question captures what most guides miss. You're not just learning new business practices - you're rebuilding fundamental aspects of how you show up in the world. There's also an ego recalibration that comes with the territory. You've built expertise and credibility that works in your home market. In America, that track record gets politely set aside - not because your work wasn't excellent, but because it doesn't translate to their reference points. I definitely fell into this trap - spending way too much energy being frustrated that my previous achievements didn't carry weight, instead of just getting on with building new ones. The faster you can acknowledge this reset and focus on what you're building next, the less time you waste spinning your wheels. --- ## What this all means Whether you're considering this leap, just starting to navigate it, or have been here for years wondering why certain things feel so difficult - these cultural dynamics are worth understanding consciously rather than learning through trial and error. You'll succeed, but differently than you imagine. Your strengths will translate, just not how you expect. The cultural adaptation is real and often permanent - I'm not the same person professionally that I was in 2017\. But that's expansion, not loss. The real challenge isn't choosing between authenticity and success - it's figuring out which aspects of yourself to adapt and which to preserve. Some people drift unconsciously into American patterns, others resist everything and struggle unnecessarily. The most sustainable approach is conscious cultural adaptation - understanding what you're changing and why. These patterns aren't random - they're shaped by capitalism at continental scale. Once you see that, you can work with it instead of fighting it. The goal isn't to become American (though you're welcome to!) - it's learning to operate in both worlds. Even writing this guide required the cultural adaptation I'm describing. The first draft was too British, too critical. The second was too academic. The third, fourth, fifth... honestly, I lost count. I hope this version strikes the balance Americans prefer - constructive insight with optimistic framing. The irony isn't lost on me - and it's exactly why these dynamics matter so much. --- These cultural dynamics affect every international founder and creative professional I work with. If you're navigating transatlantic expansion - whether as a founder, creative, or executive building international teams - I'd love to help. I work with people on exactly these dynamics. I also speak about international business culture at conferences and company events. [Schedule a call here >](https://www.calendly.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net) ### Groove Theory: #2 - The street food rebellion at a Michelin restaurant URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-2-the-street-food-rebellion-at-a-michelin-restaurant/ Last updated: 2025-06-21T16:17:35.000Z 🥁 You’re tuned in to ****Groove Theory -** a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: creating an (unofficial) playable case study on a global pop star, being beach body unready. Picture this: You're at one of the best restaurants in an amazing culinary city - São Paulo, NYC, Tokyo. You and three fellow food lovers are wrapping up your gastronomic tour, having hit all the legendary spots. As you prepare to leave, one of your crew exclaims *"But we never got to try the street food…"* Any reasonable server within earshot of this would smile politely and move on. After all, this is a temple to fine dining, not a grungy sidewalk stall. But at Eleven Madison Park in New York, Will Guidara isn’t feeling reasonable. He drops everything, sprints outside to the nearest hot dog vendor, buys a street dog, races back to the kitchen, and somehow convinces the head chef to plate it with sauerkraut and mustard. Then he serves it to your table alongside the final course. *"I wanted to make sure you don't go home with any culinary regrets",* he tells you. You lose your minds. In the best possible way. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/image.png) Yours, for just $4,049\. ## **The Tension** Here's the thing everyone gets wrong about this story: they think it's about hospitality. It's not. It's about rebellion against your own expertise. Guidara broke the unwritten rules of fine dining because he was paying attention to something his industry had trained him to ignore: what people *actually* wanted versus what they were *supposed* to want. ### **Step Into It** This isn't just a restaurant story. It's about recognising the moment when you can give someone what they actually need. Let's say you're wrapping up a client check-in. The project is on track, deliverables are solid, everyone’s cool. But as you're finishing, someone makes a half-joke; *'I'm a bit nervous about the board meeting next week*'. As the words tumble out of their mouth, they scramble to ‘*so, what are you guys doing this weekend?!*’ - voice spiking up a half octave. Your scope of work is already confirmed. So is your Lyft - it’s literally outside. But something tells you that high-pitched pivot just told you everything. ## **The Groove: Presence** Most people think “presence” is about confidence or charisma. Even the mention of that word probably brings certain people to mind (wut, you didn’t think of *moi*? no, neither did I.) Here’s the thing - real presence is about being awake to what others miss. We can think of this as practicing **intentional attention**. At Will Guidara’s Eleven Madison Park restaurant, they turned this into a system. Staff don't just serve meals - they write down guests' names during service, note even the smallest of dietary preferences, listen for emotional subtext. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/image-3.png) Will Guidara and business partner / chef Daniel Humm They practiced what Will calls "unreasonable hospitality" - going beyond what was asked to deliver what was needed. The famous hot dog story? That wasn't luck. It was the result of systematic attention to detail. #### **Three levels of intentional attention:** 1. **Surface level** \- What they're saying *"We've had an amazing trip, hit all the best restaurants."* 2. **Functional level** \- What they're asking for *A great meal to cap off their culinary tour.* 3. **Emotional level** \- What they actually need *To feel complete, to not have any regrets about missing a quintessential NYC experience.* Most of us stop at level one. The transformation happens at level three. *Presence is one of the five elements that create groove - you can see how all five work together* [*here*](https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/) ## **The Release** Presence isn't about imposing yourself in a room. Nor is it being psychic. It's about being intentional with your attention. Here's how Will and his team put this into practice, and how we can do the same: 🌭 ****\- Write it down:** When you notice something about a client, colleague, or audience member, capture it. Names, preferences, concerns, throwaway comments. All the pieces matter. ****\- Listen for regrets:** What are they worried about missing? What would make this interaction feel complete for them? ****\- Question your standards**: Your professional standards might be getting in the way of giving people what they actually want. Whether it’s hot dogs or conversation, the magic happens when you stop delivering what's expected and start noticing what's actually needed. Next time: something different. An excellent new album, ADHD, and the underestimated value of an empty field... Got a hot dog story of your own? Hit reply - I'd love to hear it. Howard P.S. Will co-produced an episode on Season 3 of “The Bear” where a similar moment - Richie running to get deep-dish pizza for disappointed guests - became a turning point for the character. Art imitating life, imitating art. [Season 4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOyRo-Yjr2Q&ref=howardgray.net) of The Bear is released later this month. --- ## Build the Groove with... me That moment when you know you've got something good, but it's not quite landing the way you want? That's exactly what Groove Build is for. 1:1 co-development to turn your raw idea into something that resonates. [Let's build ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me) --- ## Extended Mix: Groove Tools - [The Lost Chapter](https://www.porchlightbooks.com/blogs/excerpts/unreasonable-hospitality-the-lost-chapter?ref=howardgray.net): an unpublished extra from Will Guidara's book 'Unreasonable Hospitality' on the power of (unusual) brand collaborations - [Systems of Progress](https://jtbd.info/the-system-of-progress-763f7dd1cad5?ref=howardgray.net): The three levels of intentional attention closely mirror the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) model. Systems of Progress takes JTBD to the next level. Strong recommend. - **First Star**: Mexico City's [Expendio de Maíz](https://www.instagram.com/exp%5Fmaiz/?hl=en&ref=howardgray.net) \- undisputed #1 Wavetable co-location lunch spot - just got their first Michelin star last week ### The Creative Technologist comeback URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-creative-technologist-comeback/ Last updated: 2025-12-30T01:45:08.000Z In 2007, I worked at a digital agency in London with someone whose job title was "Creative Technologist". I had absolutely no idea what it meant. This was during the halcyon days when agencies like AKQA, B-Reel, and Glue London were pushing the boundaries of what digital could be. Interactive Flash experiences were winning Cannes Lions. The web felt experimental and magical. My colleague lived in this weird liminal space between the creative team and the developers. While the creatives dreamed up concepts and the devs built websites, they made... things. Interactive experiences that were half art installation, half technical demo. Digital experiments that made clients go "wow" and account directors ask "how do we sell this?" I remember thinking: what the hell even is this job? The creative technologist spoke in this hybrid language few understood - part creative brief, part code comments. They'd get genuinely excited about ActionScript tweening while the account team stressed about billable hours. The creative directors loved their work but didn't know exactly how it all worked. The developers respected their chops but didn't get why the perfect loading animation mattered so much. Creative technologists were digital agencies' beautiful misfits. Then, seemingly overnight, the role largely vanished. #### In this post: ## The Slow-Motion Crash The decline started in 2007 when Apple launched the iPhone without Flash support. By 2010, Steve Jobs' infamous "[Thoughts on Flash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts%5Fon%5FFlash?ref=howardgray.net)" letter had finished the job. Suddenly, agencies wanted "mobile-first solutions," not digital art projects. The appetite for beautiful, inexplicable experiences evaporated as clients demanded measurable ROI. Creative technologists scattered. Some became UX designers, others product managers, many became "design technologists" - essentially the same skill set, repackaged for the startup era. A few experimental experiential agencies (try saying that after a couple of negronis) kept CTs front and centre, but for the most part they went beneath the surface. Their skills were the drum & bass of digital - once underground, influential, and ahead of their time, but too niche for the mainstream until the culture caught up. By 2015, the term had practically disappeared from job boards. But the skills didn't die. They just went back underground, waiting for the right moment to resurface. Fast-forward to 2025\. The experimental digital landscape has been replaced by something far more chaotic: the AI gold rush. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/CT-1.jpg) ## The Signal vs. The Noise Everyone's pitching AI solutions right now. Every consultant, every agency, every startup founder has suddenly become an "AI expert." So how do you know who's actually good? Look for someone who can build working prototypes during your strategy meeting. Not mockups or slide decks - actual functioning experiences you can touch and test. But in 2025, there's almost no excuse for not being able to build *and* demonstrate. The tools are too accessible, the APIs too simple. If someone's charging premium rates to advise on AI but can't show you how it works for your specific use case... what exactly are you paying for? The good ones will ask uncomfortable questions about your business problems before showing you any technology. They'll prototype three different approaches and explain why two probably won't work for your context. They'll build something custom to your world, not a generic AI wrapper with your logo slapped on it. That's the difference between signal and noise. ## The Perfect Storm Three seismic shifts have created the perfect conditions for the Creative Technologist's return: **AI has democratized coding but elevated creative vision.** When anyone can prompt ChatGPT to write basic code, the real value shifts to knowing what to build and why. Creative technologists don't just execute - they imagine possibilities others can't see. **The product/marketing divide has evaporated.** Your website is your product. Your product is your marketing. Your brand experience spans seventeen different touchpoints. Companies need people who think holistically, not specialists in silos. **Speed has become the only competitive advantage.** Platforms change monthly. Attention spans shrink daily. You need people who can prototype concepts in real-time, not just pontificate about them in PowerPoint. But here's what's really different: today's creative technologists have learned to speak business. The 2010 version built beautiful experiences that struggled to justify their existence. The 2025 version solves specific business problems while keeping their experimental edge intact. ## Four Emerging Archetypes Despite this demand, the creative technologists I'm seeing fall into four distinct archetypes: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/4-CT-Types-1.jpg) ### **1) The Business Translator** Sits in C-suite meetings and help teams understand what's actually possible with emerging tech. They're educators who can prototype while they explain, making the complex accessible. (I'm one of these - along with a bit of archetype 3...) *Core Skills:* - Workshop design and facilitation - Business storytelling and communication - Rapid prototyping with no-code AI tools - Strategic thinking and pattern recognition - Cross-functional team enablement *Where they're needed:* Strategy consulting, innovation labs, executive advisory, team education and upskilling *Key scenarios:* Your leadership doesn't understand how AI could help your business. Your innovation initiatives keep failing because there's no bridge between strategy and execution. *Pairs well with:* Strategic CEOs, innovation-hungry board members, transformation-focused consultants ### **2) The Platform Pioneer** Builds on tomorrow's platforms today. They create the playbook everyone else copies six months later. *Core Skills:* - Advanced creative coding (Three.js, p5.js, TouchDesigner) - AR/VR development (Unity, Unreal Engine) - Hardware integration (Arduino, sensors) - Machine learning implementation - Physical-digital experience design *Where they're needed:* Experience agencies, media companies, cultural institutions, startup R&D teams *Key scenarios:* You want to be first to market with AR/voice experiences. Your competitors are creating buzz with cutting-edge digital while you're stuck with traditional approaches. *Pairs well with:* Visionary CTOs, experimental marketing directors, forward-thinking creative directors ### **3) The Experience Architect** Designs end-to-end digital journeys spanning multiple touchpoints. They think in customer flows, not individual channels, and excel at orchestrating complex workflows. *Core Skills:* - Systems thinking and service design - Multi-platform prototyping - Data integration and analytics - Voice/conversational interface design - Customer journey mapping - Workflow automation and process optimization *Where they're needed:* Product teams, customer experience roles, omnichannel retail, fintech companies *Key scenarios:* Your customer journey is fragmented across touchpoints. You're losing customers because your digital experience feels disjointed. *Pairs well with:* Savvy COOs, process-obsessed operations leaders, customer-centric CMOs ### **4) The Data Storyteller** Transforms complex datasets into compelling narratives and interactive experiences. They bridge the gap between what the data says and what humans can actually understand and act on. **Core Skills:** - Advanced data visualization (D3.js, Tableau, custom dashboards) - AI model interpretation and explanation - Interactive narrative design - Statistical analysis and pattern recognition - User research and behavioral psychology - Real-time data integration and automation **Where they're needed:** Analytics teams, research organizations, fintech companies, healthcare systems, government agencies **Key scenarios:** Your data team produces insights nobody acts on. Your AI models are black boxes that executives don't trust. Your dashboards are technically accurate but strategically useless. **Pairs well with:** Data-driven CMOs, research-focused CPOs, metrics-obsessed VPs, evidence-based executives A.I. INTEGRATION ADVISORY Want practical guidance on integrating AI tools into your creative workflows without losing your human edge? I can help. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/advisory-coaching/#3-market-expansion-for-founders) ## The skills exist, but the positioning doesn't The reality is more nuanced.Search 'Creative Technologist' on LinkedIn and you'll find the role buried among medical technologist positions and rebranded as everything else - 'Design Technologist,' 'Innovation Consultant,' 'Technical Product Manager.' The skills exist, but the title hasn't unified around what they're actually doing. Which creates a massive positioning opportunity. While everyone fights to be "AI Consultant #47,385," someone could own the space where creativity and technology actually intersect to drive business results. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/2005-2025.jpg) ## The Uncomfortable Truth Most "digital transformation" initiatives fail because companies hire people who can pontificate about AI but can't build a working chatbot. They get consultants crafting beautiful narratives while charging $300/hour to explain why their prototype will be ready "next quarter." Meanwhile, some indie hacker just launched an AI tool that solves the same problem and has 25,000 users within a week. This disconnect between talking and building hits close to home for me. My degree in multimedia production - which felt embarrassingly unfocused in 2004 - was accidentally perfect preparation. Turns out being scattered across multiple disciplines isn't academic ADHD, it's exactly what you need when the future keeps shifting every six months. That "*wtf what even is this*" moment I had in 2007? Companies are having it again. Except this time, they're not scratching their heads - they're scrambling to find someone who can actually build the future, not just talk about it. At least, they should be. Here's the thing: for companies, this means rethinking how you hire for digital transformation. Stop looking for 'AI consultants' who can't build. Start looking for creative technologists who prototype while they strategize. The question isn't whether you need these hybrid skills - it's whether you'll find them before your competitors do. The creative technologist is back. The question isn't whether you need these hybrid skills - it's whether you'll find them before your competitors do. --- A.I. INTEGRATION ADVISORY Want practical guidance on integrating AI tools into your creative workflows without losing your human edge? I can help. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/advisory-coaching/#3-market-expansion-for-founders) ### Pascal's Wager for AI (and why you should bet on Scenario 2) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/pascals-wager-for-ai-and-why-you-should-bet-on-scenario-2/ Last updated: 2025-06-09T23:25:21.000Z People are paralyzed by AI decisions right now. Should you dive in? Hold back? Learn everything? Ignore it completely? Here's a very simple way to work through it... [Dan Hockenmaier](https://www.howardgray.net/what-brian-eno-knows-about-learning-that-weve-forgotten/) just cut through all the noise with a framework made up of three scenarios: 1\. AI capabilities hit a wall and don't add as much value as people expect 2\. AI absolutely supercharges what most humans can do, but stops there 3\. We reach AGI; game over for humans contributing meaningfully to society His advice? Bet on scenario 2\. Learn the tools. Apply them to your work. Because if it's scenario 1, you've wasted some time on tools that didn't pan out. If it's scenario 3, nothing matters anyway. But if it's scenario 2 and you're prepared? The upside is limitless. It's Pascal's wager applied to AI: when facing uncertainty about something massive, choose the path that gives you the best outcome if you're right and the least costly outcome if you're wrong. Those Guardian stories I shared last week? Real people losing work to AI right now. But there's another group emerging: people who've figured out how to work with these tools rather than against them. They're focusing on what's still uniquely human - reading the room, facilitating tough conversations, making sense of messy situations. The question isn't whether AI will change your work. It's whether you'll be ready when it does. Ready to bet on scenario 2? Our Involver sessions help teams practice the uniquely human skills that will matter most when AI supercharges everything else. Hands-on scenarios, real-time decisions, immediate impact. Drop me a line if you're curious. ### What happens when you collapse the talent stack? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-happens-when-you-collapse-the-talent-stack/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:01:19.000Z What happens when you collapse the talent stack? The answer might make you uncomfortable. Here's a bit from Scott Belsky, Adobe's Chief Strategy Officer, buried in a newsletter that caught my eye: > "A lot of the magic I've observed in teams over the years happens when the talent stack is collapsed - when a designer also codes, when an engineer has a growth hack skill set, when a product leader is great at copy. > Vertically integrating interdisciplinary collaboration in a single human is f'n awesome, and you should transcend traditional org structures of teams and make exceptions for who you hire when you encounter an opportunity to collapse the talent stack." But here's what Scott doesn't say out loud: the real disruption isn't in the collapsing - it's in what happens next. The first wave is the tools: - A strategist with Figma can prototype their ideas by lunch - A finance director with Python can automate workflows overnight - A marketer with Descript can draft an article before the daily huddle The second wave? That's where it gets interesting: The specialist roles start to dissolve. The silos start to crack. The "I do X" positions begin to feel precarious. That mid-senior hire you were planning for next quarter? A junior team member just figured out how to do it "good enough" with AI and some YouTube tutorials. Or rather, that gig you were aiming for next quarter. They just figured out 'good enough' without you. Yup. Uncomfortable. The conventional wisdom *still* says "stay in your lane." But the lanes aren't just merging - they're disappearing entirely. The question isn't if your stack will collapse - it's what you'll do when singular skills no longer command a premium. What's your plan? ### What Brian Eno knows about learning (that we've forgotten) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-brian-eno-knows-about-learning-that-weve-forgotten/ Last updated: 2026-04-21T16:51:07.000Z Brian Eno - ambient music pioneer, U2 producer, visual artist - has a theory in his new book *What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory* that stopped me cold: "Play is how children learn; art is how adults play."\* A five-year-old crashes toy cars to understand consequence. But what happens to that play impulse as we grow up? Eno believes we just rename it. When you're lost in a novel, you're playing with someone else's life. Galleries let you play with new ways of seeing. Theatre allows you to step into a character’s environment, their world. But here's his key insight: **Art works like a flight simulator.** The reason we have flight simulators isn't so pilots can have fun—it's so they can practice without the real-world consequences. Experience failure, learn from it, try again. Through art, you can experience an unhappy marriage by reading about it. Feel the terror of revolutionary France without losing your head. I never thought about it this way before, but then Eno is known for his Oblique Strategies. **So what if we built that flight simulator for the decisions that actually shape your work?** That's what we're building with [Involver](https://www.wavetable.net/involver?ref=howardgray.net). Instead of reading case studies, you step into them. Make the calls. Navigate the tensions. See where your instincts lead. The best learning happens when you're playing—even if we call it something else. ### The AI displacement wave is here (and it's not what you think) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-ai-displacement-wave-is-here-and-its-not-what-you-think/ Last updated: 2025-06-08T22:36:31.000Z **"Just put it in ChatGPT."** That's what Annabel Beales overheard her boss say about her copywriting work. Six weeks later, after being told her job was "safe," she was fired. She's one of five people The Guardian profiled last week who've lost work to AI: → A Polish radio journalist replaced by AI avatars interviewing dead poets → An Indonesian illustrator whose commissions dropped from 15 to 5 per month → A voice actor in San Francisco who heard his character say a line – but it wasn't his voice → A graphic designer let go after 6 years as his company's only designer Reading these stories, I remembered a conversation with a friend over pints in London two years ago. We couldn't see an outcome where we don't eventually need UBI. But here's what's happening right now: Four people have reached out to me this week asking about career planning. Four. These aren't abstract future scenarios - this is happening to skilled professionals today. LinkedIn's Chief Economist recently wrote in the NY Times that *"the bottom rung of the career ladder is broken."* These stories show why. The graphic designer in the piece nailed the immediate reality: *"Learn as many skills as possible. You have to be prepared."* But honestly, I think people are underestimating what this actually means. It's not just about learning AI tools (though that helps). It's about building work that's harder to replicate: → Deep human connection and cultural understanding → Creative problem-solving in complex, messy situations → The ability to facilitate, coach, and guide others through change These sound like buzzwords, but I think we really have to think about what it means to get good at these things. The future belongs to people who can dance between domains - who understand both the human and technical sides of their work. If not, I really do worry. Yes, I know there are lots of posts suggesting this kind of thing, but the Guardian piece is REAL. Real people, with real skills, in deep uncertainty. Do you see what I see? Or - like an LLM - am I hallucinating? [Full Guardian article >](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/31/the-workers-who-lost-their-jobs-to-ai-chatgpt?ref=howardgray.net) ### Groove Theory: #1 - The accidental breakthrough that changed everything URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-1-the-accidental-breakthrough-that-changed-everything/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T01:26:25.000Z 🥁 You're tuned in to ****Groove Theory** \- a newsletter about how creative ideas, careers, and live moments find their rhythm, structure, and presence in the world. I'm Howard Gray, founder of [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Currently: Building [zany games](https://fix-the-vibe.replit.app/?ref=howardgray.net) with Replit, occasionally remembering to eat lunch. In Spring 2015 I was about to face my toughest audience yet: 60+ teenagers in East London who'd rather be anywhere else than listening to another industry person drone on about their career. I was a music agent stepping into education for the first time. A week before the talk, reality hit. These kids would see right through any polished presentation. So I scrapped my carefully prepared slide deck and spent the weekend frantically pulling together something different - festival economics, site layouts, real data they could actually use. When I walked into that classroom, I did something that felt both terrifying and obvious: I asked them to build a music festival from scratch. Not just the lineup - everything. Ticket pricing, food vendors, even portable toilet placement. ## **The Tension** The session was pure chaos. I had no framework, no real plan. But halfway through, a teacher nudged me and pointed to a student in the corner, head down, sketching an incredibly detailed site map. *"He hardly ever pays attention,"* they whispered, *"but he's been doing that for 20 minutes straight."* That's when it clicked: I'd stumbled onto something. I just couldn't articulate what. And it turned out that chaotic afternoon would be the catalyst for everything I do now - but at the time, I had no idea. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-05-31-at-21.33.10.png) The artist lineup template from the briefing packet that day. I cringe looking at what I put together, but you gotta start somewhere... ### **Step Into It** You’ve probably been there. You're in the middle of something that's working... but also out of control. It's messy, chaotic, not like what you planned. Say you're mid-presentation and your material isn’t landing. But then someone asks a question that takes you completely off script - and suddenly the whole room leans in. - Do you get back to your agenda, or follow this unexpected thread? - How do you know if you should trust it, or do the rational thing and try to regain control? ## **The Groove** For years after that classroom, I kept encountering these moments - sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. I couldn't figure out why until I started noticing the pattern. The breakthrough moments - whether in demos, strategy sessions, client meetings - all share five common elements. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Sq.png) 1. **Structure** → Shape the idea Move from fog to form without losing your voice. Could be: - *When "Here's my 30-slide deck" becomes "Here's a problem to solve"* - *Real constraints that spark creativity.* 1. **Rhythm** → Find the flow The pacing and timing that keeps audiences engaged from start to finish. Could be: - *Pausing mid-pitch to ask "What's the thing you're not saying?"* - *Shifting tempo - speeding up when you sense restlessness, slowing down when something lands* 1. **Modality** → Choose the vessel Turn expertise into repeatable formats that land across platforms*.* Could be: - *When your detailed report becomes a 5-minute walkthrough* - *When your strategy deck becomes a tool they can test with real customers* 1. **Presence** → Bring yourself into it Tune in and engage authentically*.* Could be: - *"Honestly, I don't know. Let's figure this out together."* - *Staying genuinely curious about what they're thinking and feeling rather than pushing your agenda* 1. **Signal** → Clarify what matters Distill your message into something that sticks and spreads. Could be: - *The one insight they'll text their best friend about* - When *your complex idea becomes a simple story people retell* --- These five elements, when they align, create what I call *groove*. Not perfection - but that unmistakable feeling when ideas start flowing, people lean in, and something shifts in the room. You'll know it when you feel it. But what does this look like in practice? ## **The Release** Here's what this means for you: Next time you're in front of people who need to get something - whether it's a pitch, a workshop, or a crucial conversation - you'll recognize which element is lacking. Is your structure too loose? Your rhythm off? Wrong format entirely? The framework gives you a way to diagnose what's not working and adjust in real-time. --- Each edition of Groove Theory, we'll explore how someone found their groove - and dig into what made it work. From Danish architects to Californian surfers. In formal settings, and the most casual. You'll discover specific moves you can use/remix/steal. Next up: - How a Michelin-star restaurateur found his groove... in a street food truck - The silent gig in a Parisian storefront that unlocked a whole new format Watch out for other subscriber-only extras coming soon - including live events and interactive tools. Thanks for being in the groove. Howard P.S. Comments, ideas, questions, complaints? Just hit reply. --- ## Extended Mix: Soundtrack - [Bill Spencer on NTS Radio](https://www.nts.live/shows/bill-spencer?ref=howardgray.net): Every other Sunday, just like Groove Theory. Eclectic, interesting, unexpected - I listened to this show a lot while forming these ideas. Spencer has a knack for finding connections between sounds that shouldn't work together, but somehow do. ## Deepen the Groove ****Get support** [Groove Build: 1:1 co-development to design your breakthrough moment - from first idea to final delivery](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) ### From Wavetable (with something new) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/from-wavetable-with-something-new/ Last updated: 2025-05-28T15:52:58.000Z Quick note: This is Howard, founder of Wavetable, emailing about something new I'm launching _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Adventures… #67: Back in the Groove URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-67-back-in-the-groove/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T01:27:06.000Z Hello, It’s been a while. A long while. You received *Adventures… -* the newsletter where I shared riffs, reflections, and stories from the creative path. Except, I stopped. Why? The short version: life moved fast, and I couldn’t quite keep up. There was always something more urgent. A project to deliver. A bill to pay. A small human to co-raise. I wrote [66 editions](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/adventure/) over the course of 7ish years, but over time, it got harder to justify hitting “send” - harder to make space for the kind of thoughtful, lightly meandering work that *Adventures…* was built on. ## Still riffing, still seeking Yet I never stopped thinking about it - never stopped jotting fragments down, or [posting bits online](https://www.howardgray.net/blog/) (now 600+ posts…!) Because writing this way - story-led, signal-seeking, slightly sideways - has always felt like home. Not always efficient. Not always strategic. But always a kind of peculiar, multi-coloured compass. And over the past year or so, something’s been pulling me back. ## Into the Groove This time, though, there’s a new rhythm. And a clearer purpose. Linking what I’m doing at [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) with the other parts of me. So I’ve been slowly shaping something called ***Groove Theory***. It’s part reflection, part toolkit - a lens and rhythm system for navigating the moments that matter in creative work. Talks, team sessions, turning points. The high-stakes, high-resonance stuff. Honestly, it’s an amalgamation of almost everything I’ve done over the past 15+ years. I'm very excited - and a little nervous - to now bring it into the world. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/Five-Elements-of-Groove_Sq-1.png) ## What to expect Where *Adventures* wandered, **Groove Theory** focuses. Still thoughtful, still story-led - but now with tools you can actually use. I believe it matters now more than ever. In an age of AI and automation, speed and saturation, gurus and grinders, staying visible is hard. Staying true to your voice, your instincts, your *groove*? That's even harder. If you’re on this path - trying to show up well, do work that matters, and make it land - well, this is for you. You’ll get: - **Cultural remixes** \- How a Japanese village used trading cards to celebrate their elders, or what Paul McCartney's empty front row teaches us about audience experience - **Practical frameworks** \- Tools like *Eventness* and *New Wine/Old Oak* to shape ideas and moments with structure and vibes - **Real-world applications** \- How creative professionals (like you!) use these principles to design live experiences that engage, pitches that land, and career pivots that work You'll hear from me twice a month. No noise. No hype. Just rhythm you can use. The first edition drops this Sunday. A series of small salon-style events to follow soon after. And if this isn't your thing anymore, that's totally ok. No hard feelings if you unsubscribe - I'm just grateful you read *Adventures* when you did. And besides, turning off unsubscribe notifications was one of the best decisions I ever made. Here's to the next adventure. See you on the other side. Howard *P.S. Shout out to Fer F, Will A, Hugh G, Conor M, Tom C (and a few others) for helping nudge this into view.* ### Groove Theory: A new lens for creative professionals who want to find - and hold - their rhythm URL: https://www.howardgray.net/groove-theory-a-manifesto-for-creative-professionals-who-want-to-find-and-hold-their-rhythm/ Last updated: 2025-05-26T13:28:54.000Z You know your stuff. You've done the work. You're good at what you do - maybe even great. But when it matters most, when the spotlight hits, something goes sideways. Your voice wavers. Your ideas scatter. Your story slips. Groove Theory is here to help you find your rhythm - hold it when it counts. Because you don't need to shout. You need rhythm. You need resonance. You need a groove. --- ## When mistakes become magic Late night, early 2000s. Three of us were driving from Brighton to London on a whim to see Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills at The End. I was 19\. We'd all grown up on drum & bass, a totally different genre - a different culture, a different planet. The venue, The End, was legendary for its intensity - DJ in the middle of the dancefloor, barely elevated, crowds reaching into the booth. Even drum&bass titan Andy C said it was the venue where he got most nervous before he played - he always stayed in the car until right before showtime. That night, when Mills started, I remember how alien it felt. Three decks. Tracks slipping in and out in seconds. This slight, quietly focused guy - no showboating, no grand gestures - just fingers moving at lightning speed. And the crowd - they cheered at times I didn't understand - like when a hi-hat came in. It wasn't about bassline drops. But Mills made *mistakes*. Small ones, constant ones. And somehow, they made it better. You could hear the crackles in the vinyl, the wobble of the pitch. He was riding three grooves at once, and it was messy and alive and… strangely perfect. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/Jeff-Mills---The-End.jpg) Jeff Mills at The End. Photo: [Matt Cheetham](https://www.flickr.com/photos/watchlooksee/?ref=howardgray.net) What it had was ***groove***. Not perfection. Not flawless execution. But a rhythm, a presence, a flow that transcended the individual elements. The mistakes weren't failures - they were proof it was alive. Years later, I'd realize this wasn't just about DJing - it was about any creative work that needs to land with real humans, in real time. ## Finding the path to groove That night at The End stayed with me. Over the next 15 years, I became ever more fascinated by creative people – first as a talent agent for DJs and artists, then as a production partner, educator, and coach. I watched them navigate high-stakes moments – pitches, gigs, keynotes, career pivots. The patterns became impossible to ignore. I watched talented people struggle with the same question: **How do you show up fully as yourself while meeting your audience where they are?** I saw it everywhere. Brilliant consultants who nailed the strategy but couldn't get clients to feel it. Workshop leaders with transformative content that somehow fell flat. Creative directors pitching breakthrough concepts to blank stares. Talent managers who believed in their roster but couldn't get the industry to see what they saw. ...And yeah, I saw it in myself. All the time. But watching all these talented people struggle helped me see the real issue. The edge isn't what you know - it's how you shape it, pace it, and show up within it. The best performers I encountered had found their groove – that sweet spot where structure creates freedom, rhythm reveals what matters, and presence isn't performed but embodied. In the past three years, I've watched this approach help: - A global innovation team shift how they create experiences for clients - from initial chemistry meeting to final project delivery - A cultural consultant land his dream client by turning a standard capabilities presentation into an immersive experience - A brand strategist double her rates by changing how she presented insights (same insights, different groove) **The pattern is always the same: they stopped trying to download information and started designing experiences.** And right now, that matters more than ever. ## Why now? Three shifts are making groove essential: 1. **AI floods the zone with content** \- but can't deliver presence or trust. The edge is now how you show up live. 2. **Everyone's building a personal brand** \- yet most are dancing to the algorithm's tune, chasing likes instead of creating genuine connection. 3. **We're drowning in information** \- but starving for connection. What resonates isn't volume, but craft. People crave experiences that feel alive. # Introducing Groove Theory Groove Theory is a creative lens and rhythm system for navigating the moments that matter in your work. It's not about productivity hacks, motivation tricks, or presentation tips. It's about finding – and holding – your groove when it counts. That elusive state where your ideas flow, your presence lands, and your audience feels something shift. Whether you're pitching a new concept, building a creative venture, guiding a team through change, or navigating a career pivot – Groove Theory helps you design experiences that transform rather than simply inform. It's where pop culture meets business strategy, where DJ techniques inform workshop design, where mistakes become features, not bugs. ## The Five Elements of Groove The Groove Theory framework consists of five interconnected elements that work together to help you find and hold your groove. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/05/Five-Elements-of-Groove--no-title-.png) ### **Structure → *Shape the idea*** **Move from fog to form without losing your voice** Turn scattered thinking into something usable and repeatable. The difference between rambling for 20 minutes and landing your point in 2. ### **Rhythm → *Find the flow*** **The pacing and timing that keeps audiences engaged from start to finish** The rhythm that makes your work feel alive. When you find your flow, you know when to push and when to pause. ### **Modality → *Choose the vessel*** **Turn expertise into repeatable formats that land across platforms** Sometimes an idea wants to be a workshop. Sometimes a keynote. Sometimes a conversation. Choosing the right format is key to making your work resonate. ### **Presence → *Bring yourself into it*** **Tune in and engage authentically** Presence isn't about performing – it's about showing up authentically and engaging with what's actually happening. ### **Signal → *Clarify what matters*** Distill your message into something that sticks and spreads The core idea people remember and repeat. In a world of infinite content, clear signal is how you cut through the noise. These five elements work together as a system - but who needs them most? ## Who needs a Groove? If you've ever stood in front of a room, pitched an idea, or tried to bring a vision to life—you know this feeling. You might be: - An agency founder who thinks *"I need this pitch to feel tight and premium"* - A consultant helping others transform while wondering *"This works, but it could hit harder"* - A creative entrepreneur feeling *"I've got a strong POV, but it's hard to shape"* - A rising thought leader thinking *"I know it's in here - but I can't pull it out"* **The common thread?** You're building something that matters, and you need to show up - fully, authentically, effectively - in the moments that count. Whether that's a pitch, a workshop, a team session, or a career pivot, you're asking the same fundamental question: **How do I stay true to myself while meeting my audience where they are?** That's where groove lives. And that's what Groove Theory helps you find. ## What you'll actually get Yes, another newsletter. But this one's different. The Groove Theory newsletter isn't theory - it's practice. Every other Sunday, you'll get: - **One Story:** How someone in your situation found their groove (and what happened when they lost it) - **One Framework:** A practical tool you can use in your next pitch, workshop, or crucial conversation - **One Shift:** A cultural insight that reframes how you think about your work - **Ready-to-use materials:** Templates and questions for immediate application Think less "another thought leadership newsletter" and more "coaching session in your inbox." You'll discover unexpected connections - like how a Japanese village used trading cards to bridge generations, or what stand-up comedians know about first impressions. Field-tested frameworks grounded in learning science and experience design, developed through work with everyone from EY's global innovation team and The New York Times, to WeTransfer and indie strivers. **No hype. No noise. Just rhythm you can use.** **Coming up in the next few months:** Live sessions, workshops, and other ways to practice your groove with fellow creators. Ready to find your groove - and hold it when it matters most? ## Get Groove Theory in your inbox Stories, frameworks, and cultural insights for creative professionals navigating high-stakes moments. Every other Sunday. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No hype. No noise. Just rhythm you can use. Unsubscribe anytime. ### The 80-hour reality check: What actually happens when you build with AI URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-80-hour-reality-check-what-actually-happens-when-you-build-with-ai/ Last updated: 2025-12-30T01:46:29.000Z Seems like everyone is talking about using AI. But how many people are actually *doing* something - and if they are, what's the process behind it? Here's the messy reality behind what I've been building recently…. #### In this post: ## The Project We're building playable case studies for our new platform. Think interactive business scenarios with game elements. We've tested these live and know they're powerful - but showing an "experience" to someone who wasn't there? That's a challenge. ## The Journey (abridged version) ### Act 1: Format Fails - Figma: 30+ hours on a prototype that walks through a live experience. I'm kinda proud of it but no one cared. Design wasn't good enough, genre was confusing. - Bubble: 2x sessions of 4-5 hours. Some progress but too painful. Failed - Back to decks: Tightened some messaging but the format didn't feel right. - One pager: Better. - Miro based deliveries: validated a bunch of game concepts! But we still know we need to shift formats ### Act 2: Bad Vibes Coding - Figma round 2: 2-3 days with GPT-generated specs. Rigorous but rough. Was embarrassed to show it. - Bubble again: 3 more wasted hours. Started tearing my hair out. \[People say "vibe coding" is fun. How about BAD VIBES CODING - where you want to smash the screen and eat your own face.\] - Coffee with engineer friend: Helpful architecture chat, but still stuck on implementation. - V0 & Lovable: V0 too complex, then some hallucinations on Lovable. Kinda cool, but didn't have the energy for it ### Act 3: Double Wow - Procrastination. - Claude Artifacts discovery: Friend showed me React prototypes from simple prompts. WOW moment. - Claude deep dive: 4 hours of VIBES, then constant breaking and rolling back. ARGH. - Replit breakthrough: Uploaded detailed spec, got a solid v1 in 2 minutes. WOW moment #2. - The final push: 10 hours straight with Replit's AI agent. Two very late nights. Still not quite there. But… it emerges. **Total timeline: 6 weeks, 80+ hours** ## What I learned 1. Be skeptical of "one prompt" flexes. If someone claims they built something amazing instantly (and implies you're slow for struggling) - take it with a grain of salt. 2. The messy 70 hours got me to the "2-minute" breakthrough. The struggle wasn't wasted time - it was necessary learning. I've been reasonably tech-savvy since I was 12, yet my curve is still steep with this stuff. This isn't meant to discourage you. When you see the endless "look at this!" and "your careers are over!" posts - please don't feel despondent. You CAN figure it out. But it takes time, and that's completely normal. ### What's next We're sharing the prototype with select folks. It's a DJ mixing game that helps you create new media formats - think Ableton for decks, workshops, or short-form content. Want to take a look? Drop me a note and I'll send the link. ### Crystal Palace’s finest FA Cup moment (and it wasn't the goal) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/crystal-palaces-finest-fa-cup-moment-and-it-wasnt-the-goal/ Last updated: 2025-05-17T18:52:34.000Z Crystal Palace pulled off one of the great FA Cup upsets this weekend - beating Manchester City to win their first ever major trophy. But the moment that stuck with me? Not a goal. Not a tackle. Not even the final whistle. It was something that didn’t happen. Marc Guehi, Palace’s captain and an England international, had to come off after 60 minutes with a concussion. He’s been a cornerstone all season. Might even be off to a bigger club this summer. So when it came time to lift the trophy - his first major silverware, and the club’s too - you’d expect him to be the one front and centre. But he stepped aside. And let Joel Ward do it. Ward’s played just 12 minutes this season. Not 12 games - 12 minutes. But he’s been at the club for over a decade. Signed for £400k when Palace were in the second tier. He’s been their club captain, their constant. And he’s leaving this summer after 13 years of service. No announcement. No ceremony. Just a quiet, classy handover. Guehi knew what it meant. A quiet reminder: Leadership isn’t just about who wears the armband. It’s about knowing when to take the spotlight - and when to give it away. Up the Palace. ### Now - 17 May 2025 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/now-17-may-2025/ Last updated: 2025-05-17T15:30:33.000Z Star date: 17 May 2025 - Developing 'Involver' - Gearing up for NYC summer - Learning about game design - Starting in person events - Ramping up pilates - Continuing Friday night football ### Step into the room where you're the amateur URL: https://www.howardgray.net/step-into-the-room-where-youre-the-amateur/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:04:51.000Z What happens when you take your work into a room where you're clearly the least qualified person? **Sunday at Gumbo - a co-working space for game developers in NYC.** Serious people. Proper video games. Physics engines, complex art, hardcore coding. And me. I'm sitting there with my silly prototype feeling completely out of my depth. It's like showing up to a fine art class with crayons. I nearly didn't go. I nearly left after an hour. Everyone around me knew what they were talking about. I had no idea. But then something clicked. I wasn't there to compete with their technical skills. I was there to see how far I could push my idea. At the end of the day we showcased everyone's work. I was nervous, but it was worth it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_0384.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_0386.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_0387.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_0388-1.jpeg) Three things happened that I couldn't get anywhere else: - **Accountability** \- Being around people actually doing the work - **Inspiration** \- Seeing what's possible when you take craft seriously. Amazing to see 10 other people all working on similar yet different projects - **Clarity** \- Finally talking about the thing instead of just thinking about it. Do people get the hypothesis? Do they believe the story? And I forgot how much playtesting id done. They were surprised by how much I'd accomplished with my simple prototype. Sometimes the best way to level up your work is to take it where you're obviously outclassed. The experts (the good ones) won't judge your technique - they'll help you see what you're actually building. I'll be back soon for more Gumbo. ### Joy, humour, and caring: Jony Ive & Patrick Collison in conversation URL: https://www.howardgray.net/joy-humour-and-caring-jony-ive-patrick-collison-in-conversation/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:29:54.000Z I find myself quite allergic to much of the Silicon Valley tech scene: the posturing, the co-opting of terms, the double talking. But this weekend I found an antidote. Jony Ive and Patrick Collison spoke at Stripe's conference - a breath of fresh air in our hyperventilating tech world. A nice reminder that you don't need to be a bombastic sociopath to be successful. Their conversation has a meditative quality - a quiet call to action for those making things deliberately, with joy, empowering others, creating little moments. Topics include: - Why joy and humor are underestimated in design and business - Prioritizing the user's evolving nature as a person - The magic of making breakfast for each other vs sitting in conference rooms Two quotes that stayed with me: > "Simplicity is trying to succinctly express the essence of something, its purpose and role in our life." > "If you care about each other, you might just be in danger of listening… what kills most ideas is people desperate to share an opinion." If I can take one thing: **Good design tells people you care about them.** And remember, you can design almost anything: an email, a meal, a meeting. It's not reserved for the special ones. If you're producing any kind of creative work, please watch this. I don't say that lightly. P.S. Like a good sports referee, Patrick is a masterful interviewer you barely notice. And the final minute of the 60 is the best of all. ### Ojisan magic: The trading card game that’s reviving a town URL: https://www.howardgray.net/ojisan-magic-the-trading-card-game-thats-reviving-a-town/ Last updated: 2025-05-17T18:58:48.000Z How do you highlight peoples' unique abilities - and connect a community at the same time? A small town in Japan may have the answer - and it's delightful. In Kawara, the local community created "Ojisan Trading Cards" featuring their local middle-aged men and their special skills - and it's become a sensation that's breathing new life into their town. The game is beautifully simple: each card features a local man with "hit points" and "magic points" based on their real-life skills. Players battle with these cards - the retired robotics expert might face off against the former train driver or the local soba chef - with the player holding the most cards at the end declared the winner. Why I'm completely smitten with this idea: - It's brilliantly simple yet profound - turning ordinary people into local celebrities, making the invisible visible - The delight of children collecting cards of everyday heroes, then using their special skills in friendly battles - Cross-generational connections: kids now recognize and chat with adults they previously wouldn't have noticed - When children said "make this a game!"... the adults listened - How something analog and distinctly un-digital is proving more engaging than countless high-tech attempts at community building - The ripple effect as neighboring towns create their own versions and visitors come from as far as Europe to experience the phenomenon The one thing that would make this even more wonderful? Including women in future editions to showcase the full spectrum of community wisdom. Format innovation and smart design can make such a huge impact: unlocking hidden talents, bridging generational divides, and transforming how we see each other. Sometimes the simplest games are the most powerful tools for connection. And a prompt to ponder: **If you were to design your own version of Ojisan Trading Cards for your organization or scene, which three people would you feature first, and what would their special abilities be?** I know who I'd pick... [Full story here >](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/27/its-done-wonders-trading-card-game-featuring-middle-aged-men-revives-japanese-town?ref=howardgray.net) ### Yale's Bad Bunny course reveals the future of learning URL: https://www.howardgray.net/yales-bad-bunny-course-reveals-the-future-of-learning/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T22:56:24.000Z Yale University just launched a course on Bad Bunny. Easy to roll your eyes, right? But hang on. There's something much smarter happening here… Bad Bunny is a Puerto Rican rapper who's become a global phenomenon. He was Spotify's most-streamed artist worldwide for three consecutive years (2020-2022) and his album "Un Verano Sin Ti" is Spotify's most-streamed album EVER. This particular bunny rabbit is big as well as bad. But the Yale course isn't about celebrity worship - it's using Bad Bunny as a lens to explore: - Puerto Rican diaspora experiences - How reggaeton connects to colonial legacies and policing - The musical evolution from bomba and plena to modern sounds It came about when Prof. Albert Laguna, an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race & Migration at Yale was inspired while walking around New Orleans listening to Bad Bunny's latest album. Pop culture at its best becomes the doorway, not the destination. The beats grab you, pull you in, and suddenly you're exploring colonial history and migration patterns. That's the sleight of hand that makes learning stick - when you're vibing to the rhythm but also absorbing something deeper. The key challenge is that the learning design has to be even better than usual - sharp, relevant, substantive. When you nail it - that's when the magic happens. Art & Science in perfect sync. When the cultural figure becomes a lens for learning, not the learning itself. A question on my mind for you: **Which cultural figure - living or dead - would make for the most fascinating university course? And why?** ### Two Pilates studios - and the great capability divide URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-pilates-studios-and-the-great-capability-divide/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:02:37.000Z There are two Pilates studios in my neighborhood that perfectly illustrate what's happening to skills and capabilities in our changing economy. Wut? No, I’m serious. The first is independent, founder-owned. Small, intimate space with a little garden out back. They've got digital booking systems, sure, but the essence is handcrafted. They weathered the pandemic and came out the other side. The teachers are individuals with unique backgrounds and approaches that regular clients come to know. Most have Instagram accounts but none are influencers. The second just opened. It's a franchise, part of a rapidly scaling global brand. Classes are 50% larger, and while there's technically an instructor wearing a headset microphone, most of the class follows pre-recorded videos on large screens. The instructor's primary job isn't to teach but to serve as a hype person—counting down reps, shouting encouragement, occasionally adjusting posture. It's not really a Pilates class - it’s a branded fitness experience, packaged as a lifestyle. Neither approach is inherently better, but they do represent the bifurcation happening across nearly every profession. At one end: craft-based capability building. Deeply personalized, human-centered, and relatively unscalable. The experience is intimately tied to specific people and their expertise. It scales… horribly. At the other: systematized, standardized. Highly scalable, technology-enabled, with humans serving primarily as facilitators of pre-determined routines. Goal-driven. Metric focused. Optimized. **What happens next?** The industrial studio will likely become increasingly AI-driven. The instructor is fundamentally a cost—interchangeable, following a script. I know my instructor's name is Alex, but nothing about her background, methodology, or why she teaches. She could be incredible, but I have no idea. She's neither fully human connection nor fully technology, occupying a middle space that's acutely vulnerable to disruption. As AI advances, these middle-capability roles will get squeezed. Hard. The model will thrive as a business, optimized for efficiency and scale, but the human element will continue to diminish. Meanwhile, the craft studio—despite its limited scale with only eight machines—creates connection. I know Adam's teaching style, background, influences, favorite music, and pacing preferences. I go there not because of any Instagram presence but because I know him as a person. At the franchise, I consume a product. At the independent studio, I participate in a relationship. This divide is appearing in knowledge work too. At one end, we'll see an explosion of industrial, AI-enhanced capability building—standardized, efficient, and increasingly automated. At the other, deeply human expertise that AI can augment but not replace. In the latter, there are - to quote Liam Neeson - a very specific set of skills. The gap between these worlds is widening, not shrinking. And it’s widening REALLY QUICKLY. I dont think people quite grasp this. Hence the capital letters. The most vulnerable place? The middle—where you're neither creating uniquely human value nor fully leveraging technological scale. So the key questions become: 1. **Which model are you building capability for?** 2. **Which capabilities do you focus on developing?** The Wavetable team and I have developed a skills taxonomy framework that helps map capabilities for both models. If you're navigating this divide and would find it useful, drop me a line and I'll share it. Because whether you're designing deeply human experiences or building scalable systems, the approach to building those capabilities couldn't be more different. --- P.S. In my last 12 pilates classes I have seen another man… once. Go figure. Maybe that's another capability gap waiting to be filled…? ### Why creative blocks don't solve themselves at your desk URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-creative-blocks-dont-solve-themselves-at-your-desk/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T22:53:38.000Z I spend a lot of time at my desk. The classic introvert's comfort zone. It's productive. Measurable. Safe. Stepping out? Can feel like wasted time. Hard to justify the ROI. Especially in New York. Expensive, relentless. A city that demands optimization of every minute. And yet… Yesterday was a reminder. An event hosted by Payoneer pulled me from my cave. Met founders from Tel Aviv, Belgrade, Delhi, Philippines. We tackled real challenges together, built solutions on the fly. Made connections strong enough we're meeting again next week. I planned to leave at 3pm. Then 4\. Then it was 6. I'd already mentally canceled on a downtown meetup. "They're strategy people. I don't belong there." Walking through Midtown - past Nasdaq, through Times Square's neon wilderness, past the new "Glengarry Glen Ross" production - I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in a year. Thirty seconds later, a famous comedian walked past. One block further, a well-known startup founder. No one blinked. I talked myself back into the meetup. Just 30 minutes. The 6:30 downtown F train: the full spectrum of humanity compressed into a metal tube. On Bleecker Street - reinvented roughly 37 times since I've lived here - I found the bar. Familiar faces, new ones. My "quick appearance" stretched to three hours. Met someone I'd been following online for five years but never had the courage to approach. I'm still an introvert. Still need to recharge. Still need time and space for building, writing, all the things. I’m tired today, honestly. But. In-person connection is 4,367 times more potent than Zoom. (Approximately) And NYC enables a density of unexpected collisions that's almost impossible to replicate elsewhere. When spring hits this city, there's an electric quality: ideas, connections, possibilities seem to hover in the air, waiting to be grabbed. And it's all because of the people. My best ideas rarely emerge from screens. They come from human interaction. From conversations that veer sideways. From the surprise of another perspective. From wandering. This city can be exhausting, demanding, occasionally soul-crushing. People? Yes, they can be all of those things too. And they're absolutely everything. **Why does this matter?** Because creative blocks hardly ever solve themselves in isolation. That product problem you're stuck on? That business model that isn't quite working? The solution probably isn’t in another Notion doc or Figma board. This week, step away from your desk. Find humans. Even if you're an introvert. Especially if you are. ### Desert Island Ive: What Apple's design legend reveals when stripped of the corporate context URL: https://www.howardgray.net/desert-island-ive-what-apples-design-legend-reveals-when-stripped-of-the-corporate-context/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T16:07:32.000Z I know we've all seen enough Apple case studies to last several lifetimes, but yesterday I stumbled across a different kind of case study format - courtesy of a media brand that’s been running since before your parents met. Desert Island Discs started as a BBC radio programme in 1942, asking guests to choose eight tracks, a book, and a luxury item to take to their imaginary island exile. The format has remained largely unchanged for 80+ years. Sometimes the best designs need little iteration. Speaking of design, this week's episode features Jony Ive, Apple's former Chief Design Officer. There's something refreshing about his manner - no bombast, just thoughtful reflection on craft, detail, and elevating the unheard. Plus a great selection of songs. A couple of quotes that jumped out: > “ I struggle with being present in the now because I spend so much of my life in my head in the future. The way I try to understand the future is I’m obsessed with the past. And so the bit that often gets missed out is right now.” > “When you struggle, then a goal can become just commercial issues. I understand — I mean, if you’re losing lots of money, you’d like to stop losing lots of money. The problem there is it means you focus on money, and you’re normally losing money because the products aren’t right. And \[at Apple\] from ’92 to ’97, it was a very, very difficult season. One that I am so grateful for — but I still get the shivers sometimes.” As Ive talks with Lauren Laverne, the conversation shifts from design principles to his formative years, and to his education. He's the son of two teachers, and his father played a crucial role in ensuring Design & Technology became part of the UK national curriculum. But what really resonated was how Ive felt marginalized in school - struggling with conventional academics while his creative talent went unrecognized. It's a story that still plays out today: not just in school, but in university and workplace learning too. The most innovative thinking often comes from those who don't fit neatly into our rigid learning boxes. But just as importantly, the right conditions can enable anyone to be creative and innovative. When we create environments that allow all the different types of genius to emerge, that's when magic can happen. It’s just a question of design. Whether you're into tech, design, education innovation, or just enjoy a format that gets beneath the surface, this one delivers. Give it a listen - on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. [BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Sir Jony Ive, designerSir Jony Ive, designer, shares the soundtrack of his life with Lauren Laverne.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/icon/p0kr999p.jpg)BBC![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/thumbnail/p0kr999p.jpg)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00289vf?ref=howardgray.net) P.S. There's a surprising song twist that makes this episode unique - but I won't spoil that for you. ### The secret ritual behind Brentford FC's success (that has nothing to do with data) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-secret-ritual-behind-brentford-fcs-success-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-data/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T15:53:36.000Z What if the key to team performance isn't in the data, but in childhood photos? Brentford FC are Premier League underdogs who consistently punch above their weight - despite a budget just 10% of what Manchester City and Arsenal spend. While their data-driven "Moneyball" approach gets the headlines, there's a ritual they practice that no algorithm could design… Each week, one player stands before their teammates with a childhood photo and tells its story. Inevitably, it often starts awkwardly. But as these athletes from Denmark, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Korea and beyond talk about the environments they grew up in - and the people who shaped them - something shifts. These aren't just nostalgic stories - they're the foundations that built world-class athletes, revealing influences that never show up in analytics dashboards or scouting reports. Yeah, I know. It's easy to see the through-line for footballers. Most have wanted to play since they were kids. What about the rest of us? While you may have told your boss otherwise, you probably weren't dreaming about your current role when you were 10. Yet I'd bet there's a skill, an area, a zone of genius that connects back. For me, it's creating spaces for people to connect and discover new things. At 10, making magazines. At 13, coaching my brother's football team. At 15, working in a record store. Today, designing workshops and learning experiences. Different contexts, same thread. Next time you're questioning your path, dig out - or just picture - a childhood photo. Take a minute with it: - What naturally drew me in at this age? - What made me lose track of time? - What talents did adults notice that I might have forgotten? I know it sounds corny. It is. But it's also not. Your current work might look different on the surface, but underneath there might just be a consistent pattern – a way of engaging with the world that's uniquely yours. What childhood thread connects to your work today? ### What a DJ's 4,500 parties teach us about creative longevity URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-a-djs-4-500-parties-teach-us-about-creative-longevity/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T15:58:51.000Z **"How... how could you STILL be doing *THAT*?"** It's what they don't say out loud when you've been following a creative path for decades. Canadian DJ and music producer Tiga has been at this for 25 years. This morning I stumbled across a live set he posted from the incredible Robert Johnson venue in Frankfurt. What caught me wasn't just the music, but the note he shared alongside it. It made me think about the paths we follow. The tension between what we love and what others think we "should" be doing instead. The strange looks when you're still pursuing that thing you started years ago. You don't need to be into music to understand this. That feeling when their voices - or even just their eyes - say "how... how could you STILL be doing *THAT*?" But if you can, if you are - isn't that something to celebrate? The persistence. The craft. Finding your groove and staying in it. And it doesn't even need to be your full-time occupation. Perhaps that's the most important part. Here's the DJ set. It's truly excellent. But the note? That might be even better. *the worlds gone crazy™️ and a lot has changed since 1992.* *but this hasn’t, not really. this is what i do, and have been doing every night since i was 17.* *i find records i love, not records i like, i fly to a city. i take a nap. i play the records for people. they dance. i get paid i go home. sometimes i actually think there might be something wrong with me to STILL be doing this. am i stupid?* *HOW…. how could you STILL be playing records for people at 5am. shouldn’t you have developed an APP? A line of Wellness Products? surely you should have “sold your company” by now? WRITE A DECK? raise capital!!!!* *but then i play a set like this (link above) and remember that this is, in fact, as good as it gets, that the core idea i had as a 16year old was actually the BEST idea: to live a life surrounded and protected by MUSIC. armed with your favourite songs, the ones that keep you young and naive and confidant, the ones you want to share with friends.* *so that is DJing for me. simple. not particularly revolutionary… except for the fact that to be excited and happy seems revolutionary these days.* *also: i’ve played about 4500 parties. and most are like 6 or 7 on tens….. sometimes an 8\. this was a 10\. and there are lots of exclusives and THREE of my new tracks. and its been recorded WITH all the crowd noise…. trust me its a good one. if you only listen to one of my 4 hour sets this year…. make it this one.* *love from montreal via Offenbach.* ### Why great event design doesn't need to be complicated URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-great-event-design-doesnt-need-to-be-complicated/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:05:32.000Z I don't like big groups. Networking events? Yak. My instinct is to retreat. Hide. Avoid. Part of the problem is that many events are poorly designed. But here's the thing – great experience design doesn't need to be complicated or expensive. Just thoughtful. When XP Land invited me to their NYC event at The Shed this week (yeah, yeah, low key flex, sue me) I had the perfect excuse: Dad duty. Combined with my introvert tendencies, a polite decline was EASY. But they did a couple of things that changed my mind. First, they actively encouraged me to bring my 3-year-old along. Despite the swanky arts venue, people in fancy threads, and high-end cheese and salami platters, they made it clear he was welcome. So instead of finding an easy out, we embarked on an evening adventure through NYC’s beating heart. The best bit? These little conversation cards they created. So simple, yet brilliant. An anchor. If you don't know anyone, you can just ask someone if they know any of the three people listed on your card. And they'd really thought about it – considered each person, what they're like, what they're into, who might connect with whom. It makes you wonder - “Hmm, why did they pair ME with THESE people…?”. They even made a 3-year-old's version and made sure the servers had a glass of milk available for him. Wonderful. It cost practically nothing but made the evening for both of us. Even though it was a lonnnng schlep home on the subway, it did remind me why it's good to say "Yes, and..." to the unexpected invitation - especially with a little one in tow. These are the memories and experiences that shape them. And me. Work and parenting don't always need to be separate worlds. Thank you to the XP Land gang - Erica, Andrew, Lori and crew - for making it happen. P.S. He ate a mountain of cheese, salami… and olives. And stashed a few chunks of cheddar in his stroller for breakfast. NYC hustle, perhaps. ### New business: The commercial alchemy that defies systematization URL: https://www.howardgray.net/new-business-the-commercial-alchemy-that-defies-systematization/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T16:09:49.000Z New Business. Not quite Sales. Not exactly Marketing. Different from Business Development. Something more elusive. I first encountered it in advertising agencies, where the Head of New Business was this mysterious figure I couldn't quite figure out. Initially, I thought they just schmoozed their way through long lunches and industry events. One of these figures was a guy called Sam Kelly. He was clearly very good at what he did - I just didn't know what it was. And I never had the courage to ask him about it (hi, Sam). Years later, I realized what I'd missed. New Business isn't schmoozing - it's reading people, putting them at ease. Being interesting, and interested. Understanding motivations that aren't written in briefs or whispered in meeting rooms. Then there's the commercial alchemy - designing deals that actually make sense for both sides. Creating value rather than just capturing it. In a world where the tech industry seems to co-opt every term under the sun, everything's become a function, a system. Sales has its playbook. Marketing its metrics. Business Development its pipeline. But New Business remains delightfully resistant to systematization. It's quicksilver - part art, part instinct, part commercial savvy. You can't quite grab it, but you know it when you see it. And here's the thing - whether you're a freelancer, founder, or corporate climber, you'll need the skills of New Business sooner or later. The ability to create and design opportunities rather than just chase them down. P.S. If you're wondering what the difference is between this and Business Development, Seth Godin's post on the topic is vital reading. ### How on earth are people cranking out so much content? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-on-earth-are-people-cranking-out-so-much-content/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:07:34.000Z I know I shouldn't ask, but how on earth are people cranking out so much content on places like LinkedIn? You know who I’m talking about - they're everywhere. Posting, sharing, scaling. Cheatsheets, templates, videos, add a 🔥 in the comments. Meanwhile I'm sitting here, staring at my riffs backlog, watching another "I'm humbled to announce..." post float by, thinking: how do they do it? Are they independently wealthy? Working 2-hour days? Living in their parents’ basement? Everything outsourced? And why does LinkedIn keep pushing these posts to my feed when I've explicitly said I'm not interested? I know - "comparison is the thief of joy". But I'm a person. So are you. Between keeping the lights on, client work, attempting to parent with some degree of competence, self-administered pedicures, and trying not to lose the plot - when does all this 'content' actually happen? It takes me an hour or two - at least - to write anything that doesn't make me cringe. To find a spark. To make something that actually feels worth your time to read. Something beyond the "10 ways to use AI to optimize your toenail trimming routine“ templates. When I do write, I'm chasing that electric feeling. Maybe you know the one - when you stumble upon an interesting idea and the dots start to connect. Yes, it's messy. Scattered. But it's... alive. And you can't really plan it. Especially when your 3 year old wants: RAISINS! NOW, DADA. NO, NOT THOSE ONES. So I'm asking, honestly and with a heady mix of angst and curiosity: - **How do you keep the output flowing without losing your soul to the machine?** - **How do you decide what's actually worth sharing versus what might just get engagement?** ⠀ I genuinely want to know. Not for the sake of 'scaling my audience' or 'optimizing my funnel' (sounds painful) or whatever else the algorithm seems to think I should be doing. I ask because I would like to keep it flowing. Maybe you would too. P.S. Now I've finally published this, drafts folder is down to... 254\. And, naturally, I’m both thrilled and humbled to inform you of this. ### An antidote to AI tinnitus URL: https://www.howardgray.net/an-antidote-to-ai-tinnitus/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:21:18.000Z Can you hear it? That weird buzzing in your ear. Yup, it's the low-level hum of uncertainty about AI's impact on our careers, paired with the high-pitched screech of hot takes and prophecies. But here's a possible antidote to AI tinnitus - a quote from OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman: *"Agency, willfulness, and determination will likely be extremely valuable. Correctly deciding what to do and figuring out how to navigate an ever-changing world will have huge value; resilience and adaptability will be helpful skills to cultivate."* I believe he's right. After a decade of helping creative professionals wrestle with change (and doing plenty of wrestling myself), I’ve seen these themes surface again and again. But these words get tossed around so much they can lose meaning. What does cultivating them actually look like in the real world? Here's one way to think through it: 1. **Start with mindset**: Before any tactical moves, get clear on your relationship with change. Most of us don't enjoy change, even if we pretend to be champions of disruption. 2. **Set a compass**: Define a direction based on your unique strengths and interests, not just what the hype cycle dictates. Be mindful of becoming contorted by the crowd. 3. **Identify specific skills**: Break down broad concepts like "adaptability" into concrete capabilities that apply to your day-to-day. 4. **Create sandboxes**: Building stuff like 'determination' is not easy. Find low-stakes environments to experiment, fail, and learn. 5. **Build feedback loops**: How much agency did you take? Where might you have you been more resilent?Gather input from peers, mentors, and your own reflection. Or ask an AI... :) The framework isn't perfect, but it's a start. But whether AI ends up being revolutionary or just another shiny tool in our kit, these capabilities Altman outlines will keep us grounded. What say thee? How do you think about building these skills when everything's shifting under our feet? ### The Art of the Interview: What Makes a Great Interviewer? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-art-of-the-interview-what-makes-a-great-interviewer/ Last updated: 2025-01-26T18:52:08.000Z What makes someone a great interviewer? It’s hard to say. Is it their curiosity? The way they listen? Their ability to put people at ease? Probably all of that—and something intangible on top. Sam Fragoso, host of [*Talk Easy*](https://talkeasypod.com/?ref=howardgray.net), is one of those rare interviewers who just gets it. He’s been at it for eight years, and it shows. (He’s also barely 30… which, let’s be honest, is slightly depressing for the rest of us.) His recent conversations with Josh Brolin, Jia Tolentino, and Francis Ford Coppola are all masterful: thoughtful, surprising, and deeply human. Fragoso shows up armed with extraordinary preparation and knowledge about his guests, yet somehow keeps the vibe spontaneous and easy. Here’s the thing: he also breaks “the rules.” He’ll interrupt. He sometimes talks as much as his guests. But he’ll also let a silence stretch for six or seven minutes, giving guests the space to fully unravel their thoughts. And it works. He never seems overawed by celebrity, and he even gets notoriously guarded people to open up—and enjoy themselves. Interviewing is one of those underrated skills we don’t talk about enough. Maybe because it’s so hard to pin down. - How does someone *actually* get good at it? - How do you recognize it when they are? - And here’s the meta twist: how do you build the skill of spotting *any* skill? This isn’t just for podcast producers—it’s invaluable in leadership, hiring, or any creative collaboration. Who’s your favorite interviewer? And what makes them stand out? ### MSCHF's secret weapon isn't what you think URL: https://www.howardgray.net/mschfs-secret-weapon-isnt-what-you-think/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:10:07.000Z What’s the secret to MSCHF’s creative brilliance? The Brooklyn-based collective - known for projects like Lil Nas X’s “Satan Shoes” and the viral Big Red Boots - has something unexpected up its sleeve: a *curriculum*. But this isn’t the rigid, corporate kind. Instead, it’s a dynamic system for learning, brainstorming, and experimenting that’s baked into their company DNA. Here’s how their founder, Gabe Whaley, describes it: - **Everyone’s a creator.** Whether you’re in legal, finance, or production, you’re expected to pitch ideas. The best ideas often come from people *outside* the typical “creative” roles. - **They run like a school.** Brainstorming sessions follow a quarterly curriculum with themes and topics to guide exploration. - **The six-month test.** Ideas are shortlisted, then left to sit. After six months, they’re re-evaluated. If they still excite the team, they’re greenlit for production. This isn’t brainstorming for the sake of it. It’s a structured way to embed curiosity, experimentation, and learning into the fabric of their team—and it works. Here’s the real kicker: why don’t more organizations do this? Education doesn’t have to be boring or rigid. It can be dynamic, inclusive, and deeply tied to a company’s culture and goals. At MSCHF, the result isn’t just great ideas—it’s a thriving creative culture. So here’s a provocation: - What would a “curriculum” for your team look like? - What if your company didn’t just train employees—but built a system to *learn and experiment* together? Because the new educators? They don’t look like you’d expect ### The punk path to landing Nike as a client URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-punk-path-to-landing-nike-as-a-client/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T16:03:10.000Z You want Nike as a client. But you're a zero-budget startup. Here's the wild way two founders landed the swoosh... Early 2000s, New York City. Two young upstarts have just quit their jobs to start a creative agency. The kind of move that makes your parents nervous. But hey, they've got a plan. Sort of. They're gonna launch a magazine. Here's the thing though - magazines need advertisers. The pair know Nike would be perfect for their focus on music and culture. You're in their shoes. Cash is tight. The phone isn't ringing. And you're running out of runway. What's your play? A) Dial for dollars until your fingers bleed B) Chase down some investment (maybe that trust fund kid from college?) C) Something that skirts the line between genius and lawsuit Want to know what they actually did? They straight up lifted Nike ads from other magazines. Photocopied them. Ran them without asking. This generated zero income. And when Nike's agency Wieden & Kennedy found out, they were... let's say "less than thrilled." But then something interesting happened. Nike called. Not long after, our heroes found themselves pitching for the Air Force One 25th anniversary campaign. Against W+K themselves. And they won. Fast forward to today: Cornerstone agency and The Fader magazine (founded by Jon Cohen and the late Rob Stone) have landed more Nike projects than they can count. Sometimes the most punk rock move is the one that works. What would you have done? P.S. For the full story of Cornerstone and The Fader, catch Jon Cohen on the Bob Lefsetz podcast. ### Lemon automation: How Chick-fil-A processes 20% of America's lemons... and what it means for your career URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lemon-automation-how-chick-fil-a-processes-20-of-americas-lemons-and-what-it-means-for-your-career/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T16:05:05.000Z 🍋 Chick-fil-A's lemon juice factory processes 1.6m pounds of lemons daily. That's roughly 20% of ALL lemons in the US supply chain. For a single menu item. At a chicken restaurant. But here's where it gets interesting for anyone thinking about their career trajectory... Their automation system saves 10,000 hours of manual labor every single day. That's equivalent to 1,250 full-time employees - just for squeezing lemons. The factory only runs 4 days a week. They've built such an efficient system that they don't need the fifth day. Two career lessons hiding in plain sight: **🤖 1\. Automation creates opportunities in unexpected places** While their robots handle the squeezing, humans are needed to design, maintain, and optimize these systems. The future isn't about competing with automation (seriously, fuhgeddaboudit...) - it's about mastering its potential. **⚙️ 2\. Systems thinking is the new superpower** Understanding how things connect - from supply chain to sustainability - is becoming invaluable across every field. So many people underestimate this skill set. Next time you're mapping out your career moves, remember: the biggest opportunities might be in the places others see as routine or mundane. P.S. When life gives you lemons... sell them to the cosmetics industry. (Yup. Chick-fil-A sells their leftover lemon oils to make your face cream. Sustainable, and profitable.) ### Er... how are people keeping up with the content machine? No. Really. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/er-how-are-people-keeping-up-with-the-content-machine-no-really/ Last updated: 2025-01-15T02:09:25.000Z I know I shouldn't ask, but how on earth are people cranking out so much content on platforms like LinkedIn? You know those people—they're everywhere. Posting, sharing, scaling. Cheatsheets, templates, videos, calls to action. And I'm sitting here, staring at my riffs backlog, thinking: how on earth do they do it? (No, seriously. How?) Are they independently wealthy? Working 2-hour days? Living with their parents? Everything outsourced? I know, I know. "Comparison is the thief of joy". But I'm a person. So are you. And this keeps gnawing at me. Between keeping the lights on, client work, attempting to parent with some degree of competence, and trying not to completely lose the plot - when does all this ‘content’ actually happen? It takes me at least an hour or two to write anything that doesn't make me cringe. To find a spark. To make something that actually feels worth your time to read. And please - I beg you - don't say "systems" or "content calendars." I know about Atomic Habits. I know about batching content like some kind of social media meal prep Sunday. But it’s mechanical. For precision and predictability. For churning out widgets. That electric feeling when you stumble upon an interesting idea? That creative flow when you're exploring something new? That's human. Yes, it’s messy. But it's... alive. And you can't really schedule it. Especially when your 3 year old wants RAISINS. NOW, DADA. So I'm asking, honestly and with a mix of angst and curiosity: - How do you keep the output flowing without losing your soul to the machine? - How do you stay creatively lithe while still getting things done? - How do you balance art and algorithm? I genuinely want to know. Not for the sake of 'scaling my audience' or 'optimizing my funnel' (sounds painful) or whatever else they say I should be doing. But because I would like to keep it flowing. Maybe you do too. P.S. Now I've finally published this, drafts folder is down to 254. ### What's your dream project? (No, your real one) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/whats-your-dream-project-no-your-real-one-2/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:18:08.000Z What's your dream project? (No, your real one). Simple question. Often difficult to answer. But well worth it. I was at dinner recently when someone posed this. As we all sat there searching for words (or mumbling "good question..."), the questioner – who runs a design agency – went first: > "Design an airport." So, we asked them why. What followed was fascinating. Their explanation revealed all kinds of stuff - from airline operations, to global cuisine, to politics, to their own family background. Here's what I've learned from asking this question since: 1. Answer it plainly first. Let it sit. 2. Acknowledge you are probably lying to yourself. Repeat step 1. 3. Remove all constraints: Time. Money. Fear. Status. What does it look and feel like now? Turn up the volume. 4. Try a few follow ups: - What am I really chasing? - What small steps could move me closer? - How am I complicit in the creating the conditions I say I don’t want? (h/t Jerry Colonna for this one) Do this alone, or if at all possible, with a friend over coffee. So, what's your dream project? Feel free to share in the comments, because, well, y’never know… P.S. Mine? A bizarre love triangle of Harvard Business School, HQ Trivia, and Red Bull Music Academy. That's all I'm saying for now – currently chasing it. ### Paul Newman's four career stages (and what they mean for you) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/paul-newmans-four-career-stages-and-what-they-mean-for-you/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:12:26.000Z Paul Newman was one of the great American movie stars. He once said the life span of an actor has four stages... > "At the beginning of your career it's, 'Who is Paul Newman?' > Then it's, 'Get me Paul Newman.' > Then it's, 'Get me a young Paul Newman.' > And then? It's 'Who is Paul Newman?'" Just about every actor starts their story as a total unknown. Just about everyone ends it that way, too. This doesn't just apply to actors. Look at any career trajectory: First they don't know who you are Then they can't get enough of you (hopefully) Then they want the next version of you Then... well, y'know. Does this sound disempowering? I reckon it's the opposite. When you realize the vast majority of careers follows this arc, it frees you to focus on what matters: - Building while they're asking "who?" - Delivering while they're demanding - Reinventing while they're moving on - Creating your next chapter while they're forgetting the previous ones Newman's response to the fourth stage? He built a food company that's donated over $570 million to charity. Turns out "Who is Paul Newman?" was exactly the right question to ask. The real work happens in the spaces between the stages. You know that, though. The question is - what will you build in yours? ### Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: Going beyond the book URL: https://www.howardgray.net/last-night-a-dj-saved-my-life-going-beyond-the-book/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:43:13.000Z The Paradise Garage. Ministry of Sound. Space Ibiza. Berghain. From 1970s block parties to acid house summers. Disco's death to dubstep’s rise. The stories in "Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" are incredible. But reading it for the second time, I'm imagining something bigger. The book is wonderful - a definitive history of DJ culture from 1920s phonographs to Berlin after hours. It's about way more than DJs spinning records: it's history, language, anthropology, geography, and cultural revolution. Marketing, business, communication, tribes. Here’s the thing, though. I don't just want to read about the music. I want to hear it, feel it, understand it, see it, connect it. Imagine what this could be: • An immersive audio companion with the actual tracks being discussed • Local reading clubs that mix discussion with mini DJ sets • A facilitated course exploring each era with music, video, stories and maps • A Vision Pro experience letting you step into those pivotal club moments Books don't have to stay just books anymore. We've been exploring this "format extension" concept with several brands and individual creatives recently - taking core IP and reimagining it across new mediums and experiences. The opportunities are massive. Like any great DJ, it's about curating and remixing existing raw materials into something that hits differently What book would you love to see extended into new formats? And how would you extend it? P.S. Yes, I have a second copy. Leave a comment if you want it and Santa will drop it off. ### The Hidden Curriculum of First Jobs URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-hidden-curriculum-of-first-jobs/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:52:05.000Z Your first job probably taught you more than you realised. Not the career-starter, but that very first trade of hours for cash - perhaps when you were barely a teenager. These early experiences are fascinating time capsules. When we examine them closely, unexpected patterns emerge - beyond just showing up on time or dealing with customers. Here are three of mine: **📰 Newspaper Delivery (age 12-14)** - Wait, plumbers have their own magazine? - The same news story could be totally different in each paper - If you timed - and wrote - your Christmas card right, the tips got bigger **💿 Record Store (15-18)** - How to feel less intimidated by the cool twenty-somethings - Figuring out what someone would be into, before they knew - Even indie record stores had their own pecking order (aka, status games) **🥖 Supermarket Bakery (15-16)** - Big companies weren't just about 9-5 office jobs - There were bosses, and there were bosses' bosses - Reduced price pastries after 8pm = next week's pocket money Sure, the tricky bit is separating what I actually knew then versus what I'm projecting back from today. But here's what intrigues me: what if we could help young people recognize the value in what they're already noticing? Not to make them grow up faster, but to appreciate their natural insights. That 14-year-old who noticed different papers telling the same story differently was onto something important. The teenage baker who spotted opportunity in reduced pastries had glimpsed something fascinating about markets and value. There's something powerful in helping young people see the value in what they're already noticing - not to accelerate their growth, but to nurture their natural curiosity. What did you notice in your first job(s) that makes more sense now? Share your story with me, I'd love to hear it. ### The McCartney Method: Mastering the Magic of Audience Connection URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-mccartney-method-mastering-the-magic-of-audience-connection/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T17:05:36.000Z Paul McCartney leaves the front row empty at every show. In an industry transformed by CDs, MTV, Napster, and streaming, McCartney has stayed remarkably present. His operation runs deep - beyond his management company, he maintains a full-time team of 10 people focused solely on his personal projects. And he's hands-on, to say the least. For example, he personally checks the paper stock quality for vinyl releases. Paper not up to scratch? Release not happening. You might think by now he's focused on a Vegas residency or Christmas gigs in London. Nope. His reach is genuinely global. 35,000 people showing up for a gig at a football stadium in Paraguay? No problem. With this kind of pull, McCartney could easily charge $1000, $2500, even $10,000 for tickets. Instead, he caps them at $300. But here's the magic part: at every show, the front row starts empty. His tour promoter Barrie Marshall (who also works with Elton John, Cher, and Pink) has a brilliant system. Before each show, they find fans sitting way up in the "gods" - those distant seats where the stage looks tiny - and bring them down to the front row. They do this at every single show. Why? Two simple reasons: - No artist wants their front row full of people more interested in their phones than the performance - For that upgraded fan? Pure magic. A night they'll never forget. It's a beautiful intersection of three key elements: - Being hands-on with the details (those vinyl specs) - Creating unforgettable experiences (the front row upgrade) - Taking the long view (willingly leaving money on the table) Perhaps this approach to audience experience is part of what keeps you vital in a 60+ year career. And you don't need Beatle-level talent to do it. You just gotta notice what others miss. ## Sign up for Groove Theory the newsletter that helps creative professionals find own McCartney method. released every other Sunday. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### The underrated skill that'll define collaboration in 2025 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-underrated-skill-thatll-define-collaboration-in-2025/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:56:22.000Z I just spent 10x longer designing a whiteboard session than using it. Why? Because in 2025, this might be your highest leverage skill… A well-designed digital whiteboard session is like mise en place in a professional kitchen - when everything's prepped right, the team can cook at their highest level. They can maintain that groove for weeks. But get it wrong? You're just watching talented people's minds turn to mush in real-time, killing momentum. The team might end up cooking entirely different dishes. In today's hybrid work environment, this can be horribly expensive. Yes, templates are great... until everyone's using the same playbook and wondering why nothing feels fresh anymore. Tools like Miro, Mural and Whimsical are really just empty canvases. The differentiator is the invisible skill of experience design - answering questions like: - Who needs what from this session? - Which formats will unlock the right conversations? - How do we sequence so everything is clear? - What's the connective tissue between ideas? - How do we maintain momentum after? This means dozens, hundreds of small decisions. For my recent 4-person session, this meant 3 hours of design and 3 iterations of refinement. As work becomes more collaborative and remote-first, these design and facilitation skills are becoming critical. Most organizations still think a Miro license and a template library is enough. Meanwhile, their teams are burning hundreds of hours in poorly designed sessions. Digital whiteboard design: one of the most underrated skills for the next 5 years. P.S. While templates have their place, I'm curious about your creative solutions. We built our last session as a recording studio mixer to gauge interest in different topics. What's worked for your team? ### What's your dream project? (No, your real one). URL: https://www.howardgray.net/whats-your-dream-project-no-your-real-one/ Last updated: 2024-11-26T14:56:16.000Z Simple question. Often difficult to answer. But well worth it. I was at dinner recently when someone posed this. As we all sat there searching for words (or mumbling "good question..."), the questioner – who runs a design agency – went first: > "Design an airport." So, we asked them why. What followed was fascinating. Their explanation revealed all kinds of stuff - from airline operations, to global cuisine, to politics, to their own family background. Here's what I've learned from asking this question since: 1. Answer it plainly first. Let it sit. 2. Acknowledge you are probably lying to yourself. Repeat step 1. 3. Remove all constraints: Time. Money. Fear. Status. What does it look and feel like now? Turn up the volume. 4. Try a few follow ups: - What am I really chasing? - What small steps could move me closer? - How am I complicit in the creating the conditions I say I don’t want? (h/t Jerry Colonna for this one) Do this alone, or if at all possible, with a friend over coffee. So, what's your dream project? Feel free to [share yours with me](https://www.howardgray.net/contact/), because, well, y’never know… P.S. Mine? A bizarre love triangle of Harvard Business School, HQ Trivia, and Red Bull Music Academy. That's all I'm saying for now – currently chasing it. ### Behind the Scenes of Premier League Football (RefCam) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/behind-the-scenes-of-premier-league-football-refcam/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T22:15:07.000Z _No content available._ ### Jeffrey Katzenburg's magical 4am question URL: https://www.howardgray.net/jeffrey-katzenburgs-4am-question/ Last updated: 2024-11-24T21:02:02.000Z It’s 4am in Los Angeles. Somewhere, a phone rings. On the other end is Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks, architect of Disney’s animation renaissance, and, by many accounts, an unrelenting force of nature. Jeffrey is on his treadmill. The question is always the same: “What do you need?” You’d think being woken at 4am would set most people off. But for those who got the call, it wasn’t an annoyance—it was a challenge. Katzenberg wasn’t micromanaging. He was proactive, clearing roadblocks: addressing issues before they escalated, securing resources for new ideas, or simply letting his team know their work mattered. With movie stars, “What do you need?” built trust, showing he valued their contributions and aligned their personal stakes with the project’s success. For creative partners, it fostered boldness and creativity. For executives, it reframed negotiations as collaboration. No matter the context, the message was the same: I’m here to help you succeed. Here’s the thing: how many of us actually ask this question? It’s so simple. But so few people ask it. Most of us don’t because we think we already know the answer—or we’re afraid of what we might hear. But Katzenberg leaned into it. Those early morning calls weren’t a flex (ok, maybe a little). They were symbols of leadership: service; clarity; removing barriers. Katzenberg’s question was simple—elegant, even. Great questions don’t happen by accident. They’re designed. That’s why me and the [**Wavetable**](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net) crew created a new hands-on workshop dedicated to the art and science of asking better questions. The right question, asked at the right time, can break through the clutter, build stronger connections, and bring people together to solve real problems. Whether it’s through an accelerated program, a single session, or a top-secret adventure game (yes, really!), it’s designed to help you and your team build stronger connections, have better conversations, and make a real difference—together. And no, you don’t need to be on a treadmill at 4am to start. Want to learn more? Drop me a DM. P.S. “What do you need?” wasn’t even the real question. There were three questions behind it. That’s for another post… ### What Matthew McConaughey Can Teach Us About How Work - and Education - Really Gets Done URL: https://www.howardgray.net/mcconaughey-alt-education/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:30:18.000Z You probably know Matthew McConaughey from Interstellar, Dallas Buyers Club, or a bunch of 90s rom coms. But here's something wild: he also teaches one of the most interesting classes you're likely to find. At the University of Texas, McConaughey teaches a class called "Script to Screen." And it's genius. Here's why every creative professional should pay attention (yes, that includes you, you're a creative professional even if you don't believe it): The class starts with a book - one that became a movie. Everyone reads it. Then, McConaughey reveals the first draft of the screenplay. *"Wait - where did that storyline go?!". "Why did they change that character's name?"* Next comes draft two. *"Hold on - what happened to my favorite scene?"* And draft three. *"The whole second act is different! The ending's completely changed!"* Finally, the class watch the finished film. And they piece it all together - from script to screen. He's done this with eight of his own movies - from Dazed and Confused to Mud to The Gentleman. But here's the real magic: This isn't just about making movies. It's about something much bigger. McConaughey is exposing the messy middle - that space between idea and execution where real work happens. Where decisions get made. Where creativity meets constraints. This isn't just for tanned Texan Oscar-winners. It's relevant for all of us. Because these are exactly the skills we need: - **Seeing how ideas evolve through feedback and iteration** - **Understanding why certain decisions win out over others** - **Learning to kill your darlings (even when it hurts)** - **Recognising patterns in creative problem-solving** - **Building resilience when your vision meets reality** The genius? By revealing the gaps between versions - the space between intention and final product - McConaughey teaches something far more valuable than filmmaking. He shows us how work actually gets done. The learning, training, education that works - it doesn't just do theory. It doesn't show only highlight reels. It helps us see - and explore - the iterations, dead-ends, and pivot points. I've spent a long time working with creative teams and founders, and I keep coming back to this truth: the magic isn't in the end product. It's in these spaces between. That's where the real shifts happen. P.S. Which movie would you love to see get the 'Script to Screen' treatment? I'm torn between 'Jurassic Park' and 'LA Confidential'... ### Weaving Threads: The Great Compression of Mid-Career URL: https://www.howardgray.net/weaving-threads-the-great-compression-of-mid-career/ Last updated: 2024-11-24T20:57:11.000Z **Early career is all about loose threads. But mid-career? That’s when the weaving really gets tricky…** People often talk about how challenging early career is. I get it. I’m not sure I’d want to be starting my career right now—navigating hybrid/remote setups, bouncing between threads of optionality that can feel more like frayed ends. Sure, there’s potential, but weaving it all together into something solid is no small feat. But here’s the thing: I wonder if mid-career professionals are actually under more threat. Mid-career is getting squeezed under the weight of what Brian Morrissey calls *The Great Compression.* Early-career professionals have hustle, energy, and curiosity—qualities that can be channeled to build strong foundations. They take those frayed ends and weave something new, creating patchworks that are uniquely theirs. The ideal employee now is a *new generalist*: someone with a core specialty and flexible skills across multiple areas. That unique patchwork is hugely valuable—it’s what sets you apart. But for mid-career professionals? Weaving gets harder. You don’t move quite as fast, some of the colors fade, and finding new threads gets tougher. **So, what do you need to succeed?** - **Early Career:** This is your time to experiment, find your core specialty, and put in the reps. Think geology—time and pressure shape the foundation. A few threads, then the weaving begins. (Excuse the mixed metaphor.) - **Mid Career:** The challenge isn’t just about skills—it’s mindset. Staying adaptable, unlearning old patterns, and embracing new ways of thinking are harder but essential. It’s not easy, but it’s learnable. No matter where you are in your career, you gotta keep weaving. I’ve been thinking a lot about these transitions—how the threads we choose, and the way we weave them, shape not just our careers but the way we work, lead, and connect with others. At Wavetable, we’ve been exploring these shifts through our **Capability Labs**—focused, hands-on spaces for tackling the challenges that matter most. How do you keep your threads strong, or find new ones when the old ones wear thin? ### Act or artist? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/act-or-artist/ Last updated: 2025-06-08T22:44:48.000Z When I was a talent agent, I noticed something interesting in how we referred to our clients. Most people in our office used the term 'artists'. Very occasionally, you'd hear 'act'. At the time, I paid zero attention to this. But there's an important distinction – one that matters far beyond the music industry. An act revisits a moment in time. They're playing the hits, recreating an era. Their audience comes along for the nostalgia trip. It's why we use terms like 'heritage act' or 'legacy act'. Put those same words in front of 'artist', and they mean something completely different. Because an artist? They're moving forward. Creating. Exploring. Taking risks. And here's the tough part about being an artist: you have to be willing to fail. Again and again. In disciplines like standup comedy or DJing, this can be particularly brutal – you're alone on stage, with nowhere to hide. As an artist, there's no warm embrace of the familiar. No safety net of the proven formula. But you can move between these modes. Act to artist. Artist to act. The choice is yours. "That's great," you might think, "but I'm in business, not entertainment." Here's the thing: we're all faced with this choice. Do we stick with what worked before – becoming an 'act' – or do we push forward into uncertainty, embracing the role of 'artist'? Yes. The word 'artist' might feel out of reach. I get it. It does for me too. But being an artist isn't just about creative genius or divine inspiration. It's also in choosing to move forward, even when staying still feels safer. In your career, your business, your work – which will you choose to be today? An act, or an artist? That's the tension. ### Nov 6: new roles available URL: https://www.howardgray.net/nov-6-new-roles-available/ Last updated: 2024-11-24T21:07:20.000Z **Looking for a new gig? Certain roles are suddenly thriving this week...** **📦 International Furniture Mover** Yes! We can fit your entire pitiful existence into these three boxes **🛬 Immigration Lawyer** Now offering bulk discounts on multi-family packages **🦉 Duolingo Customer Success** Duo, what's Portuguese for 'indefinite remote work'? **📱 International Dating App Founder** Love + citizenship in a single swipe **🏡 Ottawa Real Estate Agent** You got it! Here, we don't charge you an extra $150 per month for hot water **📑 Resume Translator** Kein sprechen "circle back", "10 days PTO", oder... "in the trenches"? **🛋️ Psychiatrist** Let's gently process those feelings about affordable healthcare - together. **⚠️ Remote Work Compliance Officer** Your IP address says you're in... Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch The future of work is here. Kinda. What other suddenly-in-demand roles did I miss? 😅 ### Yes, Chef URL: https://www.howardgray.net/yes-chef/ Last updated: 2024-11-06T12:22:44.000Z A few weeks ago, I spent four days co-locating with a colleague. Just two of us. We spent 40 hours planning for it. Yes, you read that right - we spent more time preparing than we actually spent together. For what was effectively a two-person meeting. Sounds insane? The prep time was worth every minute. Because *mise en place* \- everything in its place - isn't just for chefs. It's for anyone doing complex, creative work. *Mise en place* means having Plan B and C ready for when (not if) things go sideways. It means knowing which work needs to happen async versus live. Understanding how long something takes to prep, to process, to refine, to deliver. Most of us doing knowledge work are horrible at this. We don't think about which ingredients we need today versus tomorrow versus later this week. We don't use tools like Loom to ensure the prep work is done right. We don’t record voice notes for colleagues starting their shift 8 hours ahead of us in another timezone. We use a document when a board is better. Or visa versa. We interrupt other people’s cooking when we really don’t need to. Then wonder why their station is overloaded. When you nail the prep, you can focus purely on execution - whether that's in your own deep work time or especially during live collaboration. The pre-reads are clear and purposeful. The scope fits the time allocated. You know whether you need a kitchen porter to help, or if the exec chef needs to review before it goes out. I think about *mise en place* constantly now. It's one of those things that once you see, you can't unsee. Because in modern work, chef skills are everything. What in your work could benefit from better *mise en place*? ### What Hot Ones, Masterclass, and Liquid Death have in common URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-hot-ones-masterclass-and-liquid-death-have-in-common/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T23:15:00.000Z What do Hot Ones, Masterclass, and Liquid Death have in common? They all won by breaking the rules of format - in entertainment, education, and consumer goods. Think about it: - **Hot Ones** turned celebrity interviews into a hot sauce endurance challenge - **Masterclass** reimagined online learning through cinematic storytelling - **Liquid Death** made water cool by packaging it like craft beer (and positioning themselves as a comedy platform...) They’re not the only ones. Format innovation is reshaping everything from media to professional development to travel. I've spent years designing learning experiences and professional development programs, and I'm obsessed with format innovation. The best formats feel obvious after the fact, but they're hard to get right. Here's one I noticed this morning - Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast. The original was just Seth talking, followed by Q&A. Simple but effective. Now it's back - in a different format: - Part book tour - Part coaching session - Part spotlight on mission-driven founders Last week's guest was **Andre J. Marrero**, former chef turned Nantucket chocolate entrepreneur. This week: **Leneita Fix**, executive director of The Reef Institute. Like many great designs, it's deceptively simple. But look closer and you'll see the strategy: Seth's not just promoting his new book - he's demonstrating its principles in action by helping real entrepreneurs think through their challenges. Smart. When I help companies reimagine professional development, we'll always question formats. Because that's often where the magic happens. Want to spot the next big thing in your work? Look for format innovation. What other great format innovations are out there? Please share - I know there's tons I haven't heard about yet... ### Shakepeare & Co's Proustian Questions URL: https://www.howardgray.net/shakepeare-cos-proustian-questions/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T17:06:04.000Z In Paris, there's a bookstore called Shakespeare and Company (hey, who said the Brits and French don’t get along?). Next door is Bob's Cafe. Together, they do something wonderful. Your tray arrives with a "*Kilometer Zero Proust Questionnaire*," inspired by the legendary French author Marcel Proust. Legend has it Proust created this as a parlor game, though no one knows for sure. This single sheet of printed paper is a delight: - Simple yet powerful questions - Encourages solo reflection - Dozens of conversation starters - No screen required Customer Experience doesn't need to cost a fortune. Neither does marketing. I've never even been to this cafe, yet here I am, telling you about it. It's a reminder: sometimes the simplest ideas create the most memorable experiences. What’s your favourite of these Proustian questions? P.S. To grab the questions as text, drop the image into your AI-powered LLM of choice. Or better yet, book a trip to Paris. ## Sign up for Groove Theory the bi-weekly newsletter to help you find your inner groove Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### Delta's $120 seat choice, but no subtitles? The curious priorities of airline CX URL: https://www.howardgray.net/deltas-120-seat-choice-but-no-subtitles-the-curious-priorities-of-airline-cx/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T15:55:34.000Z Ever noticed how airlines will charge you $120 to choose a seat but can't figure out how to do the most obvious things to make a flight pleasant? A recent Delta flight had me wondering about CX priorities... Have you ever promised yourself you'll work on a flight, and then… do absolutely nothing? Yeah, me too. Recently I was "working" on a flight, looking for something to watch. It turned out none of the movies or TV shows appeared to have subtitles. None of them. Not even the ones in French, Spanish or Mandarin. Despite there being a 'subtitles' option available on screen. What an fantastic CX and accessibility fail. As I dug deeper into this puzzle, I discovered French films were only available dubbed, no subtitles in any language. This wasn't just an annoyance - it completely excluded deaf passengers and those who prefer watching international films in their original language. As a fix, I used my "work-related" in-flight WiFi to log in to SubtitleCat, downloaded the subtitles, and watched along from a text file on my phone notes. Stylish. Not exactly the seamless experience you expect when paying hundreds of dollars for a flight. While airlines like to charge me $119.99 to choose a seat, they don't seem to be as interested in making the experience better for all passengers. Is there an obvious reason for this that I'm missing? P.S. The $119.99 was for an exit row seat in economy, NYC to Madrid. The Fall Guy, indeed. ### Customer Experience with a pinch of Proust URL: https://www.howardgray.net/customer-experience-with-a-pinch-of-proust/ Last updated: 2024-10-17T10:59:06.000Z In Paris, there's a bookstore called Shakespeare and Company (hey, who said the Brits and French don’t get along?). Next door is Bob's Cafe. Together, they do something wonderful. Your tray arrives with a "*Kilometer Zero Proust Questionnaire*," inspired by the legendary French author Marcel Proust. Legend has it Proust created this as a parlor game, though no one knows for sure. This single sheet of printed paper is a delight: - Simple yet powerful questions - Encourages solo reflection - Dozens of conversation starters - No screen required Customer Experience doesn't need to cost a fortune. Neither does marketing. I've never even been to this cafe, yet here I am, telling you about it. It's a reminder: sometimes the simplest ideas create the most memorable experiences. What’s your favourite of these Proustian questions? P.S. To grab the questions as text, drop the image into your AI-powered LLM of choice. Or better yet, book a trip to Paris. ### Mispriced Talent URL: https://www.howardgray.net/mispriced-talent/ Last updated: 2024-10-15T18:41:35.000Z Underserved. Underrepresented. These are valid terms for talent, but let's be honest - they've lost their edge. I've used them in my work, sometimes awkwardly, lazily, or without enough critical thinking. And too often, they're twisted into something else entirely. That doesn't help anyone. But what if there's another way to look at this? Here's a term that cuts through the noise: Mispriced. In commercial markets, 'mispriced' refers to assets valued incorrectly due to inefficiencies or overlooked factors. It's where savvy investors find hidden gems. Mispriced talent? Those people valued incorrectly in the job market - a place where complex dynamics shift constantly. And 'price' isn't just salary. That's barely scratching the surface. We're talking about the full spectrum of value a person brings. The opportunity? Seek out Mispriced talent. It's about unlocking potential that the usual system overlooks. It’s definitely not easy: how do we find those perfect fits, reveal hidden brilliance in people? I certainly haven't solved it yet, but I'm convinced thinking about mispriced talent is key to designing better opportunities for everyone. And once you start seeing talent through this lens, you can't unsee... Who do you know who's mispriced? P.S. I borrowed this term from venture capitalist Josh Wolfe. It was buried in one of his company's all-hands meetings. I'm surprised it hasn't caught fire yet. But then again, maybe the term itself is mispriced. ### The Shadow Brief URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-shadow-brief/ Last updated: 2024-10-10T19:11:57.000Z Carl Jung said every person has a shadow - the other version of themselves, shouting in silence. Turns out, every brief has one too. Every project, every ask, it has a shadow. The thing it's not saying out loud. In fact, it's something all of its own. I call it The Shadow Brief. Let's break it down. In some coaching models, you'll see three agendas used as a concept: 1\. **Presenting**: What they want to do 2\. **Deeper**: Who they want to be 3\. **Transformational**: The core need It's that last one - the unspoken, transformational agenda - that often forms the Shadow Brief. Not from a project or a persona, but a real, human need. Tap into the Shadow Brief, and subtle second-order effects start to emerge. You begin to see beyond the immediate ask to the underlying motivations and desired outcomes. For instance, a brief for a product launch campaign might have a Shadow Brief of *"prove to the C-suite that my department is worth keeping around."* Of course, a quick tactical task isn't going to dive this deep - no need to look for meaning that isn't there. But with something bigger, braver, more pivotal? There's always a deeper agenda. There's always a Shadow Brief. Identifying and understanding this shadow requires a blend skills: empathy; customer experience; active listening; strategic thinking; emotional intelligence. But it can be the difference between delivering what's been asked for and what's truly needed. So next time you're faced with a brief, ask yourself: What's the shadow saying? Your ability to answer might just be your competitive edge. ### An unexpected skill for the Future of Work URL: https://www.howardgray.net/an-unexpected-skill-for-the-future-of-work/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T17:25:38.000Z For years, I've used 'magic' as shorthand for moments of delight in products, classes, or events - but what if it's actually the most practical skill for the future of work? Here’s the thing, though. Lately I've hesitated to use the word ‘magic’. In our metrics-obsessed world, people eye it with suspicion. It's fluff, snake oil, BS. Then I stumbled upon this gem from Raymond Teller (one half of the illustrious magician duo Penn & Teller): > "Magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect." Suddenly, "magic" isn't about illusions. It's about dedication. It's the extra mile that transforms good into unforgettable. In the future of work, where AI handles the ordinary, this kind of magic - this unreasonable effort - will set us apart. It makes people think, wonder, and stick around. It takes you places you didn't expect. So, I'm reclaiming "magic" in my professional lexicon. It sparkles in workshops, programs, and co-working sessions. It’s when you conjure those shining moments of insight, those unexpected bursts of creativity. And magic is unlocking the hidden capacity in teams and individuals - the ability to go above and beyond in ways no algorithm can touch. You won't find 'magic' in any Future of Work trends report. But in a world of algorithms, making magic might just be our most valuable skill. He's a good fella, that Teller. ### Two ways to define 'Good Enough' URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-ways-to-define-good-enough/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T15:57:37.000Z Ever found yourself endlessly tweaking a project, chasing that elusive perfection? Yeah, me too. But here's a thought. What really is “good enough”? It's a simple question, but it can revolutionize how we approach our work. At Wavetable, we've turned it into a surprisingly effective framework for processes, content, workshops, and classes. Picture this: You're all set for the big presentation tomorrow, and suddenly your kid gets sick. Or that workshop you've been planning for months? Yeah, the client just moved it up by a week. Cue the panic, right? Wrong. (Feel free to read that last word in your best Schwarzenegger voice, btw. I did.) Anyway, we now make a concerted effort to stop labeling things ‘V1’. And we absolutely avoid FINAL\_FINAL\_FINAL. Instead, we aim for a version that meets one of two criteria: 1. **If you HAD to launch/present/teach it tomorrow** 2. **If you weren't there and someone else had to do it** *Would it work? Would it be good enough?* Yeah, “enough”. That's the tricky bit. A Goldilocks zone of productivity: not too perfectionist, not too slapdash. But it’s worth the effort each time to figure out what ‘enough’ is. Here’s why this approach has worked so well for us: 1. Forces you to think about others (shocker) 2. Things need to be clear, easy to explain, and shareable 3. Reduces stress from fiddling with stuff that really doesn't matter (ooh! a shiny new font!) 4. Gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling of actually finishing something Next time you're knee-deep in a project, ask yourself: - What if I wasn’t there? - What’s the ‘share it tomorrow’ version? ### Soft Skills are dead. Let’s talk Character Skills. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/soft-skills-are-dead-lets-talk-character-skills/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:31:02.000Z Soft skills. Hard skills. Moderately moist and squishy skills. These buzzwords are thrown around all the time, but they’re neither appealing nor particularly useful. How to think differently about it? The 'soft' and 'hard' language originally came from the US Army: hard skills relating to the ability to use military hardware; soft skills being… well, the other stuff. Through this lens, hardly any of us are using true hard skills (no, your desk job is not urban warfare, even if some people want to believe it is). And ‘soft skills’ doesn’t exactly spark excitement. Seth Godin has a reframe, thinking of soft skills as ‘Real Skills’. I love Seth, but can’t help feeling this does a disservice to ‘hard’ skills. They’re still valuable. Another brilliant bald brainiac, Adam Grant opts for ‘Cognitive’ and ’Character’ skills. This, I dig. The Character stuff is particularly fascinating. --- One example Grant references comes from a team of social scientists working in West Africa. They recruited 1,500 entrepreneurs running small startups in manufacturing, service, and commerce. The founders were men and women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. In Cognitive Skills training, founders took an accredited business course. They studied finance, accounting, HR, and pricing. They then practiced what they learned to solve challenges and seize opportunities. In Character Skills training, they attended a class designed by psychologists to teach personal initiative. They studied proactivity, discipline, and determination, and practiced putting those qualities into action. After five days working on Character skills, their firms’ profits grew by an average of 30% over the next two years - nearly 3x the benefit from Cognitive skills training. Right. Cool story, bro. Thanks for being the 1000th person to repost some Adam Grant stuff this month. So, here's the real question. How do we create environments, tools, and resources that not only enhance Character skills - but make people excited to develop them? This is a tough nut to crack. It ain't gonna be through regular courses or training stuff. But it's a very tasty nut indeed. What's your take? How are you developing you and your team's Character skills? P.S. If you're interested in the challenge of creating cool ways for people to develop their Character skills, give me a holler. It's also ok if you have a nut allergy - we don't discriminate. ### “Imagine if we taught baseball the way we teach science…" URL: https://www.howardgray.net/teaching-baseball-teaching-science/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:24:26.000Z > … until they were twelve, children would read about baseball technique and history, and occasionally hear inspirational stories of the great baseball players. They would fill out quizzes about baseball rules. College undergraduates might be allowed, under strict supervision, to reproduce famous historic baseball plays. But only in the second or third year of graduate school, would they, at last, actually get to play a game.” This gem from Carl Sagan's '95 book "The Demon-Haunted World" has been living rent-free in my brain for ages. It nails a critical problem that so many schools, colleges and companies are *still* grappling with. Baseball has passionate fans, rich statistics, and vibrant cultures. People lose sleep over trade decisions and wake up at ungodly hours to catch games in different time zones. Why? Because they've experienced it firsthand. They've felt the tension of a close game, the thrill of a perfect play, the agony of a crucial error. So why are so many people disengaged in classrooms and workplaces - places where they've often invested so much of themselves? Perhaps it's because we've turned too many subjects into "science" when they could be more like "baseball”. Here are three ways to shift the onus: 1. **Get your hands dirty**: Create chances for people to actually do the thing they're learning about. Theory's great, but have you tried actually swinging the bat? 2. **Embrace the blooper reel**: Set up a sandbox where it's okay to mess up. Even Babe Ruth struck out... a lot. (I'm betting big on the next generation of sandboxes btw) 3. **Start a nerd club** (the cool kind): Build spaces where people can geek out over their craft. Think of it as fantasy league, but for work stuff. ⠀ The world has changed dramatically since Sagan’s book from '95, but the approach to learning stuff often lags way behind. Next time you're exploring a skill or topic, it’s worth asking… > “How might this be more like baseball?" P.S. I'm more of a football (soccer) fan, but I've recently been indoctrinated into the world of the New York Mets. Turns out I now have a 3-year-old southpaw pitcher in training. Just got to get him throwing balls instead of my computer mouse. ### Dumbo Moving's marketing moves URL: https://www.howardgray.net/dumbo-movings-marketing-moves/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:01:58.000Z The best bit of marketing I've seen in a while? Three tough guys, a gaggle of kids, and... moving boxes. On a Brooklyn street corner this weekend, Dumbo Moving stole the show at a free 'Back to School' event. They rolled up with: 🏰 A huge, free-to-paint castle made of moving boxes 🚂 A train built from dollies, crates, and packing tape 💪🏽 Dumbo’s top mover talent as the locomotive power In a sea of kid-focused businesses, these removalists stood out. Why? They understood their audience better than anyone. The genius of box-castle marketing: 1. Families = bigger moves, greater pain, higher spend 2. Parents love free, fun Sunday activities 3. Trust-building (would you let strangers move your kids otherwise?) 4. People talk about experiences (exhibit A: this post) 5. Community event sponsorship = local goodwill It's product marketing at its finest. Low cost, high impact. And this isn't Dumbo's first rodeo. Last summer they turned a moving truck into a mini nightclub for kids, complete with DJ booth. This isn't rocket science. There's plenty of more sophisticated marketing out there. But sometimes, the simplest ideas pack the biggest punch. What's a time you've seen a business nail it with something refreshingly straightforward? P.S. Full disclosure: I've used Dumbo Moving twice. They're good. Special shout out to crew 94, straight outta Tbilisi. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/10/Dumbo3.jpg) ### Why Learning Beats Education (and Why It Matters to You) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-learning-beats-education-and-why-it-matters-to-you/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:57:30.000Z Education. Learning. Training. Ever wondered why we use different words for seemingly similar concepts? There’s more to ‘em than meets the eye… Here's a quick definition of each of these processes: **⚙️ Education:** receiving and providing knowledge through systematic instruction **⚡️ Learning:** acquiring new skills and knowledge through experience, study or teaching **🏄🏾‍♀️ Training:** learning the skills and behaviors to do a particular job or activity Ok. So what? Look closely and you’ll spot a few morsels: - Education is done *to* you. You’re mandated, subjected to it - Learning is about opting in, enrolling, choosing to go on the journey - You can learn (a lot) through teaching others - Training is learning applied to practical, real-world situations I’m skeptical about education. The others? They're packed with opportuntiy. What matters today is flipping education into learning. Mandated becomes enrolled. Suddenly, it's mapped to something you actually care about. Learning and training? Done right, they can become delightful, valuable by-products of experimentation, exploration, and simply hanging out with other curious minds. Serious fun. Digging the process vs. the outcome. Leveling up without even realizing it. Maybe you don’t believe me. Here's a quick thought experiment. Think about a valuable skill you possess. Did it come from education... or learning? P.S. There's also the nuanced dance between Training and Practice, and how it all ladders into Professional Development… but that's a word-association game for another day. ### 7 ways to improve a conference speaking proposal URL: https://www.howardgray.net/7-ways-to-improve-a-conference-speaking-proposal/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T17:06:58.000Z I’ve just finished evaluating proposals for SXSW 2025\. Here are 7 things that separate the standouts from the rest... 1. **Why now?** It’s rarely a good thing if your proposal was teleported from the 2021 schedule (let alone 2007). Some topics are truly evergreen. Most aren’t. We want to know why this matters *now*. A simple way to find your why (now): Ladder off a recent shift in the world that has knock-on effects. Three examples: i) tech that enable new kinds of transactions / interactions; ii) a key social/cultural event; ii) a change in legislation (Pro Tip: this last one is undervalued) 2. **Use video** No, not a recording of that janky Zoom webinar you did during the pandemic. Make something for *this* submission. It can be incredibly simple - just you walking down the street is totally fine. A short, clear video can instantly put you in the top 30% of submissions. And video is ESSENTIAL if you’ve chosen a presentation-driven format. 3. **Format** While we’re talking about formats… yes, you can submit a panel, but *should* you? Think about the material you are conveying. Is a multi-person discussion the best delivery method? And if you have ideas on how to elevate a traditional format (e.g. interactive product demo during a panel session) - make sure you show us. 4. **Triangulate** I wish I had a dollar for every time I leave the comment ‘too broad’. You may worry about being too niche. Don’t - especially at an event as big as SXSW. Use your industry or areas of interest to slim down your focus. Examples: 'How AI & Humans can create engaging content' -> 'How PR pros use LLMs for crisis comms'. Or “Why podcasts are the new opportunity for Asian-American hair & makeup creators” - still easily big enough. Speaking of makeup, I made up that last one. 5. **Diversity** Diversity covers multiple dimensions. Should your panel on Men’s Mental Health not feature any women? Might your session on Sports Brands & Creators be elevated with a speaker from a seemingly unrelated - yet fascinating and relevant - industry or community? Your call. Either way, diversity is… diverse. 6. **Word Salad** “Immersive”, “Connection”, “Engage”, “Authentic”. Re-read your description. Are there one (or six) too many buzzwords? Trim 'em. Btw, feel free to use AI to help, just be mindful that evaluators can sniff out a quick copy-paste from ChatGPT… 7. **AI rush** There a LOT of AI proposals. If you are pitching something here it needs to i) be genuinely insightful (and something that isn’t available on YouTube), and ii) demonstrate you have actually built something with AI tools. Again, think about format. Only talking about AI can feel as abstract as trying to dance about architecture—it’s hard to fully grasp until you engage with it directly. Ok, that’s it for now. 7 ways to make a better proposal for SXSW - or just about any conference, really. GROOVE BUILD Ready to turn your expertise into a signature session that transforms audiences? Explore "Groove Build" - my unique co-development framework. [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) ### How the creator of 'Peaky Blinders' uses one word to unlock new worlds URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-the-creator-of-peaky-blinders-uses-one-word-to-unlock-new-worlds/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:05:29.000Z Picture this: A working-class kid from Birmingham, youngest of 7, no silver spoon in sight. Fast forward, and he's the mastermind behind Peaky Blinders, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, and the next Star Wars screenplay… How does Steven Knight conjure such diverse stories? Here’s one method he uses that’s laughably simple: 1. Google a topic you're curious about 2. Toss in a random word For example: - New York 1840s watermelons - Birmingham 1920s horses - Japan 15th century tax evasion Suddenly, you're not just reading facts. You're stumbling into drama. Characters emerge. Conflicts simmer. Quirky details jump out. One word becomes a back door to a library of untold tales. Each search term is a key, unlocking rooms few have explored. Some will be empty, but others… Intrigued? Have a listen to Steven Knight’s recent appearance on Desert Island Discs (featuring music from Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald and many more). It’s a delight. [BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Steven Knight, writerSteven Knight, writer, shares the soundtrack of his life with Lauren Laverne.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/icon/p0jdrcrh.jpg)BBC![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/thumbnail/p0jdrcrh.jpg)](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021xdf?ref=howardgray.net) Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some oddball searches calling my name... ### Two essentials for building distributed teams URL: https://www.howardgray.net/untitled-6/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:09:08.000Z Jeff Bezos once said to bet on things that won't change. Here's one: talent is everywhere. But opportunity? That's been another story... until now. There’s a real shift happening in how teams come together: - **Way back**: Outsourcing - **Recent past:** Enforced remote work - **Next**: Truly distributed teams ⠀ What if you had… - Business analyst in Istanbul - UX designer in Kyiv - Game developer in Curitiba - Marketing lead in Mountain View - Project Manager in Colombo - Experience designer in Guatemala - Product lead in New York ⠀ All brought together in just a few weeks, and in sync with only 5-6 tools that cost less than a single co-working desk. Let’s not even start on the melting pot of perspectives, backgrounds, and cultures. But how to do this well? Two key skills, I reckon - and they link humans and technology: 1. **Curation**: The human touch of finding, supporting, and enabling talented people 2. **Systems**: The digital groove of intuitive, efficient, and streamlined workflows ⠀ I don’t see this as the same as ‘remote work’ or even distributed teams. It feels more… Borderless. And I can’t imagine going back. What's your take? Have you been in - or built in - teams like this? What challenges and opportunities do you see in this new world of work? P.S. That team listed above? It’s my current one… ### Tyler Cowen's two questions to unearth hidden talent URL: https://www.howardgray.net/tyler-cowens-two-questions-to-unearth-hidden-talent/ Last updated: 2024-11-24T21:27:08.000Z How do you find talent with a spark? Can you predict who’s going to be most creative, energetic, curious, or successful? Here are two unusual questions the economist Tyler Cowen asks to figure it out… Cowen’s range of interests are eclectic, to say the least. The LA Times said he is “a man who can talk about Haitian voodoo flags, Iranian cinema, Hong Kong cuisine, Abstract Expressionism, Zairian music and Mexican folk art with seemingly equal facility”. When it comes to spotting talent, Cowen says he places the most weight on these two questions: 1. Who are the smart, energetic role models you were exposed to aged 12-16? 2. How old were you when you first started to try to do something in some area - even if you failed? On one hand, I love these as indicators of who has a spark for our new world of careers and work. On the other, I can’t help but notice they're exclusionary. A lack of networks, resources and other scaffolds means many people’s potential will remain unseen. Your geography or socio-economics may limit the role models you can be in direct physical contact with, or the number of areas in which you can try new things. However, there’s amazing opportunity to level the playing field and discover all kinds of talented humans: 📲 Platforms that offer access and interaction with a whole world of role models, direct from a device in your hand 🛝 Multi-player sandboxes to follow a curiosity and build your first projects ⎋ Adaptive education that meets people in their zone of proximal development (not just ‘where they are’) 📦 Smart brands and non profits bringing micro ‘career starter kits’ to underserved locations Wouldn’t it be cool if you asked these two questions and got mind blowing answers each and every time? Yeah, I reckon so too. ### My one piece of advice for new parents URL: https://www.howardgray.net/my-one-piece-of-advice-for-new-parents/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:35:31.000Z If I could give my pre-parent self one piece of advice it would be this: deal with loss. Let’s be real. Parenthood means losing a lot. Freedom, energy, time, focus, serenity. That cool breakfast meetup everyone’s going to? Nope. Motoring through that AI course or working on your side project on a Tuesday evening? Fuhgeddaboudit. You’re exhausted. Knocking out 50 emails and writing your killer daily LinkedIn post before 8am? Once a quarter perhaps. Watching others cruise around with minimal responsibilities while you’re drowning in life admin and diapers? You might want to scream. Many of the things you had, they reduce. Some disappear completely. And like any loss, there’s probably a sense of grief. This can be hard to process. Sometimes it can turn toxic. This all sounds disempowering, but it’s actually the opposite. Because once you accept these new constraints - on your time, bandwidth and other resources - it’s wonderfully freeing. And besides, you now have a little person in your life who’s far more interesting than you are. P.S. Caveat: Last time I checked, women and men can be different. As is every individual. Your mileage may vary. ### Goodbye Google Slides. Hello, Figma URL: https://www.howardgray.net/goodbye-google-slides-hello-figma/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:14.000Z Death by Powerpoint? Perhaps ‘Death of Powerpoint’ is more apt. Because Figma just launched a slide design tool, and it’s pretty, pretttttty, prettttty good. About 18 months ago I was ready to ditch Google Slides. It was driving my nuts. Let’s not even get started on Powerpoint. As me and the [**Wavetable**](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) team had been using Figma for designing various digital products and learning materials, we thought we’d give it a whirl for slides. In just a couple of weeks, we’d built all the content for a multi-module online course. Soon, Figma was the home for keynotes, workshops, sales decks, worksheets, and more. However, there were a few thorny issues: - It’s tricky to use if you’re not a decent designer (I’m passable at best) - Exporting slides was clunky - Most obviously - it’s not a slide tool! No presenter notes, transitions, or other presentation essentials Basically, we were following our instincts. Hacking it. Then, last week our lead designer sent me a note: “Howard, have you seen this?” A new tool, called [Figma Slides](https://www.figma.com/slides/?ref=howardgray.net). We’ve gone in deep, and I gotta say, it’s very cool. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/10/Figma-Slides--2-.png) There are brand kits, real-time collaboration, interactions. All your design assets linked together. And we can work FAST. I just spun out three pitch deck variations in under an hour. Overnight an upcoming workshop went from a fiddly Google Slides draft to a super-sleek Figma build. Along with Notion for documents and project planning, and Whimsical for visualizations, Figma just became the third pillar of our team’s foundational toolkit. Sorry, Google. P.S. I don’t mind admitting we love nerding out on this stuff. Perhaps **Fer Franco** said it best: “Such a good feeling when a product gets an update like this!”. I agree. ### The Player-Commentator URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-player-commentator/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:54:59.000Z Ever pretended to play like Messi, Ronaldo or Rapinoe? How about the people who tell you what’s going on at the game? My new favorite player at Euro 2024 has created a new kind of role: he’s a player-commentator. Young Noble is a lip sync commentator from Nigeria who takes highlights of each game and re-runs them in his own inimitable style. It’s strangely delightful, and is fast becoming my favorite football format. Remember: talent is everywhere, and everything’s a remix. ### 5 Founder Types URL: https://www.howardgray.net/5-founder-types/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T21:09:12.000Z Ever wonder what drives people to start businesses? After observing hundreds of founders, I've noticed 5 distinct types... **1\. Idealist**: Visionary, compelled by a possible future. Driven by a mission to change the world. **2\. Builder**: Business builder and operator. Thrives on the challenge of turning ideas into successful enterprises, regardless of industry. **3\. Firestarter**: Unhireable, in a grudge match, seeking control. Has a chip on the shoulder, a chaos agent with a burning fire inside. May burn bright.. or burn it all down. **4\. Trendsetter**: Chasing what's next, wants to be part of the startup club. Seeking identity, connection and validation via entrepreneurship. **5\. Stacker**: Primarily motivated by financial gain. Wants to get rich, preferably quickly. This model, while not exhaustive, serves as a useful prototype for understanding founder motivations. It's based on patterns me and two serial startup friends noticed. Let's dive deeper... Most founders are either: - Compelled or Repelled (types 1 & 3) - Driven by Reward (types 4 & 5) - Naturally skilled at building businesses (type 2) ### What might they need? - 1 (Idealist) needs a coach to ground their vision and turn ideas into actionable plans. - 2 (Builder) needs a steady stream of complex challenges and opportunities for innovation. - 3 (Firestarter) needs a therapist or mentor to channel their chaotic energy productively. - 4 (Trendsetter) craves a supportive community and platforms for recognition. - 5 (Stacker) requires solid financial mentoring and wealth-building frameworks. Type 3 might be the most intriguing. It's potentially the most volatile, often driven by past experiences or relationships. But when channeled correctly, this type can be incredibly potent... The five types are interconnected, and founders often embody multiple types or shift between them as they grow and their motivations evolve. ### Gaps to ponder: - How do these types influence business success rates? - Are certain types more prevalent in specific industries? - How do external factors (economy, technology trends) affect the distribution of these types? - Can understanding one's type help in personal development as an entrepreneur? What's your take? Do you see people you know in these types? More importantly, do you see yourself? P.S. Reflecting on my own journey, I got caught in a type 4 trap. I didn't balance my type 3 tendencies with type 1 vision. And spending too much time as a type 3 led me to foolishly resent type 2 builders. All part of the learning process, I suppose... ### Carl Cox's timeless creative career advice URL: https://www.howardgray.net/carl-coxs-timeless-creative-career-advice/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:17:34.000Z Carl Cox is a DJ legend. He’s played at midnight on New Year's Eve twice in one night (Sydney and Hawaii). Held Ibiza's biggest residency for 15 years. And his approach to DJing can teach you more about presenting ideas than any TED Talk… Cox started out running a mobile disco in 1970s South London. Almost five decades later, he’s one of the world’s most popular DJs - and still enormously popular at 62 years old. How so? The guy is clear a master at engaging an audience. But I wonder if his greatest skill is to make average material sound good, good sound great, and great… well, you get the idea. Here are two of Carl Cox’s approaches to DJing that I believe can help any of us share our work with others. Even better, they’re handy pieces of broader career guidance, too. ### **⏩ 1: Two tracks ahead** > “Every record has a beginning, middle and end. I'm thinking two records ahead all the time, rather than just reveling in whatever's currently playing. If you enjoy it too much, your next record may fall flat because you haven't prepared.” It’s so tempting to bathe in successes, or luxuriate in what feels safe and comfortable. Instead, think ahead: two slides, two concepts, two weeks, two projects… ### **🦎 2: Create unique blends** > “…unique blends are a big part of why people go to see DJs.... I do sometimes let a record do its thing, but then how am I different from the next DJ? If instead I play this record with another one that enhances it, you'll probably never hear that again. I've always thought this way… it's a big reason why people come back and see me.” Standing out is hard. Especially today. Unique blends let us stand out without have to conjure a miracle every day. Combine unexpected ideas; link concepts; show us something we’ll never hear or see again. (and do the same with skills: drawing+financial planning; DJing+writing…) Now, let's turn the tables (oh yes, oh yes): - How can you think two tracks ahead in your work? - What unexpected skills or ideas can you blend to create something unique? ### The wallet, the CV, and me URL: https://www.howardgray.net/wallet-cv-me/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:52:26.000Z Paddy Considine is an award-winning actor with an enviable list of credits: Peaky Blinders, House of the Dragon, The Bourne Legacy, Dead Man’s Shoes. But just like millions of others, he’s in the gig economy. How do you design a creative career like this? I don’t suppose too many actors use Linkedin, but they face the same challenges as many people here: chasing jobs; creating projects; carving a niche; aiming to make it all fit together. Paddy has a very simple but effective method of designing his career. He categorizes projects into three buckets: - One for the CV - One for the Wallet - One for Me The dream? Hitting the trifecta - a single project that ticks all three boxes. With a blend of wisdom and luck, you might nail two at once. But mostly, you'll get one. And that's okay... as long as you know which one it is. Which category does your next project fall into? And have you ever hit the jackpot? ### "Tell me when..." URL: https://www.howardgray.net/tell-me-when/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:56:00.000Z Our latest co-creation venture is building a professional development platform for doctors. It’s been a fascinating ride. To help us avoid making the wrong thing, we’ve done 100+ interviews with actively practicing doctors. There’s one question that reveals far more than anything else… Around halfway through we’ll ask: “Tell us when you first wanted to become a doctor….” The answer usually starts with being good at science, or wanting to help people. We reckon there's more. So we nudge them back to the start: to the first moment of realization; of sensing possibility; of when their curiosity was piqued. The real catalysts? 5 years old, breakfast every Thursday with their doctor grandfather; a close-up view of a family member’s health issues; even playing a particular role in a 3rd grade school performance. This simple question seems to act as a reminder: why they do this work, and who helped them along the way. It’s also a reminder for us that doctors aren’t really ‘healthcare professionals’, or ‘users’ of our product. They’re real people, with real stories. Just like the rest of us. It’s strange that part gets forgotten so often. P.S. Not all of us are following a vocation, a calling. But this simple question can still unlock something. Just substitute \[job title\] for \[strength\], \[ skill\], \[curiosity\]. Tell me when… ...the idea of hospitality first entered your life? ...you realized you were good at writing? ...you became curious about making charts and graphs? And whatever your first answer is, go back. Can you go back a little further…? ### The silent struggle of men in Gen X URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-silent-struggle-of-men-in-gen-x/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:58:41.000Z Over the last year, I've had a glimpse into a rarely discussed phenomenon: the existential crisis brewing amongst men in Generation X. There’s a very real disquiet simmering under the surface as 40 and 50-something men grapple with rapidly shifting societal roles and expectations. Some might cautiously open up after a couple of beers, or with a trusted confidant: > “Sometimes I feel I have nothing left to offer." > "How can I keep providing for my family for 10, 20… 40 years?" > "What even does it mean to be a man today?" Yet open conversation is vanishingly rare. Now, you may think “yeah, but they’ve had it their way for years”. And you’d be right. But I’m not sure this is simply a case of male fragility. There are many mid-life men who genuinely want to contribute, be of value… to simply be useful. Yet they find themselves in a state of paralysis. They’re unsure where to go next, how to show up, which skills to build. A confusing riptide of detachment and irrelevance is breeding steadily worsening isolation. And a dearth of conversation means the spiral continues. Why does this matter? Young males badly need positive role models to aspire towards and pattern their own identities after. Adrift older men leave that pipeline disrupted, a void filled by troubling alternatives (on which there is now a vast body of research) Workplaces require productive contributors, not people embittered. Relationships suffer when partners grow distant. The world becomes that much less diverse. All levels of society lose out when a significant segment feels displaced and disconnected. The same is true here. I don’t yet have a full grasp on this topic, and I can’t put my finger on \*exactly\* what it all means. Yet I sense it’s worth paying attention to - that there are nuanced challenges here worth unpacking. While under-correcting for previous gender indiscretions is unwise, so is turning a blind eye when the world shifts. ‘Cos as with life itself, this ain’t a zero-sum game. Two things can be true at once. So, here’s a small spotlight on an oft-avoided discussion. Because poorly understood problems rarely reach worthwhile resolutions. Am I seeing this all wrong? Or is there a significant male crisis brewing? P.S. If this topic resonates, do look up the work of Richard Reeves. As he suggest: “Gender equality is not a zero sum game. We can do more for boys and men without doing less for women and girls. We can be passionate about women’s rights, and compassionate towards the struggles of boys and men.” \[Edit: This week Melinda Gates committed $20m to Reeves’ nonprofit, the American Institute for Boys and Men. Maybe there is something going on... \] ### Two unusual questions to find talent with a spark URL: https://www.howardgray.net/talent-with-a-spark/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T21:00:37.000Z How do you find talent with a spark? Can you predict who’s going to be most creative, energetic, curious, or successful? Here are two unusual questions the economist Tyler Cowen asks to figure it out… Cowen’s range of interests are eclectic, to say the least. The LA Times said he is “a man who can talk about Haitian voodoo flags, Iranian cinema, Hong Kong cuisine, Abstract Expressionism, Zairian music and Mexican folk art with seemingly equal facility”. When it comes to spotting talent, Cowen says he places the most weight on these two questions: **1\. Who are the smart, energetic role models you were exposed to aged 12-16?** **2\. How old were you when you first started to try to do something in some area - even if you failed?** On one hand, I love these as indicators of who has a spark for our new world of careers and work. On the other, I can’t help but notice they're exclusionary. A lack of networks, resources and other scaffolds means many people’s potential will remain unseen. Your geography or socio-economics may limit the role models you can be in direct physical contact with, or the number of areas in which you can try new things. However, there’s amazing opportunity to level the playing field and discover all kinds of talented humans: - 📲 Platforms that offer access and interaction with a whole world of role models, direct from a device in your hand - 🛝 Multi-player sandboxes to follow a curiosity and build your first projects - ⎋ Adaptive education that meets people in their zone of proximal development (not just ‘where they are’) - 📦 Smart brands and non profits bringing micro ‘career starter kits’ to underserved locations Wouldn’t it be cool if you asked these two questions and got mind blowing answers each and every time? Yeah, I reckon so too. ### The secret of long-lasting businesses URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-secret-of-long-lasting-businesses/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:46:50.000Z Company life expectancies are reducing - dramatically. One secret of those that live longest? They focus their energies on the opposite end of the age spectrum… The average lifespan of a US S&P 500 company has dropped by 80% in the last 80 years - from 67 years to 15 (the likes of Microsoft and Nike are now senior citizens). And in the last 30 years, 76% of UK FTSE 100 companies have… well, vanished. But what about those that have remained successful for more than 100 years? A study by Harvard Business Review showed they have two main attributes: **1\. A stable core**: an unchanging central purpose, and leaders with tenures over 10 years **2\. A disruptive edge**: bringing in outside expertise and seeking to learn from other sectors Ok, good to know, but not that surprising. Here’s a more interesting morsel. Many of the organizations that stay in the game for more than a century prioritise engaging with society - and specifically on reaching out to children. But these aren’t only businesses in kid-friendly areas like video games or sports. They run the gamut from hospitality, to manufacturing, to financial services. Could one of your biggest risks of failure and irrelevance come from forgetting to engage with kids? Perhaps. It's probably worth figuring out how to inject more play into your work… 🛝 P.S. Accordingly to lawyer Mark Pierce, who put together this wonderful infographic of the world’s long-lasting companies, the oldest business on planet Earth is a Japanese construction firm called Kongō Gumi. It’s been in operation since 578 (no, I didn’t miss a ‘1’ from the front). Talk about staying in the game… ### When your AI presentation needs bug spray URL: https://www.howardgray.net/when-your-ai-presentation-needs-bug-spray/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:12:28.000Z Most speaking gigs find me in a conference room or Zoom box. But last week, I found myself talking about AI’s near future - and disruptive technology’s ancient past - while standing in the gardens of a mind-boggling eco-architectural project an hour outside Mexico City. WTF. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_8858.jpg) The place is called El Nido de Quetzalcóatl. Conceived by architect Javier Senosiain, it’s a habitat that seeks to integrate humans into nature, with apartments seamlessly integrated into gardens, water mirrors, sculptures and forest. (a couple of the apartments are on Airbnb if you fancy it) So how did a presentation on A.I end up here? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_8854.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_8872-2.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_8885-2.JPG) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/07/IMG_2532.jpg) Pernod Ricard's House of Tequila team put together a wonderfully curated Creativity Conference exploring the frontiers of food science, Mexican artisanship, digital manufacturing, creativity and more. And they chose this amazing place to host it. My role was to provide some relatable and applicable AI use cases, demystify some of the intimidating stuff, and chart how humans have grappled with disruptive shifts throughout history: from digital cameras; to oil pipelines; to the printing press and beyond. It was lovely to have such a delightful crew, thoughtful questions, multiple formats, fantastic hospitality… and - for my session in the afternoon humidity - plenty of bug spray. Shout outs to Antonio De La Rocha and Erin Hersey for producing a wonderful event, and fellow speakers Raul Cabra, Daniel Kurzrock, Nate Kolbeck, and the one and only Adam Katz. Here’s to humans (and a bit of technology, too). ### The Creds Doctor URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-creds-doctor/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:44:26.000Z If you’re a self-employed knowledge worker or creative, you probably have some kind of credentials document. A portfolio; an intro deck; a set of capabilities. Something snappy to sell your wares. But producing these fills many of us with deep dread. While we’re capable enough in most of our working lives, when the mirror is turned onto ourselves we freeze. Spin the wheels. Regress into a wobbly mess. A simple antidote - and a cool business opportunity - comes courtesy of the creds coach (or is it 'portfolio partner'? 'reel refinery'? Yes, your hunch is correct: I have never run a naming agency). Whatever they’re called, these individuals review, sharpen, and finesse the portfolios of their fellow travelers. And they help them compellingly communicate their work and story to the world. This doesn’t just mean making a nice slide deck. They’re able to deliver across multiple audiences, formats, and scenarios. As a business opportunity, services can be delivered in compact, easy to understand packages, with a sleek and seamless process behind the scenes. It can be location agnostic, highly productized, with a whole bunch of potential bolt-ons. Probably best to niche down to avoid excess competition. Services can be delivered either as a single fee, or perhaps a back-end deal (say a % of contracts secured over the next 1-2 years). Do it as a solopreneur, or a dynamic duo with complementary skill sets. Two of the biggest challenges people face are simply: 1) getting out of their own way; 2) selling themselves. But while these may be simple - they're not easy. It may well be worth seeking - or becoming - a creds doctor. No health insurance or med school required. ### 8 questions to get better at hiring URL: https://www.howardgray.net/8-questions-to-get-better-at-hiring/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:43:03.000Z How to get better at hiring? A few simple questions can go a long way… Hiring is one of the most challenging - and important - parts of building any team or business. Because humans are involved, it’s squishy, lumpy; art as much as science. Let’s not even get started on the assumptions and biases we’re all riddled with. While I am definitely still learning how to do this well, one thing I’ve found helpful is well-designed interview questions - both to candidates and references. Here are a few. Feel free to use, remix, or critique. Even better, add your own favourites in the comments. (And for a bit of self-coaching, you may like to try them out on yourself, too…) ### For an interview: 1\. What from your resume/LinkedIn would you most like to hide? 2\. What from your resume/LinkedIn do you wish was more visible… or more visceral? 3\. If you were in my shoes, what criteria would you be using to hire someone for this role? 4\. How do you think this interview is going so far? ### To ask references: (I increasingly believe reference calls are undervalued) 1\. If you rated the best person you’ve ever seen in this role as 10/10, how does Person X score? What would bring them closer to 10? 2\. If you were coaching Person X, what two things would you do to help them up their game? 3\. If you could hire someone else (‘Person Y’) to complement X and do exactly the same role as them (imagine you’re creating a perfect duo!), what would Y need to be good at in order to offset X’s strengths and weaknesses? 4\. What do you believe most motivates X today, and how has that changed in the time you’ve known them? P.S. I’m hiring on a couple of projects right now. I'm seeking freelance humans across the venn diagram of Experience & Learning Design, Community Development, and Creative Production. You can be based anywhere, as long as you can work (mainly) NYC hours. If this piques your interest, give me a holler. And yes, these questions may come up… ### Steve Albini's letter to Nirvana (No business lessons required) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/steve-albinis-letter-to-nirvana-no-business-lessons-required/ Last updated: 2025-06-08T22:43:31.000Z Nirvana’s final album In Utero was produced by Steve Albini, who passed away this week age 61\. Here’s a letter Albini wrote to the band ahead of them hiring him. I try to avoid just grabbing other people’s stuff to share here, but it’s a truly wonderful letter. Albini wasn't just an incredible musician and producer - he was also a tremendous writer. P.S. I’ll spare you the “here’s what Nirvana can teach us about \[B2B sales/getting a payrise/empowering your team\]” cliches. I know you’re smart enough to notice some transferrable concepts… ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Steve-Albini-Nirvana-Letter.webp) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Steve-Albini-Nirvana-Letter--1-.webp) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2025/06/Steve-Albini-Letter-to-Nirvana.webp) ### The (secret) secret of Manchester City's success URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-secret-secret-of-manchester-citys-success/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:16.000Z Last season, Manchester City dominated English and European football. They were a squad of finely tuned athletes, average age 26\. But then, there was the other guy: their 3rd choice goalkeeper. He’s 37, hair going grey. Beard too. He’s got a gap-toothed grin, and just a hint of a paunch. Across the entire season he played a grand total of 0 (yes, zero) minutes. In the last four years he's played just one league game. But instead of putting him to out to pasture, Man City offered Scott Carson a contract extension. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/05/ScottCarson.jpg) Umm. Ok. Why? City’s director of football, Txiki Begiristain, says Carson is a real asset. He’s a critical part of the ‘goalkeepers union’, a team within the team. A goalkeeper has the highest pressure - and loneliest - role on the pitch. Carson is also a local cult hero for the fans to get behind. And he's the in-house hype man - from playing practical jokes to providing valuable guidance to the younger players. Oh, and Scott Carson is the only member of City’s squad - and one of only 24 players in the world - to have won the UEFA Champions League with two different clubs. In a world where so much focus is put on the singular hero, the small group of elite all-stars, on ‘up or out’ cultures that turf the rest… well, perhaps there’s another way to view it. Perhaps there are transferrable skills hidden in plain sight; potential that’s left untapped. Critical elements that don’t fit in a spreadsheet. Besides, Man City manager Pep Guardiola isn’t wrong too often. Last season notched up Scott Carson’s 10th major trophy - and Guardiola’s 36th. This season they're on course for a couple more. ### (De)Risky Business URL: https://www.howardgray.net/de-risky-business/ Last updated: 2024-05-12T15:26:53.000Z A few years ago I went to an event featuring a talk by William Reeve. He’s co-founded no less than four hugely successful startups, including LoveFilm, Secret Escapes, and Goodlord. As you may have guessed, this event was about startups: growth; scale; product-market fit. All that juicy stuff. A good chunk of his talk focused on risk. Because entrepreneurs love risk, of course. They’re the tightrope walkers. The swashbucklers. They move fast and break things. We marvel at their audacity, chutzpah, and sharp elbows - even when they get a little too sharp. However, this serial entrepreneur was here to share a different view. He believed the job of the entrepreneur was to de-risk. De-risking wasn’t a task. Nor a project. De-risking was \*the job\*. I remember his message felt discordant, yet also faintly… well, correct. Inevitably, I didn’t take it on board. The heady concoction of ‘rockstar founders’ (urgh) and shiny objects led me astray more than once. Today though, I’m very much down with de-risking. And here’s the thing - de-risking isn’t boring. It doesn’t need to be a plethora of pivot tables and research studies (although it can be). Along the way I’ve figured out a bunch of ways to starch out risk, validate assumptions, test hypotheses - while also making stuff. Building prototypes, producing ideas, sharing, riffing, shipping. There are gamified surveys; FigJam prototypes; mix & match whiteboards; dinner for two; and dozens more. This is great news for the restless, the creative, the curious. Small Bets are the new All-In. Low risk is high value. It seems that team members, investors, and customers like it, too. Here’s to some (de)Risky Business. ### Mentoring: What, Why... How? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/mentor-definitions/ Last updated: 2024-05-10T20:35:11.000Z I get the strong sense there’s a growing demand for mentorship - both to give and receive. But why? And how do we define a ‘mentor’, anyway? On the face of it, mentoring looks a lot like coaching or consulting, but has some distinctive elements that set it apart. Chip Conley has a nice shorthand on the two broad types of mentorship: **1) Librarian:** When a mentee sees you as a subject matter expert, you are a Librarian. You have ‘know-how’ and ‘know-who’. Usually these mentor relationships is finite - your role is to provide answers (or at least the directions to them). **2) Confidante:** Here, the mentor role is to help a mentee understand themselves more as a human. Instead of you answering the questions, you’re more often asking them. These relationships can last months, years, or even decades. I’m curious how and why mentoring seems to be growing sharply in popularly - particularly as much of it is an unpaid, pro bono arrangement. If you’re a mentor to someone (or would like to be) - what’s appealing? And you’re seeking a mentor: what (and who) are you seeking? ### Deep in the hole at SXSW URL: https://www.howardgray.net/untitled-5/ Last updated: 2024-05-09T20:32:01.000Z > “Even now, no one’s willing to talk about failure”. I heard this from a few people at SXSW this year. On reflection, I think they’re half-right. People do discuss failure and its importance, but they don’t want to actually talk \*about\* it. Instead, they want to talk \*around\* it. At conferences you’ll hear a few people talk about their failures, but usually only in a sentence or two. The crowd gasps or nods sagely, then the speaker moves on to the inevitable success that followed. They gloss over it. But that’s the missed opportunity. What almost no one does is talk about the strategic mistakes that led them into the hole, or the methods they used to pull themselves out. These are the real learnings. These are the things people truly benefit from. I’m convinced that openly sharing what led you into and out of the hole does two things: 1) Offers powerful way to help people learn; 2) Makes you more relatable, accessible, and… well, human. Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut said it best: > "You will see this story over and over again. People love it and it is not copyrighted. The story is 'Man in Hole,' but the story needn't be about a man or a hole. It's: somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again." Go deep in the hole. Take us there with you. Then lead us back out, so we can follow you step by step. Yes, there's a risk of failing if you decide to talk openly about failure. But that’s the point. ### A new type of job - straight from the past URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-new-type-of-job-straight-from-the-past/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:41:10.000Z Disney has it. So does Levi’s. IBM definitely do. Stripe probably will soon. Even Theranos has one (albeit an alternative version). Can you guess what it is? A company historian. The big companies have had these for a while. Some have even built full-scale museums dedicated to their stories, artifacts and milestones. Why bother? There’s the celebratory aspect, sure. But the historians can help business avoid expensive mistakes, attract talent, and even generate new assets and revenue streams. Here’s the thing - the historian is no longer reserved for the behemoths. I know a company with a few hundred employees that has a team member acting as a kind of “Fractional Historian”. They collate all kinds of stuff - board meeting notes, social media campaigns, product launches, and beyond. Over 15 years of operations they have a ton of valuable stuff that helps inform where they’re going next. And today’s tools mean even a 50, 20 or 5 person operation can build their own archive vault. It’s tempting to keep chasing what’s next; to jump on the next new thing. But there’s massive value hidden in the archives. You may surprise yourself at what you find in there. P.S. Two areas of opportunity: 1) create a fractional role for yourself at your company; 2) start an agency that provides Plug-In Vault Curation to a bunch of businesses. ### Jobs of the Future: The Company Historian URL: https://www.howardgray.net/jobs-of-the-future-the-company-historian-2/ Last updated: 2024-11-24T20:58:48.000Z Disney has it. So does Levi’s. IBM definitely do. Stripe probably will soon. Even Theranos has one (albeit an alternative version). Can you guess what it is? A company historian. The big companies have had these for a while. Some have even built full-scale museums dedicated to their stories, artifacts and milestones. Why bother? There’s the celebratory aspect, sure. But the historians can help business avoid expensive mistakes, attract talent, and even generate new assets and revenue streams. Here’s the thing - the historian is no longer reserved for the behemoths. I know a company with a few hundred employees that has a team member acting as a kind of “Fractional Historian”. They collate all kinds of stuff - board meeting notes, social media campaigns, product launches, and beyond. Over 15 years of operations they have a ton of valuable stuff that helps inform where they’re going next. And today’s tools mean even a 50, 20 or 5 person operation can build their own archive vault. It’s tempting to keep chasing what’s next; to jump on the next new thing. But there’s massive value hidden in the archives. You may surprise yourself at what you find in there. P.S. Two areas of opportunity: 1) create a fractional role for yourself at your company; 2) start an agency that provides Plug-In Vault Curation to a bunch of businesses. ### Future Jobs: The Fractional Company Historian URL: https://www.howardgray.net/future-jobs-the-fractional-company-historian/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T19:03:25.000Z Disney has it. So does Levi’s. IBM definitely do. Stripe probably will soon. Even Theranos has one (albeit an alternative version). Can you guess what it is? A company historian. The big companies have had these for a while. Some have even built full-scale museums dedicated to their stories, artifacts and milestones. Why bother? There’s the celebratory aspect, sure. But the historians can help business avoid expensive mistakes, attract talent, and even generate new assets and revenue streams. Here’s the thing - the historian is no longer reserved for the behemoths. I know a company with a few hundred employees that has a team member acting as a kind of “Fractional Historian”. They collate all kinds of stuff - board meeting notes, social media campaigns, product launches, and beyond. Over 15 years of operations they have a ton of valuable stuff that helps inform where they’re going next. And today’s tools mean even a 50, 20 or 5 person operation can build their own archive vault. It’s tempting to keep chasing what’s next; to jump on the next new thing. But there’s massive value hidden in the archives. You may surprise yourself at what you find in there. P.S. Two areas of opportunity: 1) create a fractional role for yourself at your company; 2) start an agency that provides Plug-In Vault Curation to a bunch of businesses. ### How to use Figma for building online courses URL: https://www.howardgray.net/figma-for-building-online-courses/ Last updated: 2024-05-07T20:30:12.000Z Over the last few months I’ve been using Figma as the design engine for building our new online course. The course contains around 65 short form videos, with several hundred slides, all custom designed (plus a ton of other assets). This is first time we’ve used the tool in this way - it’s been a learning curve. Here’s a snapshot of our workflow: **🎨 1\. Brand Kit**: Create a core set of brand / deck assets, with as many variations on layouts as you can stomach (this saves time later) **🔳 2\. Storyboard**: Sketch each bit on paper first with a rough idea of the layout that best explains the concept (it’s too easy to get lost in a vortex of design options, so go offline first). Aim for max 10 slides (I always end up with more alas) **🖼️ 3\. Sections:** Set up your content using Figma’s new ‘Section’ option. Name each one **✍🏽 4\. Describe:** Start in Figma by adding 1-2 lines of text for each slide (try using the model of ‘Objective’, ‘Narrative’ and ‘Transition’ for each one). No images yet! **🎥 5\. Layout**: Add the layouts once the text feels cohesive. To test this, focus on a) mini scenes (2-5 slides), and b) the transitions from one slide and scene to another (pro tip: narrative transitions are much underrated) **🪄6\. Extras**: Import any additional resources you want to use (i.e. from places like Google Slides). Use the PDF to Figma plugin to do this. Import them at 2-3x size, lay out the slides you need, then rebuild using your layout template. I don’t do this earlier as I find I can get overwhelmed by material **📸 7\. Images**: Use Figma’s Unsplash plugin to quickly find and add images **✄ 8\. Trim**: Cut as much text as you can from the slides. Yes, you may need to change layout here. It’s worth it though **🎤 9\. Narrate**: Re-run your narrative, do a rough timing check, shunt things around (probably 10 times) **🧽 10\. Clean**: all the slide frames in numerical order so you can sequentially stack them into your delivery gear (we use mmhmm studio) **☕️ 11\. Have a cup of tea** Pro Tip: If you can, work in a pair - switching places between image/styling and the narrative/content pieces. This reduces cognitive overload a LOT (shout out to [Fer Franco](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net) \- our wonderful experience design whiz) ### Monday night storytelling URL: https://www.howardgray.net/monday-night-storytelling/ Last updated: 2024-05-06T20:25:32.000Z You know that event you kept meaning to go to, then realise it’s 4 years later and you’ve still not been? That was me with Columbia’s Digital Storytelling Lab - until this week. Their event on Immersive Storytelling at NYC’s Lincoln Center was a delight - and in more ways than I expected. Here are four bits I particularly loved about the way they delivered it: \- Smart curation: You could tell they'd thought about the panel group - interesting, open and creative folk with diverse experience across art, film, theatre, education, advertising, web3, and design \- Participatory: Right upfront the hosts made a point of bringing the audience into the session as fellow travelers vs. passive observers \- Real talk: There were candid answers on topics that really matter - and that most are afraid to discuss (e.g. ‘how do you \*actually\* fund your creative work?’) \- Hands-on: Alongside the panel there was a showcase from Columbia students, plus a collaborative workshop session to apply ideas from the first half of the session An hour before the event I was sat at home talking myself out of it, thinking I’d be ‘more productive’ sitting at my desk. Instead, being in that new environment led to me cramming five index cards full of ideas, references, and a couple of mini breakthroughs. Not bad for a Monday in the middle of March. Shout out to [Michael Monello](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAACBpgkBdyTouqvPQBaJmmEMiSGwfddIOh4?ref=howardgray.net), [Toni Thai Sterrett](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAwiA3oBFsHN2%5FolKaskAEm6UsyKUO5FKko?ref=howardgray.net), John Kudos, [Barrie Adleberg](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAL8JfMBaABXexKcIt-Ubvc7iT-UltsxW4I?ref=howardgray.net), [Andrew Hoepfner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAB6Oh7oBmj2V1aEYQK40ZoxP6je8aj7coSw?ref=howardgray.net), and [Evan Neiden](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAEQGjagBch2b%5F8s%5F6V%5FXX2XO%5Fb83PjvNV2E?ref=howardgray.net), plus [Shar Simpson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAC3omL0BGP1CrVlllmIEhh7I51PY4lLxu3I?ref=howardgray.net) and [Lance Weiler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAACnmdIB3mCqxCZb7x6GW5vsvWpixWidiME?ref=howardgray.net) for bringing it all together. P.S. Stuff like this is also a good reminder of what makes cities like NYC magical… ### Viva la voz URL: https://www.howardgray.net/viva-la-voz/ Last updated: 2024-05-05T20:10:14.000Z Last week, a friend sent me a text asking for a chat. They’re at a career pivot point and seeking some input (I’m mindful to say ‘advice’ as that’s something different). As is often the way in today’s busy world, we agreed a time a week later for a proper chat. I was going to leave it at that, but then remembered to make an ask. I texted them a question along the lines of *“To help me prep, can you send a few notes on what’s on your mind?”.* This is not something I do often - for two reasons. First, it makes me feel like one of those chiseled productivity fanatics, squeezing every last drop of efficiency from the rest of humanity in order to fulfill their laser-focused machiavellian desires. Yurgh. Second, 95% of the times I do make the ask - whether via text, email or carrier pigeon - there’s no response. However, this friend came back with two voice notes, each about 5 minutes long. I stuck ‘em on 1.5x speed, listened to them both a couple of times, and scribbled some notes (yeah I could have used some AI to help, but whatever.) It was easy for them to do, easy for me to absorb. Now we have a bunch of things to dig into. And the texture of a voice note - the tone, language, cadence, and... pauses - reveals so much more than an ‘agenda’. It's real, natural, and - dare I utter the word - authentic. Not so bad in a world that's often the opposite. It's amazing how many work-related meetings manage to be both inefficient and ineffective. Instead, viva la voz. ### Full Stackers URL: https://www.howardgray.net/untitled-4/ Last updated: 2024-05-02T20:13:00.000Z I've long believed in the value of cultivating "[Lowercase Skills](https://www.howardgray.net/2018/12/11/lowercase-skills/)" - being a an uppercase Strategist who can also design, or a capital 'P' Producer with a knack for teaching. But last week I discovered a novel - and more integrated - twist on this concept: ‘Full Stackers’. It comes from the world of software development. Full Stack describes engineers with expertise across the entire "stack" required to build and deploy an application. Today it’s applicable to many more domains. [**Troy Young**](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net)’s newsletter has a great riff on the Full Stacker concept: *“It’s never been easier to start a company, birth a brand, build a thing, make media, grow a community, sell a service. Full Stackers are well suited to this world… open minded people unafraid to use tools and learn new things to “get shit done. They are the revolutionaries.”* If you’re a Full Stacker, you can create a strategy, build a financial model, and spin up a prototype. You can design a sales campaign, write the copy, set up the meetings. Even better, you can iterate, pivot and adjust - in real time. Troy believes there’s real power in being Full Stack. I’m inclined to agree. But what's your take? Is this just ‘generalists’ by another name? Or in a brave new world, does it pay to be Full Stack? ### The unspoken layoffs URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-unspoken-thing-about-layoffs/ Last updated: 2024-04-21T20:07:06.000Z Layoffs suck. If you’re being subjected to them, I feel for you. But I can’t help noticing something. There are some amazing support networks for people being laid off, especially from big companies. There’s solidarity with others who have been impacted, and a growing number of useful resources. These are all wonderful things. Yet there’s a whole load of other people suffering in silence. They have no severance packages, and a lot of them face a scary lack of runway and momentum. Many, many freelancers, indie consultants and solopreneurs have had a horrendous past 12 months. They don’t say much. Because being ‘Open to Work’ can be bad for business. Identities are often deeply interwoven with the work. Long dry spells can feel humiliating. Yes, many freelancers decided to take their uncertain path. But they didn’t choose for clients to pull back, cut costs to the bone. They didn’t choose for some people to ghost them on projects, or even renege on signed contracts. Almost every indie person I know is trying to piece it together. They’re going through pivots, repositions, and making tough decisions on where to invest their limited resources. Often alone. And many are exhausted. This slow burn shift is far less dramatic than a layoff, but it still hurts. Like I say, being out of work is horrible, but not many people notice the indies. If you’re in the position to do so, take a moment look out for who might be suffering in silence. Good luck to all - whichever path you’re on. Onwards. ### 3 learnings from validating a new startup idea URL: https://www.howardgray.net/3-learnings-from-validating-a-new-startup-idea/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:35:58.000Z Einstein said if he had an hour to solve a challenge he’d spend 55 minutes on the problem, 5 on the solution. Simple, but not easy. Over the past weeks I’ve been applying this advice to building a new venture. Here’s what I’ve learned so far… Me and the crew are currently incubating a new startup. It’s incredibly exciting, but we have to work hard not to jump to solutions (or slide decks). We’re busy validating assumptions; building micro-sized tests; reducing our execution risk; talking to humans. To access people outside our own networks, we've run some paid social media ads. 18 ad variants point to various landing pages and surveys. Our first pass did okay, but 10 days later we'd iterated 3 times - and the results have shifted drastically. The most significant changes were all counter-intuitive: 1) Surveys take 3x longer but convert 2x better (and offers far richer insights). 2) Removing a cash incentive for product testers actually lowered acquisition costs 3) Adding an in-built "book a 15 min call" boosted conversions 2.5x (even though it’s more time and effort for people) A few other things of note… \- 90% of people gave their phone numbers freely \- ‘What else do you want to share?’ is a golden open-ended question \- A 15 min call can yield tons of insight - if you design the questions well And in classic startup style, we've built this entire system on no-code tools for $75/month (Carrd, Figma, Zapier, Notion, Typeform, Calendly) If you’re curious about the process we’ve built around this, feel free to holler - I’m happy to share some more… P.S. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually know. ### Our new approach to startup validation URL: https://www.howardgray.net/our-new-approach-to-startup-validation/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T19:00:14.000Z Einstein said if he had an hour to solve a challenge he’d spend 55 minutes on the problem, 5 on the solution. Simple, but not easy. Over the past weeks I’ve been applying this advice to building a new venture. Here’s what I’ve learned so far… Me and the crew are currently incubating a new startup. It’s incredibly exciting, but we have to work hard not to jump to solutions (or slide decks). We’re busy validating assumptions; building micro-sized tests; reducing our execution risk; talking to humans. To access people outside our own networks, we've run some paid social media ads. 18 ad variants point to various landing pages and surveys. Our first pass did okay, but 10 days later we'd iterated 3 times - and the results have shifted drastically. The most significant changes were all counter-intuitive: 1. Surveys take 3x longer but convert 2x better (and offers far richer insights). 2. Removing a cash incentive for product testers actually lowered acquisition costs 3. Adding an in-built 15 min call boosted conversions 2.5x (even though it’s more time and effort for people) A few other things of note… - 90% of people gave their phone numbers freely - ‘What else do you want to share?’ is a golden open-ended question - A 15 min call can yield tons of insight - if you design the questions well And in classic startup style, we've built this entire system on no-code tools for $75/month (Carrd, Figma, Zapier, Notion, Typeform, Calendly) If you’re curious about the process we’ve built around this, feel free to holler - I’m happy to share some more… P.S. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually know. ### Damon Albarn's preset genius URL: https://www.howardgray.net/damon-albarn-preset-genius/ Last updated: 2024-04-17T20:05:18.000Z Damon Albarn is the creative catalyst behind Blur, Gorillaz, Africa Express, and dozens of other music, film and theatre projects. He’s an incredible shapeshifter who’s also sold tens of millions of records. But is his success down to talent, hard work, connections… luck? We marvel at people like this, yet they can also feel so out of reach to us mere mortals. Could we get ourselves to even 10% of their ability or output? Me and [Fer Franco](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net) were wondering about this the other day. When Blur were an unknown band in the early 90s, did Damon know he’d become who he is today? What fueled the success? Here’s a hint. One of his biggest hits is ‘Clint Eastwood’ by Gorillaz. It currently has 763m plays on Spotify. It was a landmark song, a paradigm shifter. Genius? Maybe. But the song’s killer hook is from a preset. It was pre-programmed into a Suzuki Omnichord keyboard he had sitting in his studio. He just hit one button - and bang. He even used the drum fill, too. 0:00 /0:27 1× So how is this relevant to you, to me, to us? 🪵 1\. New Wine, Old Oak: The Omnichord was released in 1981\. Frankly, it looks it. But just because something’s old, doesn’t mean it’s crapola. And new does not equate to good. We tend to overvalue what’s new, and underprice the old. 🪄 2\. Hiding in plain sight: Sometimes it’s right in front of you. The idea, the hook, the breakthrough. It’s sitting there. Waiting for you. Perhaps the trick is to notice what you notice. 🎹 3\. Everything’s a remix: If you’re stuck on your quest to create a true original, remember that nothing is. Just start. A preset will do. 🤖 4\. Just as an Omnichord preset can’t turn me into Damon Albarn, no other technology (no, not even ChatGPT) will magically transform you into somebody else. You need the slow, unglamorous human work for that to happen. Sorry. Here's the good news, though. Me and Fer reckon some of Damon Albarn's success comes from immense levels of two things: energy and curiosity. The former is tough to ramp up beyond a certain point, but the latter… well, that might be limitless. If you let it. Stay curious. P.S. Shout out to [Conor McCarthy](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net) who pinged me this video with no context, no comment. None needed. He knows me well. ### Email Intros: The Double Opt-In (revisited) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/email-intros-the-double-opt-in-revisited/ Last updated: 2024-04-15T20:01:45.000Z How’s your inbox? Mine’s… ok. But a bunch of emails are festering. I don’t quite know what to do with them. Maybe you know the feeling. And it could be because of a small but vital missing piece of email etiquette. Here’s how it goes. Someone who knows you emails you and someone you don't know. They suggest the two of you meet. You might get lucky and it’s the perfect time, person and place. But more likely you end up having to pick one of these: - A. Saying a version of “Sorry, I don’t want to meet you” - B. Ignoring it - C. Taking ages to reply with a limp semi-excuse - D. Having a meeting you don't really want to have Yes, all these options are bad. For everyone involved. I’m sure this topic has been shared here before, but in the last couple of months I’ve had a growing number of these awkward emails. It could be that new aftershave I bought on Temu. More likely it’s down to market uncertainty. Fast twitch muscles. A frenetic energy. Fear of falling behind. I get it. (Btw, I’m not at all popular and am struggling with this, so I shudder to think what the true ballers are dealing with.) What to do? --- The double opt-in (coined by Fred Wilson, I believe) is a wonderfully simple solve. As he suggests: > When introducing two people who don't know each other, ask each of them to opt-in to the introduction before making it. Here’s all you need to do: 1\. Email each person separately to ask if it’s cool to intro. Include some context (e.g. the person’s LinkedIn URL, a couple of bullets on how you know them, what the ask is, etc). Make it easy for them to say yes or no 2\. If both say yes, make the intro. (Pro Tip: write a helpful subject line, for example: “Intro: Alice (company X) <> Bob (org Y) - \[topic\]”) 3\. If you’re one of the recipients, put the introducer on bcc unless they ask to be copied in. Most people don’t love an 14-email thread on scheduling a call they’re not attending And voila. Yes, this is more work for you if you are making the intro. But it’s worth it. Oh, and which of options A-D is your go-to? Come on, be honest… ### Mentoring: The Librarian & The Confidante URL: https://www.howardgray.net/mentoring-the-librarian-the-confidante/ Last updated: 2024-04-12T19:47:22.000Z I get the strong sense there’s a growing demand for mentorship - both to give and receive. But why? And how do we define a ‘mentor’, anyway? On the face of it, mentoring looks a lot like coaching or consulting, but has some distinctive elements that set it apart. Chip Conley created a wonderfully simple model to surface the two broad types of mentorship: 📚 1) Librarian: When a mentee sees you as a subject matter expert, you are a Librarian. You have ‘know-how’ and ‘know-who’. Usually these mentor relationships are finite - your role is to provide answers (or at least the directions to them). 🤫 2) Confidante: Here, the mentor role is to help a mentee understand themselves more as a human. Instead of you answering the questions, you’re more often asking them. These mentor relationships can last months, years, or even decades. I’m curious how and why mentoring seems to be growing sharply in popularity - particularly as many arrangements are unpaid, pro bono. If you’re a mentor to someone (or would like to be) - what’s appealing? And you’re seeking a mentor: what (and who) are you seeking? ### Gamified Career Accelerants URL: https://www.howardgray.net/gamified-career-accelerants/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:33:33.000Z **Could your career and skill set be accelerated through multiplayer games?** I reckon so. The future of learning won’t (and shouldn’t) look like today’s company training programs, universities, or online courses. My bet is the next generation of educational products take inspiration from the stuff I discovered at NYC’s Uncommons board game cafe this week. Yeah, you probably don’t need to solve 19th century murders to help get promoted to VP, or survive in a desert as proof of your problem solving skills. BUT… - stepping into the shoes of a compelling protagonist; - working with imperfect information; - playing out scenarios; - becoming more strategic; and being able to do all this online, in-person, solo or in groups… that’s exciting. When it comes to building professionals skills and confidence, these methods can be amazingly effective when done right. Which is why me and the Wavetable crew are going deep in the game. And in a world where entertainment is merging into all kinds of other forms, we might even see Robert Downey Jr or Benedict Cumberbatch showing up to play a cameo… If you’re into this stuff - either as an team leader, educator, or creator - do say hello, we are actively looking to strike up more conversations here. ### How to do Deeper Work URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-do-deeper-work/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T20:31:56.000Z How to do more with less? Or rather, how can you create valuable work with less resources but also less burnout, stress and distractions? I’ve been thinking a lot about this. So has Cal Newport (author of ‘Deep Work’ and ‘Slow Productivity’). So I stole some of his ideas. Here are a few of them we’ve been using at Wavetable. They’ve already had a big positive impact on both our effectiveness and wellbeing. ### **General** - If a remote team (vs. in person or hybrid), being structured is critical. This can be freeing rather than a millstone - Be ‘Pull’ not ‘Push’, i.e. each person pulls items from a list vs. being pushed them (and often randomly) by someone else ### **Day-to-day** - Each person focuses only on their ‘Active’ items. Everything else is then in a queue/backlog - Day-to-day comms / meetings focus only on Active items (i.e. not the queue) - Aim to block email / Slack etc. each day during Deep Work periods of 2-4 hours (i.e. if the team have planned well, there should be very few messages that need immediate attention - if urgent, text or call them) ### **Planning** - The queue either gets dealt with when an item becomes Active, or during planning (we do it every two weeks) - Block by time, not task - Plan your work in units of week, month, quarter (in our case we do Week, Sprint (2 weeks), Cycle (6 weeks)) If you have experience in product or engineering teams you’ve probably worked like this for a while. However, I get the strong sense it’s increasingly viable - and important - for all kinds of teams to use similar principles. We’re using this across education design, content production and strategy work and it’s been wonderful. Which workflows have been working well for you? ### Multiplayer games for career design URL: https://www.howardgray.net/multiplayer-games-for-career-design/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:15.000Z Could your career and skill set be accelerated through multiplayer games? I reckon so. The future of learning won’t (and shouldn’t) look like today’s company training programs, universities, or online courses. My bet is the next generation of educational products take inspiration from the stuff I discovered at NYC’s Uncommons board game cafe this week. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/10/GameResearch1.jpg) Yeah, you probably don’t need to solve 19th century murders to help get promoted to VP, or survive in a desert as proof of your problem solving skills. BUT… - stepping into the shoes of a compelling protagonist; - working with imperfect information; - playing out scenarios; - becoming more strategic; ⠀ and being able to do all this online, in-person, solo or in groups… that’s exciting. When it comes to building professionals skills and confidence, these methods can be amazingly effective when done right. Which is why me and the Wavetable crew are going deep in the game. And in a world where entertainment is merging into all kinds of other forms, we might even see Robert Downey Jr or Benedict Cumberbatch showing up to play a cameo… If you’re into this stuff - either as an team leader, educator, or creator - do say hello, we are actively looking to strike up more conversations here. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/10/GameResearch2.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/10/GameResearch3.jpg) ### Beats (Co-)Workin' | Adventures... 66 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/beats-co-workin-adventures-66/ Last updated: 2024-03-14T18:34:11.000Z *Hello. This is the* Adventures… *newsletter: a trip into finding your inner groove, creating work that sustains, and making more sense of the world. It’s put together by me,* [*Howard*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*. Not a subscriber yet?* [*Join now*](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) Greetings from seat 27B. I’m on my way back from SXSW, following a wonderful few days in Mexico City (and a less wonderful 24 hours marooned at the airport due to a flight cancellation - but hey, life.) Why CDMX? As well as seeking out tacos, art, and sunshine, I was there to co-work. And when I say ‘co-work’, I don’t mean sitting in a coffee shop with headphones on. I mean actually producing things - with a real person, in-person. The progress we made in just a few days was extraordinary. It got me thinking: why was it so successful? And how do we work now, anyway? A year ago the media was full of stories about ‘The New Normal’ and ‘Return to Office’. Now, not so much. It seems to have disappeared from view. Did I miss the memo? Was it all sorted out? Maybe for some. But I’m sensing a gnawing dissatisfaction, an ominous rumble. It’s affecting freelancers, teams, and companies alike. And left unchecked, it creates ugly side effects. Let’s take a look at why - plus three antidotes we can apply. ## A load of cobblers A [recent New York Times study](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/08/business/economy/remote-work-home.html?ref=howardgray.net)on company/employee work arrangments concluded: > *“these battles have largely come to an end, and workplaces have reached a new hybrid-work status quo. Roughly one-tenth of workers are cobbling together a combination of work in the office and from home, and a similar portion are working entirely remotely.”* Ok - 20% of the overall working population is pretty low, and WFH is definitely a privilege for most. Still, in the US alone there are 15m+ people working from home for a good chunk of their time. That’s a lot of time and energy. But almost 1500 days on from that rapid adoption of WFH, are we really still in the ‘cobbling together’ phase? It appears so. While WFH offers plenty of upsides - less commuting drudgery, space for household chores, more work-life balance - it might not be all it’s cracked up to be. ## Slumping My pal [Tom](https://tomcritchlow.com/2024/03/06/wfh/?ref=howardgray.net) and I chatted about this last week. We agreed that at home the ‘peaks’ aren’t as high - *and* the ‘troughs’ tend to last longer. The high-voltage jolt of a cool idea, opportunity or breakthrough doesn’t feel so bright when you’re on your own. Neither does the delight of a turn of phrase, meme, or other connection point. The energising, electrifying, and illuminating bits of the work all run at lower lumens. WFH can also accelerate troughs into *slumps*. Slumps are riddled with procrastination, loss of momentum, phoning it in, or a lack of direction. They can last a day, a week, a month… a year. Longer slumps pull us into the orbit of what Adam Grant called [languishing](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html?ref=howardgray.net) (written for the pandemic, but still relevant today, because guess what, the pandemic never really… *ended.*) Here’s the thing about the slump: alone, it’s hideous. Yet with other people, you tend to be able to pull yourself out much more easily. But if 5 days a week in an office isn’t the answer (hint: it’s not), how to solve this puzzle of peaks and troughs? How do we bridge the gaps? ## A question of design ![Lowercase skills](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1581544291234-31340be4b1b8?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDZ8fGxldHRlcnN8ZW58MHx8fHwxNjI3MjU0MDE2&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=1200) One of my ongoing riffs is the idea of [‘lowercase skills](https://www.howardgray.net/2018/12/11/lowercase-skills/)’: being Capital case in some areas, and lowercase in others. A great example of this is Design. Many of us would feel very uncomfortable identifying as a capital D ‘Designer’: can’t draw; can’t create pretty slide decks; aren’t able to make our apartments look like those snazzy Instagram ads. But design is *“a concept of or proposal for an object, a process, or a system”*. It’s not reserved for the creative magicians. It’s everywhere. And you too can be a designer. Including in your work setup. There are meetings, environments, tools, times of day. When you think about it, there are dozens of components that benefit from design. Becoming designers of our working lives can be transformative. Yet many of us just plod on with whatever we patched together (or was thrust upon us). This is a lingering pandemic hangover, and it’s time for a restorative bacon sandwich and a cup of tea. To avoid [blank canvas paralysis](https://www.themodernnomad.com/blank-canvas-paralysis/?ref=howardgray.net), here are 3 ideas to redesign our work. One is primarily for individuals, one for teams, and the third for workspace operators. But just like design that works - they’re open to all. ### 1) For Individuals: The Two-Way Jam Session This one is ridiculously simple. It also costs nothing, and makes both you and someone else feel good. I’ve done it with a few people now - most recently last week in CDMX. Here’s how it works. Each of us brought a single prompt or challenge relating to our work. We then spent 45 minutes collaborating on each one, with a goal of outlining some form of solution. There’s no way one to do it, but as a guide you want to: i) keep a strict time constraint; ii) focus on a single project, and iii) aim for one clear output. The process forces you to ask clarifying questions, be vulnerable, and challenge your biases. All useful, transferable skills. This combination - along with our complementary domain expertise, cups of coffee and dry humour - was magical. They walked away with an outline for a course they’ve developing. We left with a fresh and exciting way to talk about our new product. There was no money exchanged. Just a barter-based skill swap and a listening ear. (btw, there’s a probably a cool startup/side project idea here. My customary 8% equity share will apply, of course). ### 2) For Teams: Open Studios If you’re in a team and have a WFH element, you’re likely doing a lot of video conferencing (let’s call it ‘Zoom’ - just as Hoover is to vacuums and Google is to search) A quirk of Zoom is that the primary ‘thing’ shifts away from the actual stuff you’re working on, to face-to-face interaction. Counter-intuitively, this narrows the aperture and makes everything feel more clinical. Zoom can be great for alignment and problem solving, but far less so for divergent thinking and fresh stimuli. To mitigate this, try thinking like a craftsperson or artist. Many have regular ‘Open Studios’ sessions where anyone can drop by and see what they - and others - are working on. Open Studios encourage conversation, inspiration, and serendipity. Why not do this in your workspace? Create some kind of ‘always on’ offering: visuals and sketches on the wall; or a digital version via open access Figma or Google Docs files (even add the links to your email signature). Doing this gives others a much richer feel for your approach and personality vs. yet another 30 mins timebox to ‘Align on \[X\]’. (speaking of Zoom, [here are 18 ways to make it better](https://www.howardgray.net/2020/10/13/18-elements-of-the-zoom-revolution-remix/)) You can even turn it into an event - invite other teams, partners, clients, friends. This can work online too (Storythings ‘[Proper Fancy](https://storythings.com/work/proper-fancy/?ref=howardgray.net)’ is a nice example). Either way, don’t underestimate how many others are seeking fresh stimuli and connection points… ### 3) For Operators: Focus on Jobs to be Done My crew here at Wavetable are currently incubating two community-driven education ventures (one original, one with a client partner). Much of my last few weeks has been developing user personas, problem statements and ‘[Jobs to be Done’ (JTBD](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done?ref=howardgray.net)). The JTBD framework is incredibly useful in all kinds of contexts - not least for companies with office leases, co-work businesses, and real estate orgs (i.e. those in the world of owning and operating workspaces) I get the sense there’s a fundmental midunderstanding of the ‘job’ that users of a workspace are hiring it for. The Job To Be Done is not a place to put a laptop. We’ve already hired something to do that (a desk at home). Three orgs I’ve noticed with a different approach: - [WSA](https://www.instagram.com/wsanyc/?hl=en&ref=howardgray.net): A massive bet, but a very interesting one. This brutalist 1970s tower with 36 floors is being converted into mix of studio, food, and culture space. And it’s run not by a real estate business, but a hospitality company - [180](https://www.180studios.com/?ref=howardgray.net): Another brutalist reimagining - this time in London. 180 has a network of production and exhibition spaces, as well as being home to orgs like The Athletic, WeTransfer and Soho Works - [Preacher](https://preacher.co/?ref=howardgray.net): The HQ of this Austin creative agency has an in-built art gallery and community space - not as a bolt-on, but as a key part of the value proposition. Many people don’t even realise it’s home to an agency - which is part of the point And perhaps the kernel of the JTBD comes from a phrase I find myself saying often. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/03/Emily.jpg) Emily Eisenhart, at Preacher Gallery ## *“That’s why we co-work”* Whenever my friend Josh and I are working together and something interesting or unusual occurs, one of us utters these words. Sometimes we both say them simultaneously, like some throwback double act shilling naff jewelry on QVC. But here’s the thing - these moments almost never come from grinding through a document, or finishing a ‘task’. They’re a connection, a cool idea, a serendipitous triangulation. And because of the workspace we’re in - it happens often. The same happened in Mexico City. We got a lot done not just because of focused time, but because of design. Designing a structure for a strategy session (using an amazing template for a Business Hypothesis Canvas); doing the fiddly stuff asynchronously in advance; designing the day with 'too much' time to take a walk and get some donuts (guess what - we had a project breakthrough while doing it). ## Less than 5 I believe we’re going to see the pendulum swing back to more forms of in-person connection. This isn't just exciting - it's essential. Because the way we design and do our work impacts so much more: - Upskilling - Mental Health - Entrepreneurship - Economic Security - Communication & Relational Skills - Family & Relationship Dynamics - Real Estate This may seem overblown, but all of these are only one degree away from the way we (co) work. When 5 days a week in one place - whether home, office, co-work, or coffee shop - is not the answer, it then becomes a question of (lowercase) design: - How do we make more of the spaces and tools we already have access to? - What could we do to better design our time - both solo and together? - How do we bring the others along for the ride? Yup, it’s a puzzle. But it’s worth investing the time and energy to piece together (probably via some co-working.) When work sometimes feels like it beats us down, we may as well get some beats workin'. Btw, in case you're interested, here are a few new things I'm trying: - **Weekly** - Two days a week at a dedicated co-work space - Open calendar Tues-Thurs afternoons (anyone can book a chat) - Two hour structured co-work sprint every Friday - **Monthly** - 2-3 small meetups (I don't like big groups...) - **Quarterly** - Hosting a dinner + a lightly structured work session with collaborators old & new - One-week co-location sprint, in a different place each time What setup are you seeking? I’d love to hear. Just hit reply. Thanks for reading. Howard --- ## Bits - [NYC Trash Rules](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-trash-rules.html?ref=howardgray.net): An excellent dive into the inner workings of New York’s sanitation system - [What makes an album the greatest ever?](https://pudding.cool/2024/03/greatest-music/?ref=howardgray.net): Another killer bit of visual journalism from the crew at The Pudding - [Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny?ref=howardgray.net): Curious about the person running OpenAI? This 2016 profile paints a fascinating - and somewhat unsettling - picture. (pair with [this take](https://twitter.com/JeffLadish/status/1766198013939118561?ref=howardgray.net) from an AI expert). - [The Rise of Dopamine Culture](https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-2024?ref=howardgray.net): the ever-excellent Ted Gioia on the future of arts, culture and entertainment. It ain’t pretty :-/ ## Boombox [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/03/Ritos-de-Paso-Fer-Franco.jpg)](https://ferfranco.bandcamp.com/album/ritos-de-paso?ref=howardgray.net) When he’s not co-working with me in Mexico City, Wavetable’s Fer Franco is producing music and touring the world. [His debut album is out now](https://ferfranco.bandcamp.com/album/ritos-de-paso?ref=howardgray.net). ## Meanwhile... 3 things I’ve been doing of late. - **Simulating**: co-designing a live case study challenge at Columbia Business School ([here’s how](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7171141662050570242/?ref=howardgray.net)) - **Anchoring**: The irony of a place like SXSW is that despite its size, you only need to meet a couple of good humans to make it a big success - **Juicing**: My 2 year old son transformed my camera tripod into a juicing factory - complete with juice press, delivery trucks and cleaning components. If only we all had a toddler’s imagination. --- ## Just one more thing... Want more Howard in your life? You do? Well, when you’re ready, I can help you: - Bring out your inside genius and become a more accomplished teacher, presenter and speaker - Create vibrant content and experiences that people actually care about - Develop your groove with A.I. tools and workflows [More info >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) ### #SceneRemix URL: https://www.howardgray.net/scene-remix/ Last updated: 2024-02-05T23:23:14.000Z It's only February, but this is the coolest thing I’ve seen so far this year. It blends pop culture, education and entertainment - and there’s zero A.I. involved 😄 A YouTube user called 'KeepItCool' has been remixing subplots and character arcs from one of the greatest TV shows of all time - creating completely new episodes in the process. 'The Wire', HBO's ode to the heart and soul of the city of Baltimore, has a vast cast of characters and subplots over its 60 hours of runtime. KeepItCool extracts noncontiguous scenes from The Wire and remixes them to create short stories focused on a particular character or theme. They call them Scene Remixes. The goal is for someone who hasn't seen the show to “think I am presenting completely unedited episodes”. I watched five of them over the weekend. They’re brilliant. But it goes so much further than this one example. This approach can be a game-changer in career skills, education, and for brands. Here's why: ### 💡 1\. Education & Careers i) Durable skills: This work requires curation, editing, narrative, context, decision making. It’s hugely creative, yet also demand analytical skills too ii) Proof of work: What a great way to demonstrate your skills. This format beats a one-page CV. iii) Teaching method: Using pop culture is an excellent way to keep people interested and engaged. And a show like The Wire can teach us about all kinds of topics - from politics to economics ### 🧱 2) Brand building i) Deeper connection: some minor characters flit in and out when you watch sequentially. Now, they’re brought to life. Super fans love this ii) Open up to new audiences: This mini episodes are a perfect entry point to the show and its characters. More depth than a trailer; lighter lift than a full-season commit iii) Unlock hidden value: these could almost be spin-offs in their own right. And it’s worth noting HBO granted permission for the remixes to be up on YouTube. Smart. --- Imagine this being part of a school curriculum, a company onboarding, or a brand activation... I reckon the future of both brands and education is in creating products and environments that put remixing front and centre. Which TV shows and movies would you love to get a #SceneRemix? ### The audience comes last | Adventures... #65 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/65-the-inner-writers-strike/ Last updated: 2024-02-01T15:52:41.000Z *Hello. This is the* Adventures… *newsletter: a trip into finding your inner groove, creating work that sustains, and making more sense of the world. It’s put together by me,* [*Howard*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*. Not a subscriber yet?* [*Join now*](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) ### ***‘You’re too nice for this game, H’.*** Towards the end of my final week as a talent agent, I found myself in a nondescript London pub with a few colleagues. As the latest round of G&Ts arrived, one of the group pulled me aside and uttered this now immortal phrase. I knew he was right. I also knew it was a compliment - and the polar opposite. It’s unlikely anyone ever said these words to Michael Ovitz, co-founder of talent agency behemoth CAA. Renowned for his buccaneering approach (to put it mildly), Ovitz is both revered and reviled across Hollywood. A recent group chat on alternative revenue models reminded me of an anecdote from [Ovitz’s memoir](https://www.howardgray.net/2023/12/21/hollywood-hits-madison-avenue-when-ovitz-polar-bears-stole-coke/). As I tend to do, I riffed up a summary of the story and published it on my blog and LinkedIn. The big surprise wasn’t the traction it gained, but the antagonism in some of the responses: people were irate; dismissive; calling me out for being disingenuous. Yikes. A couple of days later - more unsolicited negative feedback. This time on an another piece of my writing. Ugh. I felt myself sag. Was I too nice for this game, too?! I wanted to down tools. Go on strike. But unlike the Hollywood writers, my strike was internal. Turns out I wasn’t the only one. Over the past few weeks, a bunch of people have told me about their challenges with writing. One has 1300(!) drafts, and published… zero. Another just shared their first ever LinkedIn post after weeks of trepidation. A third who is in a career shift knows writing is valuable, but is wrangling horribly with what to write about… and how. All of them have been on strike. But why? ## ~~Two~~ three types of writing A lot of the advice on ‘internet writing’ (whatever that is…?) seems to boil down to the claim there are two types of writing. One is where you’re building an audience, seeking to scale. You’re not selling anything upfront (except attention, of course). This usually equates to high volume, pumping it out via automations, playbooks and all the rest (e.g. Twitter, influencer culture, etc.). The other is to get a market of people to trust you as an authority or thought leader, so you can eventually can make a sale. This one is often anchored in ‘essays’ (that word makes me shudder). It requires precision, intellect, and supreme self-confidence that you’re an expert. This two-prong pitch is valid, except it; a) pushes everyone to look and sound the same, b) starches away all the fun and weird stuff, c) strips away nuance, leaving a binary choice (as is so much of life today, it seems) Yay. Or to put it another way, these two types of writing are so often about **extrinsic** goals. And this can make some of us want to opt out - to go on strike. But how about **intrinsic** goals? Where writing stuff may indeed serve your work or business in some way, but the roots are elsewhere? Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act (I strongly recommend the audio version) has a bunch of great ideas on this theme. One of them is about [the audience coming last](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dLeOa6Oan%5Fw?ref=howardgray.net). Here are a couple of others. ## You as four people My buddy [Steve Bryant](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevebryant?ref=howardgray.net) shared this delightful morsel recently (source unknown): ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/0PSK2cAJSou3nuOm2v3zQyuoMb69yyer38u1iGrRgIqZaeas4GIkz0JoBdwx1CvEEZon6PNR1kmvnJha1w5uz0WMfSHNzDVMvaM6Hsurn4kTQsBSktfGEy9i3XnEID9kVmDEBVqVW4tOpVDXDIYORjY) ***Nut, Moron, Stylist, Critic.*** I love this. Rather than trying to be a *thought leader* or *build an audience* \- we can simply be a nut and a moron. All of us - if we allow ourselves - can be truly excellent in these roles. Ask a stupid question, observe that weird thing. Tell a friend. (Tip: record and transcribe your chat with them and bingo: first draft). Many of us get stuck when trying to become people 3 and 4 - especially when we let OTHER PEOPLE become them instead. ## Grow bag The other thing people seem to get caught up on is GROWTH. Thou must grow. Thy numbers must go up. Or else. I’m not so sure. Here’s a fun fact - this newsletter sometimes has *negative* growth. Some months I get more unsubscribes than subscribes. The numbers go **down.** [Cordon Bleu, Rodney](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jet29TQv2uA&t=30s&ref=howardgray.net). I used to care about this. Then I realised the negative growth can be *good*. If you unsubscribe, this is not for you. I don’t want to waste your time. And when it comes to feedback - it’s rarely helpful for me to get it from people who the work is not intended for. It doesn’t help me do better stuff. In fact, it makes me more likely to go on strike. I believe the sparsely populated room of those who see what you see is far better than playing a packed house of… somebodies. Which brings us back to the talent agent. ## Party of Five There are - in very basic terms - two types of live music gig: soft ticket and hard ticket. Soft tickets are things like nightclubs, corporate gigs, festivals. The audience aren’t coming *just* to see you. They come for the venue, booze, attractive people, etc. Soft tickets are soft and snuggly, usually cushioned by cash. You’re getting paid, sometimes pretty well. And you’re insulated - i.e. you always have someone else to blame if it doesn’t go well. Hard tickets are the opposite. They’re raw, exposed, vulnerable, highwire acts. But long-term, you can win big. And they’re unshakeable proof of work. Your fans, coming to see YOU. But if you’re just starting out, you’re unlikely to get much juice from either source. Ground zero for ‘baby bands’ (i.e. those starting out) is therefore being a support act on another artist’s hard ticket gig. You get to play before a bigger act, and the risk is contained. But there’s almost zero money, and sometimes there are only five people there when you start playing just after doors open. Do this a bunch, and you can get really disheartened. All that work, for five people. But here’s the thing: you often don’t know who’s in the room. The band only needs one person - a lawyer, manager, A&R - for the game to change instantly. Today, you don’t even need a ‘business’ person - you may just need one person who’ll tell the others. Derek Sivers’ riff on [how to start a movement](http://www.ted.com/talks/derek%5Fsivers%5Fhow%5Fto%5Fstart%5Fa%5Fmovement.html?ref=howardgray.net) sums this up wonderfully. This isn’t just applicable to bands. The legendary DJ Ricardo Villalobos started out in Ibiza by playing his uniquely weird stuff to just a handful of people. He didn’t care one bit. In both cases, the audience comes last. ## This ain’t no hits business The same is likely true for your line of work. For many of us, we don’t need chase 5 million or even 5000 people. We probably only need five. You may only need one. And in a world of ‘content’ being driven by A.I, the very best way to do this is by channeling your inner Nut, your inner Moron. When I think about it, the writing that’s actually been *successful* \- both for me personally and for my ‘career’ - has been the weird stuff. The stuff that came from the Nut & the Moron: - One of my closest sparring partners found me through one of these newsletters I send each month. - The person who I’ve done 90%+ of my projects with in the last 2 years… I met him through his wife, who found me… through a short riffy blog post I wrote. - A new creative collaborator came from me posting something weird I probably shouldn’t have… until I realised that yes, of course I should. None of my posts have been ‘hits’. That’s not the point. Chasing a hit makes us conform, become derivative, interchangeable. [Henrik Karlsson has an amazing post on this (meta) topic](https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/search-query?ref=howardgray.net). Rick Rubin has no idea which song is going to be a hit (or even what a ‘hit’ really is). Seth Godin - author of 8000 blog posts and 20+ books - has never gone viral and won the internet. For all of them, the audience comes last. Maybe becoming decent at writing (amongst other things) comes down to just three elements. Be a nut. Be a moron. But most importantly - be nice. Especially to yourself. Thanks for reading. And do let me know what's piquing your interest right now - just hit reply. Howard --- # Bits - [Today’s A.I. is a Nokia 3310\. And the iPhones are coming](https://www.howardgray.net/2024/01/11/todays-a-i-is-a-nokia-3310-and-the-iphones-are-coming/) - There are no secrets left: DHH (and Jeff Bezos) on [why it’s all about confidence](https://world.hey.com/dhh/there-are-no-secrets-left-c8c95de0?ref=howardgray.net). - [The most beautiful picture in the world](https://tnnbda.com/the-most-beautiful-picture-in-the-world-unveiled-today/?ref=howardgray.net): according to A.I. - A double header from Matt Klein: [Pandemic Learning Loss](https://zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/pandemic-learning-loss?ref=howardgray.net) and [a meta view of 2024 trends](https://zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/meta-trends-2024?ref=howardgray.net) # Boombox Speaking of Rick Rubin, I’ve also been going in deep on his new(ish) podcast, Tetragrammaton. As well as the svelte edit and interesting guests, the adverts are all created in a classic 1950s radio style. It’s a nice flip on the format, and they’re surprisingly listenable. ![Product Image 1](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/02/22663511.jpeg) So, in keeping with the theme, this month’s boombox is a selection of Midcentury Musical Miniatures from [Raymond Scott’s Jingle Workshop](https://open.spotify.com/album/0181hm0yfWc28VtaR5FjHt?si=DyuvFF6gS2G12SaIPnE2OQ&ref=howardgray.net). # **Meanwhile** 3 things I’ve been doing of late. - **Refining:** Wavetable v1.5\. A lot of entrepreneurship is reducing and refining, again and again and again. It’s not glamorous. But I think I might have just unlocked it. - **Cooking**: Speaking of reducing and refining, my Instant Pot is my go-to piece of kitchen gear. I’m now knocking up 5+ tasty meals a week with it (with some help from ChatGPT). - **Walking**: Around Manhattan. I loved doing this in the halcyon pre-pandemic days. It’s great to be back at it - many fresh ideas have emerged. # Just one more thing... Want more Howard in your life? You do? Well, when you’re ready, I can help you: - Bring out your inside genius and become a more accomplished teacher, presenter and speaker - Develop your groove with A.I. tools and workflows - Create vibrant content and experiences that people actually care about [More info >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) ### 2024's acquisition of the year URL: https://www.howardgray.net/2024s-acquisition-of-the-year/ Last updated: 2024-01-24T14:58:35.000Z Here’s an early contender for the best acquisition of 2024: productivity software company Notion has acquired calendar app Cron - now known as [Notion Calendar](https://www.notion.so/product/calendar?ref=howardgray.net). It may not look like much, but I reckon it’s a big deal. ![](https://www.notion.so/cdn-cgi/image/format=webp,width=3840,quality=100/https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/1781840952-7b4dc9ed34839d2b3c5ef56aab728623987ccd35d5638537ef1bfcf8b6f5ebe5-d_1920x1080) I’ve been using Cron for the past year or so. While it doesn’t seem to ‘do’ a whole lot, there are lots of lovely little features that make it feel seamless and low-stress. And the product’s core value proposition is in making the most of everyone’s most precious resource: time. Now, you can also integrate everything from Notion - tasks, project timelines, documents, reminders, and so - all in one place. And if, like me, you use Notion every single day, this is a game-changer. It also makes Notion’s business incredibly valuable. Jim Barksdale of Netscape once said there are “only two ways to make money in business: one is to bundle; the other is unbundle.” I wonder if Notion’s bundling of Cron is another signal that Google Workspace is getting unbundled (and disrupted)…? P.S. While the news of Notion Calendar was only made official today, the actual acquisition happened over 18 months ago. Integration (and bundling) doesn’t always happen overnight. ### Word of the year URL: https://www.howardgray.net/word-of-the-year/ Last updated: 2024-01-23T17:05:36.000Z Each December, a number of publishers and linguists announce their picks for word of the year. For 2023, Merriam-Webster chose ‘authentic’: “not false or imitation”, “real”, “actual.” Oxford University Press went with “rizz”. Derived from ‘charisma’, this slang word means “style, charm or attractiveness.” Meanwhile, the American Dialect Society selected “*enshittification*”. The term was coined by author Cory Doctorow, who used it to describe how digital platforms can become worse and worse. A friend of mine summed up 2023 in another word. It’s less authentic rizz, more enshittification. Just a little simpler. *Ugly.* 2023 was Ugly. It was a year of miscommunication, misunderstanding. Lost connections. Division. Talking (and often shouting) across each other. Ugliness was everywhere - political, financial, social. Global, regional, local, individual. For many of us, the ugliness of 2023 also had a sense of being untethered. Alas, this untethered feeling was not the type that evokes creative, connected, flow states. Instead, 2023’s version of untethered meant a feeling of detachment, being cut off, drifting away into the abyss of deep space. A lot of people floated closer darkness rather than light. What of 2024? There’s certainly the chance of more ugliness. We face ongoing wars, political unrest, deepfakes, and all the rest. But at a more micro and individual level, it’ll probably go one of two ways. Many of us will stay in our foxholes. Keep our heads down. Be happy with average. Wait it out until the storms pass. Self-preserve. Phone it in. Embrace mediocrity as a form of comfort and safety. And that’s just fine. It’s… ok. But there’s another path. It’s not *ok*. And that’s the point. That’s the opportunity. While the others sit in ‘ok’, you can go the other way. Seize the initiative. Have a point of view. Go out on a limb. Look up and outwards. Paint a more vivid picture. Go technicolour in a greyscale world. Give the others something to believe in. Something to follow. Something that evokes ‘yes!’. Something that makes you and them - feeling positively untethered. It doesn’t need to be ugly. It can be quite the opposite. So, what’s the word? ### Today’s A.I. is a Nokia 3310. And the iPhones are coming. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/todays-a-i-is-a-nokia-3310-and-the-iphones-are-coming/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T17:08:25.000Z #### On this page Seventeen years ago this week, Steve Jobs took the stage at the annual Macworld conference and introduced the first iPhone to the world. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/YxkN40yhTpZTpWbnlhwGXXpmPLs096jf7pn-yz0LSv41TcQRUGcDoolD2kD2lPHYr6xexkZpfgvhaIt-OLmp8vlHx23cUoqJd60ibfybhkKnOO5HUNK_aaJLABDHLi7A2xaKA7MFw6O1l29ZjLDjT14) Steve Jobs, Macworld 2007 The launch edition came with a multi-touch interface, a web browser that actually worked, and instant access to both music (via an inbuilt iPod), and video (through a native YouTube app). Within 18 months, all iPhones included GPS, motion detection, an accelerometer, and a video camera. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/En6Da2vs4K4zAP6DfVvHRDIvRY4NE3Tg809oOAUkP1GlLjdWDsp9zVFhvLO2_DCFHnPEuQojOAVGNwUh2A4xFSyTDl1OB_qWO34dh00wEzAlJDEdcQfY3kX7xDFygtx3NGDA_05hDCcSJUei9x70dgo) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Frame-1.png) Apple's 3G announcement, June 2008\. ($199!) Yet the biggest breakthrough of that early period wasn’t a feature, but a tertiary service. ## ‘Appy Campers The App Store marketplace sparked not just a surge of innovation, but an entirely new economy. Developers across the globe were empowered to build and release their own products to a worldwide audience. Within a month of launch, the App Store was throwing off $1m a *day*. In just a matter of months, a whole host of new products, services, and businesses were created around this fledgling ecosystem. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/wqjjXTeAAJ3VjPREDCDTHwyV8fLCVeARjqsYAwxrJuOO89TqANu4UGzX-39mRnWQfFvdI_mu8HO4122Pjo8ycKDuwXDnq0a8K6257s-1eTOq6v7ZEDOAj5mN_yPJCPsWuZVUDEr-OAVmwe-n1InIG4Y) The App Store (source: Techcrunch) In the five years that followed the iPhone’s launch, the global smartphone market grew 500%. By 2021, the App Store alone generated gross annual revenues in excess of $80bn. Today, we take the iPhone’s innovations for granted. Our smartphones give us instant access to video calls, banking, global navigation, podcast production, dating, and hundreds more possibilities. All of this is seamlessly integrated into a pocket-sized device - much of it quietly driven by the App Store. As Arthur C. Clarke famously said, > *“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.* When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, we’re currently in the early stages of a similar story - one of breakthroughs, magic, new economies… and crashes. To help us better understand what’s coming next in A.I., we can follow the telecoms trail back in time - seven years before the iPhone’s debut. ## Mind the Gap When you think of a Nokia 3310, your mind may go to ‘snake’ - the cult game that came preloaded with every device. But the 3310 offered plenty more beyond the pixelated python. It had a built-in chat function, a calculator, *and* a stopwatch. The handset was virtually indestructible. Its battery lasted for eons. You could even personalize the cover. In the year 2000, all this wasn’t just novel. It felt extraordinary. Nokia thought they'd maybe sell 20m of them. Instead, that figure reached 126m. The stage was set for an explosion of innovation. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/crhyTM7Ll2dkG1dQVxm9_Nsj5uivppa1tak2tqUyI5rzDYQN7b_sDv5dmCGW-OJN1ik6v6vsg5aqp7dq4ChPctwens1R95lhV-5T7aCLnWHixc6VKUH3MWB4UvPuHm1ieAln3y7I93DWVvFnOb43Slg) My Nokia cover was even more garish than this lot But the 3310 turned out to be the last truly iconic mobile phone product until the iPhone. What happened in the intervening seven years? It wasn't like the early 2000s were a black hole for innovation. BlackBerry’s 5810 brought email to a mobile device. Motorola’s RAZR was unusually sleek and svelte. Sony built a high-fidelity camera into their K750. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Slide-16_9---1.jpg) But the dot-com bubble burst in March 2000 caused a long-lasting shockwave. Innovations were largely - per Geoffrey Moore’s seminal book ‘[Crossing the Chasm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing%5Fthe%5FChasm?ref=howardgray.net)’ - continuous rather than discontinuous. Most new releases were feature-driven: either integrating two previously separate elements (phone + email); or optimising a component or design (a camera, or the flip mechanism). While these feats weren’t to be sniffed at, and the overall market managed to keep growing in the years after the dotcom crash, consumers’ overall experience didn’t actually evolve all that much. Looking at those seven years in retrospect, we could think of them as having five chapters: 1. Huge growth as new technology comes online (3310, cloud-based telecoms) 2. A bubble pops/deflates, in part due to macro economic disruption (dotcom and telecom bubbles) 3. Compelling B2B use cases become a key growth area (Blackberry) 4. Consumer-focused innovation is driven by feature optimization and aesthetics (RAZR, K750) 5. A fundamental evolution in format leads to massive second and third order effects (iPhone, App Store) ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/1bxHjpvOp_SvZZNGFhMM4fnq3dDT90qrCflstZUOQe62-Cyqe4BuIYUhm7Gy7B1rsuojacNxONu-hGT2WxtPillqxNjb2lX0SeU9JeJBkm1wDcEXxNZqZqO2Sd3fJvAT0hyQHO8FoiPYhSLgjVUKZC0) **note: it's only in chapters 1 & 5 that Clarke’s assertion of technological magic feels apt.* ## Viva La Revolucion These five chapters align closely with researcher Carlotta Perez’s work on the cycle of new technological revolutions. Here’s how Tom Critchlow described Perez’s insights in his 2014(!) post predicting a [2025 Global Economic Crash](https://tomcritchlow.com/2014/12/01/predcting-a-global-crash/?ref=howardgray.net): *First comes the rapid growth as new technological infrastructure is put in place. This phase is funded by financial capital derived from speculation. This phase is called the Installation Period.* *This frenzy ultimately leads to a crash as the bubble bursts.* *Then starts the real growth and “golden age” as the infrastructure built in the installation period becomes cheaper, more accessible and more universal. This phase is funded by production capital derived from profits and is called the Deployment Period.* *This diagram sums up the installation and deployment periods well:* ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/qZWHF7qY_xULORCgzZW8OVyX2miUp41oTWHu8iKOxsWAOgOzuRORXpIPvbtJJVJRECz8d6fID9HyAzwxRCiS84eO-aOyUqaF4JPJvg35YTUb91BL3IZKFa5eSA4RZjT8luo1XBZZIdLWQ8L5nGiQsvI) Carlotta Perez's dynamics of bubbles and golden ages, circa 2010 Pretty cool. Let’s overlay my five-chapter version via a Howard rough-cut remix (designers, look away now): ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/I5469Wbbqr3-VgInw4AhMd9uq9uZoL2-8Ck8rPHFJkCNXhHE8MoXJnqfIre1PUKCzOPewHlDdrGOhgRGVXoQDpjHjv4G-BUS3HhtNeUnPdz0K96xRnbwD3TXmUJITsVMNwoYQYOkBraWlPgL6D5Ijuo) We can also zoom out. Perez also laid out five major technological revolutions from history that all fit the model: ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/97P_fwbIdHLybTVxUMTZvh7k4X0qxggi9sPcD7wBr9sSYDSrZdb0MlNYv7irnDEDTrDFbbzjETQFmGDZrauJVKO36hpryesiRe3aPXlNUOINFQKL7JbXKjKjtcVyLsC3je1rRmHBoktoVuFdU8uDwiw) I believe A.I. will follow a very similar pattern. And yes, that means a crash. A.I. INTEGRATION ADVISORY Want practical guidance on integrating AI tools into your creative workflows without losing your human edge? Explore my A.I integration advisory [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/advisory-coaching/#4-ai-integration-workflow-optimization) --- ## The Great Unfolding Yesterday I got chatting with a lawyer. He told me about a meeting he'd had the previous week. Him and some colleagues were discussing A.I.'s implications - for both their firm and the legal profession as a whole. After a while, he realised something didn't feel right. They were having seven different conversations: everyone talking across each other with drastically different definitions, use cases, goals, and expertise. This story is a good analog of where we are right now. Is A.I. a chatbot, a dream machine, a fad, a factory, or an assistant? Is it exciting, dangerous, or just another part of progress? The answer to all of the above is…Yes. Going back to our five chapters, at the time of writing we’re probably 70-80% of the way through Chapter 1\. Now is as good a time as any for us to avoid having those problems the lawyers faced. We need to have more productive conversations; to develop a shared understanding; to start building some kind of picture of *what this even is.* A number of people believe we’re in an A.I. bubble of some kind. To a large extent I agree. If not a full-blown crash, I expect some kind of restructuring period before we rapidly enter Chapter 3\. The likely speed of this phase is why it’s so important to equip ourselves *now* with greater knowledge, language, understanding, and perspective. And this should not only focus on the technology itself - it should be focused on human skills, human dynamics, human challenges. As DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman notes in his new book 'The Coming Wave': *“Technology is the best and worst of us. There isn’t a neat one-sided approach that does it justice. The only coherent approach to technology is to see both sides at the same time.”* After the crash period, Chapter 3 will mark the golden era for B2B. This is where business use cases become much clearer and seriously ramp up. Calling back our 2000-2007 telecoms timeline, perhaps you recall how many businesses both large and small equipped their people with Blackberries in the mid-late 2000s (Blackberry’s parent company RM had over 85m subscribers at its peak). Picture this, but with an impact 10, 20, maybe 100x greater. During this time there will still be plenty of B2C offerings, and while many will feel hugely exciting they’ll be like the RAZR and K750 - kinda cool, but rarely *vital*. This is Chapter 4\. A bunch of products will probably come and go in quick succession. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/Saa5ilr-nJKvfZU8wsQr6qJkEuo1kqPRs7ZocSmIKu-XiEvoGd83KkUI45kMtcjUPh10bzER9buOREYJqa1GOvdAUb4B51y6fgzIQ7D7uYwRnPmyqWw7qBRxXJOq9Xjf8C5RacT-tOexdeGc-Rij5nU) Perez’s original diagram cites a 60 year timeframe for Installation and Deployment. While it’s hard to agree on exactly when A.I. ‘started’, it looks like her model will hold. We just may see the upward curve become a little steeper… While hard to predict exactly, I expect Chapters 2, 3 and 4 to be fairly compressed - perhaps 2-3 years from the end of the initial crash/correction through to the early parts of Chapter 4\. This will in part be thanks to the [Law of Accelerating Returns](https://www.aitimejournal.com/the-law-of-accelerating-returns-superintelligence-and-the-technological-singularity/?ref=howardgray.net), as coined by futurist Ray Kurzweil (tl;dr: things are changing faster than they've ever changed before). And then, at some point, we’ll reach Chapter 5\. But what does that look like? ## A single prompt At this point it’s worth us going back to the iPhone one more time. What made it a true game-changer? Apple’s masterful marketing was undoubtedly a contributor, as were the features, the App Store, and all the rest. However, the real driver was a fundamental shift in format - in the entire concept of *what this even was*. It’s not difficult to imagine the Apple team asking themselves, > *‘what *is* this?'* What they came up with was not a telephone with added features. It was, as Jobs said, “a computer in your pocket”. A full-fledged handheld computer, designed to be highly interoperable, accessible and intuitive. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/hhdRqm_CYCsVKbj-Nv8nv8x8HQEoIK0oj6L4AZqXwuoEJ7W4tdRPDuoafcuhKbAl7G9_CQx3soJxACRPgn-kGYnzi-2LTH7HREO0X2uzWCjw0jdLNKQW_A193s-8mX3kmHJFkil0bxcAgiTrmdPEbn0) That simple (yet very challenging) question of ‘what ***is*** this?’ is the key to Chapter 5, but it also needs to be front of mind throughout the rest of the journey. Because throughout Chapters 2-4 - and even more so right now in Chapter 1 - it’s very a difficult question to answer. No one truly knows. And frankly, anyone who believes they have the answer - probably doesn’t.[Even Steve Jobs didn’t know](https://www.wired.com/2017/01/apple-iphone-10th-anniversary?ref=howardgray.net) how impactful the iPhone would become. Chapter 5 is when a novel and compelling answer to ‘What *is* this?’ will surface. This is where the fundamental format shift occurs. It could be a glasses product in the vein of Meta’s Ray-Bans or Apple’s Vision Pro. Perhaps it’s an implant. It might be a ‘regular’ phone or laptop, but with a completely different approach to interaction. It’s also likely the point where we’ll become more like what Ethan Mollick thinks of as [Cyborgs vs. Centaurs](https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/centaurs-and-cyborgs-on-the-jagged?ref=howardgray.net): deeply integrating machine/AI and human, vs. a strategic division of labor where we switch between AI and human tasks. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Centaurs-Cyborgs-Frontier.webp) A.I. for Centaurs ([via Ethan Mollick](https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/centaurs-and-cyborgs-on-the-jagged?ref=howardgray.net)). Next, Cyborgs ## Elements of a breakthrough All this lives somewhere in the [Adjacent Possible](https://medium.com/@SeloSlav/what-is-the-adjacent-possible-17680e4d1198?ref=howardgray.net). This means it's pretty difficult to visualize exactly what it might look like. To help see a little more clearly, let's set aside the format for a moment and ask what *properties* this might have. Again, we can look at the shift the iPhone instigated. Some of its elements included: - **Concept shift**: A fundamental evolution in concept vs. an iterated version of an incumbent product - **Feature dissolution:** Feature-driven benefits (geolocation back then, or today’s ‘AI Assistant’) will dissolve into the UI - **Augmentation**: Human abilities are augmented in completely new ways (*Cyborg vs. Centaur*) - **Human-centered design**: Highly intuitive - can be used by 8 year olds and 80 year olds; irrespective of background, geography, skill set, etc. - **Ecosystem focus**: Inclusion of tertiary services (App Store) These are just a few of the 'whats' - I’m sure there are many others. But what about the ‘when’? ## Moment... or Mirage On the face of it, it look like we’re already here. OpenAI recently announced their GPT Store, a marketplace where paid ChatGPT users can buy and sell specialized chatbot agents based on the company’s language models. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/iw9pdTgSkYlQR28qq0BmEo75Y1XNKLoq0A78j2mK3cpi2rJMjOa555RxRPEOOGLfkrta1NLZPsVMplKXXpxBO6uBqrsphzUKNsi9AffC2RuXzA-BwhdkgQh9JrPLJV0ZOskbT1Gk1IgBKbdgq_CGJM0) Given OpenAI’s user base, this *might* just be an App Store moment. We'll see. How about the iPhone moment…? A number of companies are currently racing to gain mass market adoption of hardware devices. [Humane](https://hu.ma.ne/?ref=howardgray.net) is one, [Rabbit is another](https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033498/rabbit-r1-sold-out-ces-ai?ref=howardgray.net). These products are fascinating, but to drive a true conceptual shift they need to ride out Carlotta Perez's curve from Installation to Deployment. They need to cross the chasm between early adopters and majority audiences. And many companies before them have fallen into the abyss. It won't be easy. ![](https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/jw4mO_BCm3Rmjd3RWC1-jbasBwUZXocdw6e74zUfE7zeNFmiksnwW1xJ7JZmhr_RfeGJE6l9sQVvrckfV8ZruHwyTfvHIDkuOf_u7kmG_B6quKzcBHlzPdg4zDqIBLzonFa-NnDRNJW7w8q_-Rn9zlk) Rabbit's pocket-sized R1 device So, assuming we're not there yet - when? Chapter 5’s arrival might match the 7 year gap between the 3310 and the iPhone. Per Perez’s model, the conceptual shift that occurs in the deployment phase could take as long as 30 years. Perhaps - given the law of accelerating returns (along with [this excellent piece on A.I. acceleration](https://www.contrary.com/foundations-and-frontiers/ai-acceleration?ref=howardgray.net)) - it’ll be more like 3 years… or it might even be 1\. Right now it’s very hard to say. But make no mistake, the A.I. era’s iPhone moment is coming. ## Snakes & Ladders Today, I firmly believe we’re still in Chapter 1\. We have our 3310s in our pockets, happily playing a game of snake, topping up our pay-as-you-go credits, swapping out some custom artwork. We’re marveling at the magic, yet fidgety at its limitations. Excited at possibilities, but struggling to clearly see what’s on the horizon. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Nokia-3310-Snake.jpg) Our planet with A.I., earlier today. Chapter 5 is rapidly approaching, probably faster than you think. And it could create even more of a seismic shift than the iPhone was back in 2007 - because not only do things now happen faster, they happen bigger. One final thought. You can survive perfectly well without a smartphone. Even today. But once you have one, it’s very, very difficult to imagine life without it. It’ll be the same with A.I. You won’t *need* it. You won’t need to understand it, nor even care about it if you don’t want to. Many people who choose to go this way will be just fine. But at some point - once you have one in your pocket (or your eye, brain, or wherever else) - it’ll be very, very difficult to imagine life without it. A.I. INTEGRATION ADVISORY Want practical guidance on integrating AI tools into your creative workflows without losing your human edge? Explore my A.I integration advisory [Learn more ](https://www.howardgray.net/advisory-coaching/#4-ai-integration-workflow-optimization) --- Thanks to Tom Critchlow, Will Abramson and Conor McCarthy for reviewing drafts of this piece. P.S. To illustrate how quickly this area is evolving, I thought I’d finished this piece four days before publishing. Then, over the next 48 hours, both Rabbit and the GPT Store were announced... ### Gears turning: A.I. for 3D CAD design URL: https://www.howardgray.net/gears-turning-a-i-for-3d-cad-design/ Last updated: 2024-01-05T18:36:03.000Z 0:00 /0:19 1× Most of the use cases we see for A.I. image generators relate to ‘content’: social media posts, ads, short films. And it’s almost all 2D. But what about places where 3D is critical? Industries like construction, civil engineering, and aerospace? ‘Text to CAD’ is a new tool from hardware design startup Zoo. The goal is to revolutionize how design teams create 3D components. Rather than fiddling with heavyweight CAD software to map out a particular piece, you enter a text prompt using regular language (‘a stainless steel gear with 24 teeth and a 1” pipe’). It’ll generate the component in a bunch of formats compatible with all major CAD software tools. You can also train their model on your data - giving your team a dedicated CAD generator that can create tons of components incredibly quickly. Sure, this isn’t the eye candy getting all the attention right now. But it’s a great example of how AI can be used to transform complex workflows - and job specs. ### The Reel Response | Adventures... #64 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-reel-response-adventures-64/ Last updated: 2024-01-04T15:15:35.000Z *Hello. This is the* Adventures… *newsletter: a trip into finding your inner groove, creating work that sustains, and making more sense of the world. It’s put together by me,* [*Howard*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*. Not a subscriber yet?* [*Join now*](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) --- Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I was out on the road once more - a purple patch packed with speaking, teaching, and workshop gigs. One book stayed ever-present through that Winter tour. Its author? The star of the aforementioned [travel caper](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHhG2MsGxGI&ref=howardgray.net). *‘Born Standing Up’* is the autobiography of comedian and actor Steve Martin. The story of a life on the road and how to build a practice that lasts, it's a must-read for everyone who seeks to do creative work. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Steve-Martin-Born-Standing-Up-1.jpg) As well as the book's more transferrable principles, my type of gigs contain several elements of the comedian’s craft. But the core is closer to the work of the DJ. While the comedian sharpens a pre-planned set, the DJ is a curator. They prepare a vast range of material, and then respond to in-the-moment shifts in vibe and groove. The very best take the audience on an unchartered trip into unspoken wants and desires. And paradoxically, they do it all without diluting their unique individual style, yet also never straying far from common structures and motifs. Yup, for me teaching is just like DJing. It’s no coincidence one of London’s best club nights was called *Inspiration/Information*. ### History Rhymes One of these winter gigs required an amplified level of curation. It was at the global HQ of a Big 4 consultancy. They wanted me to get into a topic that tons of other speakers offered: Digital Transformation. To carve out a niche, I flipped it around - ditching ‘digital’. Instead, we focused on people - more specifically, how people throughout history dealt with disruption and change. Not well, it turns out. Typesetters, stablehands, concert hall owners, photographers - when change hit, they all ended up... well, furious. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-03-at-19.32.15.png) An excerpt from that winter workshop In the room, smiles all round. We knew better, of course. Except we didn't. A couple of weeks after that gig in February 2020, you-know-what struck. Most of my business was wiped out overnight. All touring cancelled. I fast became the furious Typesetter. Confused. Flailing. Trying to react. I didn’t realise at the time, but I was grieving. ## **Major key, minor key** Grief is the natural reaction to a loss where we've formed a bond or affection. It’s most common when a person or other living thing has died. But grief can also show up in other contexts. The death of a relationship. When a life chapter closes, or we feel valuable time vanished. It can also occur when we’ve lost - or sense we may soon lose - a cherished opportunity or hard-won success. Perhaps we can think of these things as grief in a minor key. In lowercase letters. They don't have the seismic shocks that come from the death of those close to us; yet they're still visceral and real. The grief is not full-blown, but it’s not to be minimised, either. And there's a growing amount of it stemming from digital transformation’s latest wave. ## Sneaker revolt A couple of weeks ago I riffed up [a quick post on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7138171042740477952/?ref=howardgray.net) featuring a spec Adidas advert made using AI tools. It's now racked up a lot of traffic - higher than my last 20 posts combined. But more noteworthy are the comments. Many reminded me of the first two stages of the famous Kubler-Ross model of grief: Denial, and Anger. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Adidas-spec-AI-ad---Kubler-Ross-1.jpg) I get it. Even if we pretend to, we really don’t like change. We’re also highly averse not just to loss - but also the *potential* of it. So for many people, this brave new world of A.I. is deeply unsettling. In these minor key moments, when there's lingering uncertainty and discomfort - especially in our working lives - what can we do? I want to share two possible antidotes, in what I hope is an empowering message for the new year (yes, really!). --- ## Two Antidotes, Four R's ### 1) React, or Respond Zig Ziglar had a great riff about going to the doctor. If you take medicine and the doctor says you're reacting, that’s bad. If they say you're responding, that’s good. Sometimes it can be helpful for us to react. But more often than not, it’s better to respond - especially when we can choose how to do so. It's amazing how often we forget this. In a year of A.I. consolidation, the world’s largest ever number of people voting, possible recessions, and all the rest - it’s worth noting we don’t always have to *react*. Instead, we can likely take a beat, gather our emotions and thoughts, and generate a response (yes, via ChatGPT, if you must...). ### 2) Real Reels My pandemic pickle partly came about due to my lack of body of work. It wasn't that I didn't have one. The problem was it wasn’t *legible*. To put this into TV or ad speak - there was no [*reel*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showreel?ref=howardgray.net#:~:text=A%20showreel%20%28also%20known%20as,designers%2C%20editors%2C%20and%20models.) I could rely on. I could talk, sure, but talk is often cheap. And I have a strong sense that this year will see talk get much cheaper, and all the action will go to... well, **action**. More action, more shipping, more proof, more reels. Just like that Adidas ad. It may be A.I. generated, but it's 100% human directed. And it's proof. The reel is now critical, but you don’t need to be a movie producer or creative director to have one. Today, just about any work can be packaged in a way that’s legible and tactile. Think of it as a provocation - a way to spark conversation. Action leads to talk, not the other way round. Here’s the key thing about a reel, though. It's real. It's human. Made by one for another. You can make it unmistakably *you*. --- ## Stand up, Stand out Flicking through Steve Martin's book as another Winter sets in, I see elements of these two ideas show up again and again. Build a portfolio. Inspire talk through your actions. Be so good they can’t ignore you. Even when the prospect of loss feels terrifying. Not everyone was Born Standing Up, but all of us can stand up our own unique body of work. Speaking of which - if you'd like to respond (or react) - do hit reply. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for reading. Howard --- # **Bits** - [**Ted Gioia's 12 favourite problems**](https://www.honest-broker.com/p/my-12-favorite-problems?ref=howardgray.net)**:** I love this concept. Working on a few of mine right now - [**Crossing the chasm between Strategy & Execution**](https://www.howardgray.net/2023/12/19/strategy-execution-the-creative-producer/): A fresh riff from me on a new type of Creative Producer - [10 lessons from Replit's '100 days of code' course](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/from-100-days-to-lifelong-skills-how-to-spark-engagement-in-online-learning?ref=howardgray.net): Why their 20o,000 signups fell off a cliff # **Boombox** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-03-at-21.05-1.jpeg) [**Music Supervisors' Best Songs of 2023**](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1RQJTKwUzbsGP57yZD7F5o?si=f8395aaae3174000&ref=howardgray.net) This is a real treat. 166 cuts from across the spectrum, as chosen by the very best at matching sound and vision. (I also wrote a [riff](https://www.howardgray.net/2023/12/18/untitled-2/) on why curation like this matters). # **Meanwhile** 3 things I’ve been doing of late. - **Writing**: A lot! I hope this is a good sign - **Playing harmonica duets:** With a 2 year old. He's better than me. Obviously - **Cycling**: Around a very quiet NYC. Strangely delightful # Just one more thing... Want more Howard in your life? You do? Well, when you’re ready, I can help you: - Bring out your inside genius and become a more accomplished teacher, presenter and speaker - Develop your groove with A.I. tools and workflows - Create vibrant content and experiences that people actually care about [More info >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) ### “What’s going on here, with this human?”. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/whats-going-on-here-with-this-human/ Last updated: 2024-01-02T22:01:18.000Z Whether it’s improving collaboration in your team, assessing a candidate, or exploring new partnerships - understanding and assessing humans is hard! This article by Graham Duncan is one of the very best I’ve read on this topic. I’ve recommended it to three friends in the past week alone, so thought it’d be worth sharing here too. It also includes an excellent breakdown of the main personality assessments (I’m an Enneagram Type 5, in case you were wondering…) In a world being shaped by technology, I believe understanding and collaborating with humans matters more than ever. [https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/](https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/?ref=howardgray.net) ### Harvard's varsity blues - and a new MBA URL: https://www.howardgray.net/harvards-varsity-blues/ Last updated: 2024-01-02T20:46:52.000Z In the hallowed halls of Harvard University, an unexpected tremor is shaking the foundations. But forget presidential resignations for a minute – the MBA program is also under the microscope. While 86% of recent graduates snagged jobs within 90 days, that pales next to the 95% and 96% rates of the past two years. This is the lowest figure in over half a decade, and in a world where employers’ mantra is “do more with less”, this decline might just be the beginning. We already have a bunch of innovative online programs and specialized bootcamps offering quicker, cheaper alternatives. Is the MBA, once a golden ticket to career glory, losing its shine? Can it even survive in its current form, given the years of sacrifice and hefty tuition fees for a job market offering diminishing returns? I’m placing two bets: 1\. The top 10-20 schools will be more than fine, while the mid-level gets clobbered (as often happens in life…) 2\. Innovation won’t come from rebuilding the MBA like-for-like. Instead, individual components will be completely reimagined for today’s world of personal brands, social impact, and indie entrepreneurship. These will feel less like education programs, and more like community-driven games and quests. As you may have guessed by now, I'm currently building something to back up these bets... more soon ;) ### The Failure Reel: 2023 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-2023-failure-reel/ Last updated: 2023-12-28T19:04:44.000Z Tis the season for highlight reels: yes, that end of year post about how honored/excited/humbled-but-not-humbled we are. In keeping with the theme (well, kinda), here’s my 2023 reel: a compilation of my top mistakes and failures. From what was a highly competitive pool of submissions, here's this year's top 10: 1\. Writing for the algorithm vs. following my curiosity and what really interests me 2\. Over investing into the nuts & bolts of producing client work, and underinvesting into biz dev and the long game 3\. Not directly asking for help - especially when I most needed it 4\. Eight week gaps between haircuts 5\. Feeling deep shame when my income took a hit (I spent too much of the year forgetting that money is not our entire identity...) 6\. Not acting on the sparks of levity & inspiration (remember, they're perishable) 7\. Telling myself I'd found the others, when I probably hadn't 8\. Getting caught between building two brands at the same time 9\. Leaning too far into being a ‘Giver’ vs. ‘Otherish’ (per Adam Grant’s ‘Givers & Takers’) 10\. Not making my first visit to CostCo until September. A true slice of life. --- A few miscellaneous learnings: - When times are hard, you find out who your friends are - Most advice doesn't come with caveats - it probably needs to - A quick ‘No’ is underestimated - In person connections remain magical - and always will be - A key part of parenting is being able to regulate your emotions - A good cold email can work, but don’t bank on it - The Creator Economy is far more challenging than they want you to believe - The LinkedIn posts I delete are nearly always the ones I shouldn’t There are a few other things I want to share, but tbh I’m not sure even this - my own space - is the place. I gotta say it’s been a tough year. In many ways, my toughest ever. But I’m still here. And so are you. Onwards. ### 6 ways to reimagine a conference panel session URL: https://www.howardgray.net/conference-panel-session-how-we-flipped-the-format/ Last updated: 2023-12-27T17:10:34.000Z A few weeks ago I spoke at a conference on how emerging tech - especially AI - will impact live events. The format was a panel, but me and the other panelists decided to flip it. Several people said they really enjoyed the session, so I thought I’d share how it came together. Here are 6 things we did: **📓 1\. Craft a narrative:** Even a 40 min panel can benefit from narrative structure. And we added one to ours. But narrative isn’t story. Stories have closure; narrative is open-ended. And narrative also includes an invitation to participate - listeners can play a role in what the outcome is going to be. **👒 2\. Different Hats:** The three of us each played a role: one already using emerging tech in their work; one more cautious; the other an outside practitioner. We didn’t stay rigidly in character throughout, but wearing the hats helped the audience get a sense for for real-world scenarios. **👩🏽‍💻 3\. Show, don’t Tell:** To frame the ideas, we had a real live use case to share. And to make it feel more possible and accessible, we also included the story behind its creation. **⚙️ 4\. Tools:** People LOVE resources, tools, frameworks - stuff they can actually use. We shared a bunch of tools they could try - and even better, we showed vs. told. **🙊 5\. Interactions:** There’s wisdom in the room. Here are 3 simple questions we asked: “Who’s seen this before?”; “How often have you tried that?”; “What do you think about these?”. **🎯 6\. Themes & Takeaways:** Speaking of three, we included three themes upfront, and flipped them into three takeaways at the end. Here are three things we’re going to cover… and that we hope you’re now taking away. It was a still a panel - three people (me, [Banu Kannu](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net) and [Dave Gamble](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net)) in discussion - but these adjustments shifted the dynamic. And the interests of Show vs Tell, here’s a quick video walkthrough of the deck we used as a backdrop. Check it out: ### Status update: Close to the edge URL: https://www.howardgray.net/untitled-3/ Last updated: 2023-12-24T15:57:50.000Z You know those stories of success? The stories that we love to stream? These are the tales of the entrepreneurs, the artists, the change makers. People overcoming the odds, doing extraordinary things. The internet has opened these up from biographical tomes, bringing them to life through podcasts, YouTube videos, and Netflix series. The most compelling of these stories nearly always follow the form of the classic hero’s journey. In the journey, there’s an inevitable moment of despair - a time when they face the abyss. It’s this inflection point - or rather, how they overcome the odds and battle back - that draws us in so deep. Except, we only ever hear about these moments in retrospect. They are only shared with us as the protagonist recounts the tale from their position of safety - with the joy of hindsight giving it an embellished sheen. All of this is to say I’m planting a flag in my own hero’s journey. Because here and now, there’s 6 days to go until the end of perhaps the most difficult year I’ve ever faced. My personal life flipped upside down. My business took a massive hit. I found out who my friends really are. My wellbeing went up and down. And right now, I’m just 6 weeks from bankruptcy. Things are at a knife edge. I’ve never been this close to tapping out before. It’s all relative of course, but it still feels viscerally real and present. I’m doing ok, but I’m also not. Yet I am. I’m both. Because that’s what life is like - it’s never one or the other. I don’t want to bore you with the specifics, so I’m keeping it high level for now. Very few edits and drafts - just riffing this out as it comes. But here’s the thing - the real point of this post. A friend suggested that when things turn around and I’m sharing the story from the position we all prefer, I should be able to point to an artifact that shows how close I came to to the cliff-edge. So this is it. Christmas Eve, 2023\. Not knowing what’s next. Operating dangerously close to the edge. And being thankful for the support I have - because many people don’t. I may not be able to turn it around. I’ve been here before, but the stakes are different now. The fear is real, but the faith is still strong. Here’s hoping one day I can point to this with that wonderful joy of hindsight. See you on the other side. ### Hollywood Hits Madison Avenue: When Ovitz & the Polar Bears Stole Coca-Cola URL: https://www.howardgray.net/hollywood-hits-madison-avenue-when-ovitz-polar-bears-stole-coke/ Last updated: 2023-12-21T21:48:55.000Z October, 1991\. Hollywood's kingmaker, Michael Ovitz, craved a new conquest: brands. But not just any brand. He eyed Coca-Cola - not as a sugary drink, but a cinematic hero. McCann Erickson, Coke's agency for 40 years, scoffed. What did Hollywood know about Madison Avenue’s business? (Coke) Zero. Ovitz, the ultimate showman, orchestrated a two-way pitch: a Western shootout on Coke's home turf. He shared no spreadsheets, no sales figures. Instead, he spun a captivating narrative, envisioning Coke as a hero with CAA at the helm. And Hollywood’s finest - represented by CAA, of course - would craft Coke's silver screen saga. Then, the big reveal: adorable polar bears sipping Coke in snowy landscapes. A playful antithesis to McCann's product-pushing pitch, it left the room speechless. The "Northern Lights" ad, featuring dancing bears under the aurora borealis, became a pop-culture phenomenon. Awards poured in, sales soared, and Coke's love affair with polar bears began. But here’s the kicker. Ovitz asked for no money upfront. Not a cent. “Pay us what it's worth," he told Coke. Months went by, until a cheque for $10m arrived. He mailed it back with a post-it note: "Let's discuss." Weeks later, another check landed on his desk. $31 million. Not bad for a gamble on polar bears and a post-it. --- # 3 takeaways: 1. **Ostrich or Unorthodox?** During CAA’s pitch, McCann vice-president John Bergin slipped a note to a colleague: “we are dead.”. Later, one industry critic called McCann “a bunch of dinosaurs acting like ostriches”. Don't be the ostrich. Today's Ovitz could be just around the corner, ready to steal your Coke. 1. **New Coke, Old Oak** CAA's success didn't stem from Hollywood alone. Ovitz knew what he didn’t know - his stable of directors, actors, and writers worked alongside seasoned ad professionals to balance domain expertise with the potential for unexpected magic. 1. **Turn the Mirror, Not the Meter** Get paid for impact, not hours. Focus the mirror on their business outcomes vs. turning it on yourself. Because just like a Zoom call, it's strangely tempting to gaze at our own image... ### Crossing the chasm between Strategy & Execution URL: https://www.howardgray.net/strategy-execution-the-creative-producer/ Last updated: 2023-12-19T18:51:19.000Z > ***“I don’t want any more f\*\*\*ing strategy decks.”*** Being on the receiving end of this dressing down was not particularly enjoyable. But they were right. I’d been hiding. Snuggled deep in the warm embrace of a slide deck - I was able to show insights, trends, and high level thinking, all with minimal execution risk. Safe from harm. This client wanted action. Execution. Tangible, shipped work. Yet despite their exasperation, they also valued strategic thinking. They just didn’t want to get stuck in a loop of endless thought and no action. So we turned around, using the insights from the deck and built out 10 mini learning games, 8 Instagram ads with their employees as the stars, and an accelerated leadership development program, all on a small budget. They were right - outputs needed to go with the thinking. --- All too often there’s a gaping chasm between strategy and execution. And as much as big agencies and consultancies like to flex their abilities to bridge the gap, I’m not buying it. The turning circles are too large, the incentives misaligned. I reckon a lot of clients now know this - especially in a market that demands doing more with less. This opens up a big opportunity for those who can think strategically AND execute on the work. These people can use no code tools. Are A.I. savvy. They’re attuned to trends and culture, and know their way around the core principles of business and brand strategy. They can ask the questions that a production shop don’t (or won’t). They might be a singular human, or a small squad (I think of it like basketball - 3 or 5 on the court works best). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/12/Basketball-5---Creative-Producers.jpg) Choose your players They’re able to speak the language of senior clients, while also being able to challenge, build and ship. They can get the Why, How and What in sync, and bring a real, undiluted point of view. Let’s be honest - they may not have the rigor of McKinsey or the artistic finesse that gets plaudits at Cannes Lions, but there’s a vast world of clients whose top priorities do not include (you) winning awards… and they definitely do not want *“any more f\*\*\*ing strategy decks.”* From a client perspective, this value proposition is compelling. It’s cost-effective, feedback loops are incredibly fast, and to paraphrase Nassim Taleb - these partners have much more [skin in the game](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36064445?ref=howardgray.net). For legacy agencies and consultancies, it’s tough to compete with. After all, as a certain founder named Jeff once said - [your margin is my opportunity](https://medium.com/@fabriguespe/your-margin-is-my-opportunity-5d5acbc8d814?ref=howardgray.net). This area - the Strategic Creative Producer in the space between - isn’t for everyone. But an increasing number of businesses are going to demand it - and fast. What do you see here? ### Small wins with A.I. - filename fun URL: https://www.howardgray.net/small-wins-with-a-i-filename-fun/ Last updated: 2023-12-19T00:14:36.000Z A.I. doesn’t need to be big and whizzy. Here’s a lovely example of how it can make day-to-day tasks easier and more intuitive. You know when you have a bazillion tabs open, or when you download lots of files, and it all gets jumbled up in a confused tangle? Yeah, I don’t know what ‘db\_1702744457156.xls’ and ‘Screenshot 2023-12-11 09.57.09’ are either. Well, the Arc web browser uses A.I. to automatically rename confusing tab and files downloads to something more initiative and human-friendly. It even named this video Here’s a video on how it works. (It even renamed the video file to ‘AI Magic Arc Browser’ when I downloaded it… cheeky.) Btw, I’ve been using Arc for about 3 months now and can’t imagine going back to another browser. It has lots more lovely little features that make life more pleasant. ### Evading A.I. disruption? Look to the Curators & Supervisors URL: https://www.howardgray.net/untitled-2/ Last updated: 2023-12-18T19:08:03.000Z Which skills are going to withstand A.I. disruption? One I’m betting on is curation. Curation is ‘the selection, organization, care, and presentation of works to be shared’. A.I. will likely take the lead with the ‘organization’ part. But the others feel different. A.I. can augment them, but it won’t replace them - especially ‘care’. Care is about understanding humans and their stories, relationships, needs and desires. Here’s a great example of curation in action. A global collective of professional music supervisors chose their best songs of 2023, and the best of the best were collated by [Rollo Grady Music](https://www.linkedin.com/company/rollo-grady-music/?ref=howardgray.net) into one wonderful playlist. Could ‘Discover Weekly’ have created this algorithmically? Maybe. But I’m not convinced. This playlist has something magical. It’s incredibly diverse, mining all kinds of genres and artists. And it feels like a real slice of life: curated by people who dedicate their careers to seeking out music that pairs beautifully with moving images - tapping into multiple senses and emotions. And you can bet these music pros also know the human stories behind many of these artists and their work. Most of us associate curation with this world of arts & culture. But curation is now key in every sector. We’re all going to need more help separating the signal from the noise: selecting, presenting and caring for work that matters. Do you agree that curator roles will sustain - and even thrive - in a world increasingly driven by A.I.? Or will we all become hypnotized by the algorithm? Best Songs of 2023: ### From 100 Days to Lifelong Skills: How to Spark Engagement in Online Learning URL: https://www.howardgray.net/replit-100-days-of-code-remix/ Last updated: 2023-12-18T17:06:11.000Z Over 200,000 people enrolled in Replit’s ‘100 days of code’ course. Amazing, right? But a graph shared by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham tells a different story. These numbers massively drop off - and fast. > How many people make it through each day of Replit's online 100 Days of Code tutorial. [pic.twitter.com/2uDLTXdSyO](https://t.co/2uDLTXdSyO?ref=howardgray.net) > > — Paul Graham (@paulg) [December 7, 2023](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1732714720451330558?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=howardgray.net) This is not uncommon. But why did it happen? The course looks well designed. Was it the length? The delivery mode? Or something else entirely? Here are 10 reasons why, each with some potential paths forward. ## 1) Talking to Humans ### Who’s it for? - **Problem**: "100 Days" seems to cater to a lot of different groups. Is it for students? Novice programmers? Product managers? Solo entrepreneurs? It’s kinda hard to tell. Not being clear on who it’s for makes everything else - learning design, messaging, marketing - more difficult. - **Path**: Choose a single audience, or clearly articulate up to three sub-groups that people can identify with ### Value proposition - **Problem**: Right now the course is anchored in "Learn coding”. This is indeed what it’s about, but it’s a mask. Skills are mentioned (in this case, Python), but we can go further. - **Path**: Show how these skills empower people. Frame as offering as a journey of transformation, not just a collection of knowledge. The ‘Who’s it for?’ question help us here. For example, perhaps our value prop for side project builders is ‘Launch the projects to kickstart your entrepreneurial journey’. ## 2) Structure & Design ### Time Warp - **Problem**: The course description leads with ‘15 minutes per day’. But later it turns out that many days require 30 or more. Two problems here. First, people are busy. Finding 30 minutes a day can be a very different challenge to 15\. Second, as a course designer it’s easy to underestimate the time people need to do something - so the estimates may well be off. - **Path**: Audit the challenges with a range of users to better understand the durations. Include more context on the expected duration based on skill levels, and within larger challenges build in 1 or 2 ‘checkpoints’. ### Concept Bloat - **Problem**: A few people commented that later challenges became difficult to follow because the concepts became too large to understand. This is a common issue that’s two-fold: more advanced concepts usually have greater complexity; and often as designers we can get tired later in a build. - **Path**: Later challenges may be better as extensions or remixes of previous ones vs. net new (think ‘New Wine, Old Oak’). This is also where Designing in Reverse can help us avoid fatigue, assumptions and miscalculation. ### Make it real with missions - **Problem**: The challenges feel appealing, but lack real-world applicability. However, just because something is ‘real world’ doesn’t always mean it’s interesting or relevant to people. Tricky. - **Path**: Thinking in themes and missions can solve this problem - and a few of the others, too. Here’s an example. A few of the existing challenges can be woven together into ‘the games arcade suite’. Imagine making a suite of 4-5 games that could be used on a simple phone or an old school arcade - Rock, Paper, Scissors; Tic Tac Toe; Pong, Defender. A concept like this blends real-world applicability, with a pop culture theme (nostalgia for arcades / retro phones), and a real output that demands a decent amount of investment - but not too much to put people off. We could even ramp this up with a ‘brief’, presented by a company or practitioner (ideally a Replit customer!). ### Scaffolds & Bridges - **Problem**: The drop-off rate was serious. But day 3 blues, week 2 slump – these engagement dips are natural obstacles. How do we overcome them? - **Path**: Our Missions approach helps a lot here. But we can also add some scaffolding and other strategic interventions at these crucial junctures. First, know where the big dips are, then build bridges and scaffolds to help people cross them. Offer live Q&A sessions, badges, or provide personalized feedback to reignite the spark. ## 3) Modes & Connectivity ### Multiple engagement modes - **Problem**: The entirety of the course is about 2000 minutes, or about 30 hours. And while you can dip in and out, there’s only one main mode of engaging. - **Path**: Offer multiple modes and journeys. How about a condensed group program - say two full days covering the top 40 concepts? There’s also likely a revenue model in here as it’s likely people would pay for it, especially if there’s some kind of credential at the end. Speaking of which - this opens up two other areas to explore… ### Meaningful incentives - **Problem**: You get skills, projects, a sense of accomplishment. But in practice, these can feel strangely limited. There’s not much pushing people to engage. - **Path**: Badges, certificates, and leaderboards can feel corny, but when executed well they’re incredibly effectively. Well-placed incentives can provide nudges of encouragement, recognizing progress and motivating learners to push through dips in motivation. Perhaps more importantly, signals matter. There’s a reason why people spend so much on Louis Vuitton bags, go to Harvard, and want to work at Nike. The power of being ‘Replit 100 Certified’ shouldn’t be underestimated - and it’s also a handy piece of brand equity for Replit. ### Social Dynamics - **Problem**: This drop-off rate is not unusual for self-paced courses (some stats put it as high as 96%). It’s easy to say ‘don’t quit’, but come on - we’ve all quit stuff. 100 days straight is a lot. - **Path**: We’re social animals. Connectivity and accountability matter. This can be as simple as discussion forums, through to collaborative projects, coaching, and the aforementioned group program. Don’t underestimate our desire for camaraderie and to feel seen and heard. ### ## Just one more thing... ### Do the numbers lie? - **Problem**: The graph appears damning. Or is it? How do we know? As Richard Feynman would say - don't fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - **Path**: It may actually be good news. Are people confident enough after day 3, 10, or 20 to go and do something with what they’ve learned? Has Replit in fact achieved success in what looks like failure? Could we do something else with all the remaining challenges - create a whole new product offering perhaps? This is where user connection matters - qual matters just as much as quant. Let’s learn from those humans, so we can better understand them, and make something they love… --- So, there you have it. A few ways to level up not just 100 Days of Code, but any online learning experience. By getting clear on the value proposition, thinking in thematic missions, and offer multiple engagement mode, you’ll be well-set to help people go somewhere they never thought possible… ### Scarlett Johansson in 'Her' is moving from fiction to reality URL: https://www.howardgray.net/scarlett-johansson-in-her-is-moving-from-fiction-to-reality/ Last updated: 2023-12-16T16:48:11.000Z Scarlett Johansson’s character in the movie ‘Her’ is about to get very real. You can now create your own AI Romantic Companion. 0:00 /0:11 1× A new company called Digi has released an app where you can custom design a partner and enter into a romantic relationship. The idea is that a relationship progresses over time (starting as ‘friends’, then gaining more intimate actions and dialogue as you progress). It’s pretty sophisticated: - The characters have been created by veteran animators from Pixar - You can configure hair, skin, eyes, lips, etc. - The app has its own voice model - there should 20 different voices available in the next month But these are just features. What about the impact? - Is this a useful tool for people to practice their social skills (especially young men interacting with women)? - Could it provide a valuable additional outlet for people in human partnerships? (the founders are suggesting it does) - Will it push people even further away from other humans? - And who’s designing the models that the characters run on? I’m sure this will make the founders a ton of cash, but... there’s a lot to unpack here, shall we say. What’s your take? ### A.I. and the creative industries' five stages of grief URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adidas-ai-five-stages-of-grief/ Last updated: 2023-12-11T01:26:10.000Z Last week I whipped up a [quick LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/in/itshowardgray/?ref=howardgray.net) featuring a spec Adidas ad someone made using AI. It got 10x the engagement of any other post I’ve written. But a bigger surprise was seeing the Kubler-Ross in action. You may know it as the 5 Stages of Grief: 1. Denial 2. Anger 3. Bargaining 4. Depression 5. Acceptance Given how negative and dismissive many of the reactions are (especially from people in the advertising & marketing world), I can’t help feeling there are a LOT of people at Stage 1 and 2 right now. While much of the critique focuses on a lack of pro finesse and style, one small inconvenience is that the ad was made by David Clark - a seasoned filmmaker & creative director. He wanted to try some experiments and not let his role be redefined by the tech. But the real insight I’m getting from all the negativity is a lack of foresight. Maybe you find the ad execution to be gauche. Fine. And we can shout about the importance of human creativity (me too!), but here’s the thing: AI is very unlikely to just go away because we tell it to. Today’s tools are a Nokia 3310, and the iPhones are coming. Much of my time is now spent getting a better handle on these tools, help teams integrate them into their workflows, and - most importantly - have more valuable and informed conversations about all this stuff. I’m bemused why people would just dismiss it all out of hand. But perhaps it’s just the Kubler-Ross in action. Even if AI doesn’t go much further, I know which side of it I’d rather be on. This is one grief cycle I’d strongly suggest working through - and fast. P.S. I went through my own 5 Stages of Grief with that post getting so much more engagement than the other 300+ things I’ve written. Maybe it’s time I started using AI to write them… P.P.S. Images in the diagram were generated by ScenarioAI, guided by… me. ### A long-form interview with Richie Hawtin URL: https://www.howardgray.net/richie-hawtin/ Last updated: 2023-12-08T13:51:13.000Z As regular readers will know, I've been deep into electronic music since I was a teenager. I often feel the genre has a perception issue - many people associate it with throwaway music and drug culture. While this isn't completely unfair, there's so much more to it than that. It's a true sub-culture, full of incredible creativity and innovation. And alongside video games I wonder if it's the art form that connects humans and technology most deeply. When it comes to the people at the forefront of connecting people and machines, using tech to be creative, Richie Hawtin is right up there. Shapeshifting from geeky Canadian teenage producer, to global superstar DJ, and technology entrepreneur, he's led a fascinating life. His latest project seeks to give back while continuing to push things forward. 'bullfrog' is a synthesizer aimed at teenagers, helping them get in touch with their creativity, and learning about physics and music simultaneously. I got to spend a couple of hours with him and the project's co-creator Girts Ozolins. The resulting feature is now [live on the Wavetable site](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/richie-hawtins-next-musical-frontier-high-school-science-class?ref=howardgray.net). It's one of the best pieces I've written - I'm really pleased with how it came out. Hope you enjoy it. [Wavemakers: Richie Hawtin’s next musical frontier? High school science classHow a DIY noise machine became a portal for learning & creativity - courtesy of a legendary electronic music artist. Richie Hawtin’s next musical frontier? High school science class![](https://assets-global.website-files.com/63d0ec7d83eb07075af37290/63ff50f58853fc6c22c133cf_wavetable-favicon.png)![](https://assets-global.website-files.com/63d0ec7d83eb07075af37290/63d2640fdb29fe521294b910_wavetable-logo.svg)](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/richie-hawtins-next-musical-frontier-high-school-science-class?ref=howardgray.net) ### Yes, and… A.I. | Adventures… #63 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/yes-and-a-i-adventures-63/ Last updated: 2023-12-07T10:20:32.000Z *Hello. This is the* Adventures… *newsletter: a trip into finding your inner groove, creating work that sustains, and making more sense of the world. It’s put together by me,* [*Howard*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*. Not a subscriber yet?* [*Change that immediately >*](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/) --- Greetings from Madrid. I’ve been in Spain this past week, speaking at a big tourism & events conference in Barcelona on how A.I. can be used in live experiences. This trip has also been a timely reminder. Just as a prototype is worth a thousand (Zoom) meetings, the same is true of in-person connection. At the conference I was part of a crew of 15 speakers, and many of us ended up hanging out together. We arrived with few plans or expectations - none of us had attended before - but it all came together in a wonderfully fluid kinda way. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/12/Post-Feed-from-LinkedIn-1.jpeg) Always at the back. Always. Whether it was our conference talks and workshops, a late-night trip to a heavy metal bar, or visiting a backstreet tattoo parlor - the key to success came from two little words: *'Yes! And...'.* And while I departed Barcelona with new friends, I'd arrived in the company of two old pals: Keith & Colin. ## **Masks & Wimps** A few months ago I borrowed (ok, stole) Keith Johnstone’s book 'Impro' from my mate [Tom](https://tomcritchlow.com/?ref=howardgray.net). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/12/Impro-by-Keith-Johnstone.jpg) Written back in 1979, *Impro* is a delight. It's ostensibly about improv theatre, but really it’s about being human - with '*yes, and...*' at the core. The book is packed with tips, games, and methods, as well as the underlying principles that enable effective improvisation. Here are three of 'em: - **Status Transactions:** People constantly adjust their social status in interactions. Understanding and manipulating status leads to scenes that are dynamic and engaging. - **Theatrical Masks:** By putting on a mask, you can access different emotions, attitudes, and characters, allowing for creative expression and deeper exploration of the self. - **Blocks and Wimping:** Improv is all about making offers to others. 'Blocks' are when offers are resisted. 'Wimping' is when you don't make compelling offers. The aim of the game? Overcome blocks and avoid wimping. As you may have guessed, this goes far beyond being funny or theatrical. These principles show up *everywhere*: in sports and culture, at work and school - and throughout our personal lives. Keith Johnstone knows the principles inside out. And so does Colin. Colin is a one in a million talent. Perhaps one in a billion. Yet no one's ever heard of him. Unless you’ve watched *‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’.* Instead of trying to sleep on my flight, I went into a [Colin Mochrie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q961dViRof4&ref=howardgray.net) rabbit hole on YouTube. Like ChatGPT, his ability to take any prompt and immediately generate a unique, sometimes bizarre response - well, it's kinda mind-boggling. Colin's weird and wonderful skill set involves tapping eclectic topics, making unusual connections, switching off the monkey mind, and being comfortable with the unknown. Sounds simple, but certainly not easy. Mochrie can make a mockery of your mockery. Perhaps because of this, it's well known that improv is not for everyone. But I wonder if now, it is. Because it has to be. And it's all down to two other little words. ## **Small bets** On stage at the conference I said Artificial Intelligence (specifically [AGI & ASI](http://www.eitc.org/research-opportunities/new-media-and-new-digital-economy/ai-machine-learning-deep-learning-and-neural-networks/ai-research-and-applications/stages-of-ai?ref=howardgray.net)) now concerns me even more than climate change. However, our session offered a few simple ways forward. Here are two: - **Technology = Technique**: It's a way of doing things. The wheel is technology. So is the clock, the printing press and the QR code. Some people don't want you to understand these things. But you can. - **Small Bets**: Avoid the overwhelm by testing the smallest thing you can think of. Make the tiniest bet. As an example, Dave Gamble, head of programming at the Royal Albert Hall, shared '*What Would Albert Do?*' - a chatbot that gives him tips on who to book to play at the venue. He built the first version in... 15 minutes. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/12/085.jpeg) The Royal Albert Hall. See those mushroom things on the ceiling? There's an amazing story behind them... ## **AI: Augmented Intelligence, Improv, Imagination** Speaking of music, these ideas also came up in two long-form features I published this month. The first is a fascinating glimpse into how to teach improvisation, with [**Swedish artist Sebastian Muellart**](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/harmonizing-creativity-inside-the-zen-infused-world-of-sebastian-mullearts-circle-of-live?ref=howardgray.net)**.** The second is one of the best things I've ever written (if I do say so myself). It's a deep-dive with [**techno legend Richie Hawtin**](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/richie-hawtins-next-musical-frontier-high-school-science-class?ref=howardgray.net) on a new musical instrument that empowers teenagers to learn both physics and music. As he puts it: *“having a way to allow kids to find a sensitive connection to technology and unlock their emotions is a great asset for the world we’re leading into."* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/12/Richie-1.jpg) Richie Hawtin's creative career in three words? Combining Humans & Technology. While the majority of today's clearest, most practical AI use cases are rooted efficiency and automating simple/boring/repetitive tasks, I wonder if the most exciting ones relate to what Richie is talking about. Emotions, sensitivity, connection... improv. Why improv? Well, AI is very bad at it; yet paradoxically it can do wonders to stoke our own - human - imaginations. These tools can get us past the blank cursor problem; bridge the gaps from concept to reality; unlock a new way of approaching about a problem or idea. The key is in '*Yes, and..*.'. Just as Colin Mochrie's mind pulls on strange threads most of us don't see, in our brave new world we need the widest possible range of influences. We need more of the unusual, the unexpected... the weird and the wonderful. The big challenge for individuals, teams, and companies alike is to figure out how to best find their *A.I. Groove*. How do you get humans & technology in sync, riffing together as co-pilots and collaborators? Whether it’s creating code, writing a script, sketching an idea, or figuring out which dish the crew will love most at [El Xampanyet](https://www.cntraveler.com/bars/barcelona/el-xampanyet?ref=howardgray.net) \- the key prompt might just be... *Whose line is it, anyway?* I'm putting a lot of my energy into exploring these emerging A.I. Grooves, and helping others do the same. If this area piques your curiosity, do hit reply - I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for reading. Howard P.S. Tell me what you’re doing, what you’re seeking, what’s on your mind. I want to know, and I always reply. --- # **Bits** [Confessions of a middle class startup founder](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/venture-capital-backed-startup-founder-confessions.html?ref=howardgray.net): A refreshing take in a world with way too much bluster and bravado. [How to resist audience capture](https://zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/what-is-audience-capture?ref=howardgray.net): The latest gem from Matt Klein - this time on the perils of social media sharing. [Silicon Valley's fear of AGI](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway?ref=howardgray.net#.vp1ylDRDR): A prescient piece. From 2017.... # **Boombox** [Arthur Russell - Calling Out of Context](https://open.spotify.com/album/0cJ39KJ52lQ2tnZUyy299i?si=Z3L5jxYCTimuuenPR5kX6w&ref=howardgray.net) [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/12/Calling-Out-of-Context-2048x-copy.png)](https://open.spotify.com/album/0cJ39KJ52lQ2tnZUyy299i?si=Z3L5jxYCTimuuenPR5kX6w&ref=howardgray.net) I discovered this last week, and had to check the release date. Songs from the 80s, released in 2000, that sound spectacularly fresh in late '23. # **Meanwhile** 3 things I’ve been doing of late. - **Building educational simulator games**: with A.I., of course. - **Visiting** [**Toledo**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,%5FSpain?ref=howardgray.net): A gem of a city, with an extraordinary history. - **Contemplating NYC**: While I still love it, the trade-offs get ever tougher to justify... # Just one more thing... Want more Howard in your life? You do? Well, when you’re ready, I can help you: - Bring out your inside genius and become a more accomplished teacher, presenter and speaker - Develop your A.I. groove - Create vibrant content and experiences that people actually care about [More info >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) --- Btw - I aim not to check unsubscribes, it’s not good for my wellbeing. So go ahead... make my day. ### The bootleg Adidas ad URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-bootleg-adidas-ad/ Last updated: 2023-12-06T14:24:32.000Z Here’s the new Adidas commercial. While it’s not the greatest advert I’ve ever seen, it was produced by a single person, in an hour, with a budget of roughly... $20. This ad was made by a Reddit user on their coffee break, using just two off-the-shelf AI tools (Midjourney and Runway ML). What’s most interesting about this for me is that a) we have no idea who produced it, and b) there are zero gatekeepers - no major studio, no ad agency, no brand approval I feel this opens up so many possibilities, questions, and challenges. Where do you think this takes us next? 0:00 /0:30 1× P.S. Shout out to [Rex Woodbury](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?ref=howardgray.net) who surfaced this from deep within a sub-Reddit. ### The Blank Slide Shuffle URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-blank-slide-shuffle/ Last updated: 2023-11-30T18:18:56.000Z One morning, Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity:Water, was giving a keynote speech. The auditorium was absolutely jammed. Everyone could feel he was in the groove, in the zone. But then, something went badly wrong. Or at least I thought it did. Midway through the talk, everything suddenly ground to a halt. Amid a story full of vivid, colorful imagery, the gigantic screen went blank. Urrrrghhh. I felt myself cringe in discomfort. Where were the tech team?! A thousand people’s attention went to the sole figure on the enormous stage. But he didn’t even flinch. It was no accident. No tech issue. The screen wasn’t blank - it was pitch black. A single black background marked the end of the chapter. More specifically it marked the nadir - the moment in the story where Scott Harrison hit rock bottom. He used this simple technique to pull attention back, concentrating the entire room - before unspooling the visual story thread once more. It was genius. I’d never seen anyone do it before. In hindsight, it’s obvious. Many other forms of storytelling - books, movies, even albums - use a device like this. But we rarely see it in presentations. The blank slide can do all kinds of things: - Ramp up tension - Wipe the slate clean - Give the audience space to process - Offer you space to set up what’s next - Or simply refocus you - or whatever else you choose - at the centre Next time you’re prepping a presentation, give it a try. You may even want to use it more than once (in moderation, of course…) Oh, one last thing: The Blank Slide is a paradox. It takes no time to design. But it also takes the longest time of all. ### Four flashes of insight: a catalyst for my teaching work URL: https://www.howardgray.net/four-flashes-of-insight/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:17.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/11/Four-Part-Feeling.jpg) Have you ever seen greatness up close? Sure you have. It doesn’t need to be a rock star or athlete. It could be someone in your line of work, your boss, a colleague, a peer. But the gap between you can feel unassailable - a yawning chasm. It can feel overwhelming. The first project I worked on after I moved to NYC was designing and leading an accelerator program for diverse media & entertainment founders, backed by NYC Mayor's Office. 65 companies went through it, and I’m still in touch with a bunch of them today. Looking back, I was decent at the work… but far from great. During the first cohort, we got a bunch of guest speakers to come in as a favour. One of them was this guy from Detroit. Honestly, I’m sometimes skeptical of ‘keynote speaker’ types - I feel quite a few lack substance (did I just say that? Oh. I did). But this person? Quite the opposite. It wasn’t just his material, though: 30 minutes watching him taught me a ton about content design, teaching, and stage craft. It was amazing. About halfway through I had one of those moments where four things seem to flash before you all at once: 1. seeing what great looks like; 2. the reality of where you *really* are in your craft; 3. the gaping chasm between; 4. the spark that maybe - just maybe - you can cross it. Here’s the real insight. - You see the first of these things? It’s exciting, but fizzles away over time - The first two? It’s clarifying, but scary - Three? There’s a possible path, steps starting to emerge from the haze - Four: That’s the confidence game. (There’s a fifth: Having the right structure and guidance to stay on the path. That’s for another post…) Perhaps you’ve experienced that same four-part feeling? P.S. I meant to tell him this months ago. Years ago. Never did. Until I emailed him yesterday. It’s never too late. So, thank you, [Marcus Collins](http://marctothec.com/info?ref=howardgray.net). ### Confessions of a middle-class startup founder URL: https://www.howardgray.net/confessions-of-the-middle-class-startup-founder/ Last updated: 2023-11-25T01:19:08.000Z In a world that idolises the billionaires and the big winners, it’s easy to forget there are multiple paths forward. Here’s one of them: the confessions of a middle-class founder. As an added bonus, it’s also wonderfully written. [Confessions of a Middle-Class Founder](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/venture-capital-backed-startup-founder-confessions.html?ref=howardgray.net) ### A question of alignment URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-question-of-alignment/ Last updated: 2023-11-22T01:38:19.000Z The topic of alignment has come up in a lot of my conversations recently. Whether it’s working with teams, forging partnerships, finding clients, seeking referrals - this little ‘a’ word seems to be on a lot of people’s minds. I'm not sure it’s necessarily the same as ‘values’, though. Perhaps alignment is more about intuition. Last month I got to spend a couple of hours with the incredible DJ, music producer and entrepreneur Richie Hawtin. He’s launching a new education project with a partner. It’s substantial, with tons of complexity. But despite never meeting previously, it only took one initial phone call for the two of them to know they just had to take the plunge together. Here’s how he explained to me: > “I think life is like that… you know when you meet somebody, whether physically or virtually, by the tone of the voice or the look in the eyes, if you can do something together. And we felt it that day.” Sounds simple. But not easy. And worth seeking. P.S. I met Richie to do a deep dive interview on his new project - we covered creativity, education, community building, and more. I'm really proud of how it turned out. Will share it here next week. ### How to fix the conference Q&A segment URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-fix-the-conference-q-a-segment/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T21:06:58.000Z Live events are back. Conferences, summits, conventions, festivals. All hail human interactions! Fresh ideas! A variety of salted snacks! But there’s one issue I’ve noticed at a bunch of events recently. Q&A segments are killing the experience. And it’s happening both in-person and online. This kept occurring at a conference I attended recently. At the end of a keynote or panel discussion, the audience were invited to ask questions. But many of the questions were either: - difficult to hear - too long/complex to synthesize - incredibly specific or contextual - off-topic (And sometimes all four at once) Ooof. Speakers attempt to respond, but they, the questioner, or the audience (or all three) invariably end up feeling shortchanged. Humans overvalue the final parts of an experience. And Q&As come at the end. So, no, not good. **What to do if you’re in the spotlight?** Here’s a simple approach to use with any question you receive. 1. **Pause**: Take a beat. This gives the audience a moment to process, and you the time to prepare a response. The pause also allows attention to shift back to you rather than the questioner. Don’t be afraid to take a few seconds here. It can be startlingly effective. 2. **Repeat**: Play back their question aloud. You can either: a) Mirror (repeat it back verbatim) b) Paraphrase (restate / remix / augment it. “It sounds like you're saying…”) c) Track (synthesize the question with a few related lines of thought from the wider session) \* Pro Tip: Paraphrasing gives you license to do some jiu jitsu with the question so you can bring it towards a topic/angle that’s a good fit for your perspective or expertise. Just be mindful not to pull it out of context. Go too far and you’ll turn everyone off faster than me rocking a pair of skinny jeans 3. **Respond**: Say whatever you’re going to say. Aim to speak directly to them, and also address the rest of the audience. Oh, and be kind. Even if you think the question sucks, no one likes to feel dismissed or patronised This sounds stupidly simple, and it is. But I guarantee you’ll notice the difference. All the pieces matter. While you’re here, which other parts of live events are in need of a tune-up? P.S. For what it’s worth, I like to go with option (b), and also ask the person to confirm if I’ve heard them correctly. But option (c) is the killer move if you know how and when to use it…. ### What business are you in? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-business-are-you-in/ Last updated: 2023-11-15T14:57:37.000Z This is a good question to ask yourself on a regular basis. Two reasons why: 1) You're probably not in the business you (or they) think you're in 2) The answer is likely to change and evolve Here's an example. What business are Delta Airlines in? The airline business. Or travel, perhaps. Transportation? Want to get cute with some Jobs to be Done and Start with Why approaches, you might see them as being in the business of 'human connection'. All these might be true. But it may be something else entirely. You're probably familiar with loyalty programs - air miles, status points, tiers and so on - linked up with hundreds of partnerships across hotels, restaurants, fashion, live sports and beyond. So, are Delta in the loyalty business? No. The commerce business? Kinda. Delta have shifted their SkyMiles loyalty program to focus only on one metric: money. Miles flown will no longer count at all from 2025\. The majority of the cash comes from spending on Delta's American Express credit cards. According to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, it now makes up nearly 1% of the *entire* U.S. gross domestic product. They're aiming to ramp up their Amex-related revenue from $7bn this year to $10bn by 2025. If they get there, it'll be larger than the amount generated from their global passenger airline operation in 2022. Turns out Delta Airlines are more likely in the banking business. Which business are you in? ### The perils of Audience Capture URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-perils-of-audience-capture/ Last updated: 2023-11-15T14:34:11.000Z If you’ve ever posted on any social media platform, you run the risk of *Audience Capture*. But this is not you capturing an audience. It's them capturing *you*. > “We’re each susceptible to an audience’s hypnosis — to a Pavlovian ping, ding and hit of notification dopamine, or realization that others are available to give us attention, “caring” about us. Our existence is affirmed… > …In today’s social dilemma, our actions are “seen by all”... yet we never actually see an observer observing. An audience is always out there. Often, we receive a sweet morsel of feedback proving its existence — it conditions us. But always, we’re acting as if we’re watched.” Those snippets come from an essential new piece by Matt Klein - which also includes 10 strategies to avoid the very real perils of Audience Capture. [Check it out >](https://zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/resisting-audience-capture-how-to?ref=howardgray.net) ### Where did I lose you? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/where-did-i-lose-you/ Last updated: 2024-07-28T21:02:29.000Z Lose. Confuse. These are common problems when we’re sharing our work and ideas. It’s worth being aware of the difference between them, though. Last week I was in a co-working / coaching session. The other person wanted my input on a prototype. The first thing they said after stopping their screen share was “Where did I lose you?”. I guess I had a certain look on my face. It took me a beat to respond, as I realized there were two things happening. “Where did I confuse you?”: this is an inability to understand, usually because there’s too much going on. The word ‘confuse’ comes from the Latin ‘mingle together’ and the Old French ‘bring to ruin’. Aka, ruin my brainbox from too much stuff mingling. “Where did I lose you?”: in many interactions, especially online, this is more likely to be a case of energy and engagement. It might well be a symptom of confusion, but more likely the narrative, delivery, facilitation is off-base. We tune out, trail off. Turns out, I was a tiny bit confused. But it was more that they lost me. More than once. The good news is both issues are fixable. You can prevent people getting lost while you’re with them in the moment. Ask questions. Read the room. Shift your energy and delivery modes. Confusion is more difficult to prevent in real-time. But upfront? For sure. This is why it’s worth placing more of your focus on design vs. delivery. Next time you’re about to present something, it’s worth doing a dry run with a trusted friend or colleague and find out if the problems are more related to Lose… or Confuse… Did I lose you? Oh no, there you are. I hope this wasn’t confusing. ### Did you lose them? Or confuse them? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/did-you-lose-them-or-confuse-them/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:34:11.000Z Lose. Confuse. These are common problems when we’re sharing our work and ideas. It’s worth being aware of the difference between them, though. Last week I was in a co-working / coaching session. The other person wanted my input on a prototype. The first thing they said after stopping their screen share was “Where did I lose you?”. I guess I had a certain look on my face. It took me a beat to respond, as I realized there were two things happening. “Where did I confuse you?”: this is an inability to understand, usually because there’s too much going on. The word ‘confuse’ comes from the Latin ‘mingle together’ and the Old French ‘bring to ruin’. Aka, ruin my brainbox from too much stuff mingling. “Where did I lose you?”: in many interactions, especially online, this is more likely to be a case of energy and engagement. It might well be a symptom of confusion, but more likely the narrative, delivery, facilitation is off-base. We tune out, trail off. Turns out, I was a tiny bit confused. But it was more that they lost me. More than once. The good news is both issues are fixable. You can prevent people getting lost while you’re with them in the moment. Ask questions. Read the room. Shift your energy and delivery modes. Confusion is more difficult to prevent in real-time. But upfront? For sure. This is why it’s worth placing more of your focus on design vs. delivery. Next time you’re about to present something, it’s worth doing a dry run with a trusted friend or colleague and find out if the problems are more related to Lose… or Confuse… Did I lose you? Oh no, there you are. I hope this wasn’t confusing. ### Lost & Found | Adventures… #62 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/back-from-the-brink-adventures-62/ Last updated: 2026-05-20T11:46:35.000Z *Hello. This is the* Adventures… *newsletter: a trip into finding your inner groove, creating work that sustains, and making a little more sense of the world. It’s put together by me,* [*Howard*](www.howardgray.net)*.* --- It was a Wednesday. Mid February. The kind of greyscale London day where clouds smother and trees crackle. Everyone stoically bundled up, hunkered down. Yet despite intermittent bleakness, there's something strangely satisfying about the distinct February feeling. And it might be best encapsulated by the institution known as... the pub. I was stationed in a cozy, oak-paneled boozer south of the river. My stowaway lunchtime location provided shelter from a drizzly runaround between family commitments, US visa authorities, and [dormant ties](https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-46-resurfacing-our-dormant/). This particular Wednesday came with high stakes. My newsletter was shipping the next day, and I needed somewhere to write. Where better? In keeping with the weather, my immediate view was grey: 500 words of gluey, globular Google Docs greyness. The draft just wouldn’t smooth out - a slathering of alphabetti spaghetti strained through digitised wallpaper paste. It was a most unenjoyable feast. After an hour loop of cut/paste/edit/undo, I could stomach it no longer. I drained my pint and abandoned ship. The next day, still no joy. On Friday, the gloop was lumpy at best. By the weekend I couldn’t bear to look at the thing again. Deadline missed. Long gone. *IT'S JUST A STUPID EMAIL. THEY ALL IGNORE IT ANYWAY. YOU TW...* What? Who said that?! Oh, yes - that's [my inner critic](https://www.howardgray.net/getting-to-grips-with-my-inner-critic/). He must have been on the [pub gak](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gak?ref=howardgray.net) again. On Sunday morning I closed the browser tab for the last time - oblivious to the fact that far more than 500 words just became lost. # **19** This newsletter shipped pretty much every month for over 5 years ([honest](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter/)). Until that week under dark London skies. 19 months ago. Why the long pause? A long story. Probably one for us to discuss over a pint at the Forest Hill Tavern. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/10/Forest-Hill-Tavern.jpg) Uber's overrated. But today, right now, I’m back. Because something got left behind. Lost. In Sarf London. In NYC. Somewhere over the ocean. And clearly, inside me. For a while, I didn’t miss the thing. Perhaps I didn’t even realise I lost it. But I think - I hope - I’ve found it again. You might know the feeling. Maybe you've been there. Maybe you are. ## **Drill bits** Here in this little email dispatch I share things I’ve noticed that help me - and hopefully you - see the world through a different lens, an alternative aperture. It might even help you rediscover important things you've lost along the way. One long-time subscriber called this newsletter ‘Rolling Stone meets Seth Godin’. I'll take it as a compliment. And a close confidant recently said my role is a ‘Curator/Educator’ - spotting places to drill pilot holes so others can see new possibilities and paths forward. Just don’t ask me to put up any shelves. This drilling, my friends, is strictly metaphorical. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/10/Drill-Bits.jpg) If my DIY skills were a band, they'd be Drilli Vanilli ## **Svelte** So, this edition is a reintroduction of sorts. Sixty-two editions deep, grizzled and greying, yet maintaining a callow, gauche naïveté. It’s entrepreneurship (especially with a lowercase ‘e’). Stories of underrated humans and ideas. Ways to engage with others. Paths to overcoming barriers. Getting Lost, Being Found. In this revised, svelte new format you’ll get three things each time: 1. **A riff**: on culture, work, the world - typically inspired by pop/sub culture 2. **Quick bits**: a handful of links to interesting things I’ve recently found or made 3. **Music from my library**: a track, mix, album, or live performance The goal is a monthly cadence.\* \* If, like me, you have a young child in your life you know that 1) routines and schedules are everything, and 2) this applies to them, not you, meaning yours constantly fall out of whack. So... umm, no promises. Either way, it’s good to be back. I'm not yet found, but not quite so lost, either. Wherever you may be, thanks for being here right now. Seriously. I see you. Howard P.S. Tell me what you’re doing, what you’re seeking, what’s on your mind. I want to know, and I always reply. --- ## **Bits** - [**The new 'Mom & Pop' store**](https://www.howardgray.net/the-new-mom-and-pop-store/)**:** the next wave of parent-led businesses - [**The best 'self-help' video you'll watch this week/month/year**](https://www.howardgray.net/hobby-job-career-vocation/)**:** Liz Gilbert on four little words - [**My single go-to question for an intro chat**](https://www.howardgray.net/my-single-go-to-question-for-an-intro-chat/)**:** I swore I'd never do clickbait. And then, like London buses... two come along at once. ## **Boombox** [2 hours of Ennio Morricone movie soundtrack classics](https://soundcloud.com/user-202286394-991268468/sounds-on-screen-ennio-morricone?ref=howardgray.net). Thanks to the marvelous Murg for sliding this my way. [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/10/Screenshot-2023-10-31-at-10.20.44.png)](https://soundcloud.com/user-202286394-991268468/sounds-on-screen-ennio-morricone?ref=howardgray.net) ## **Meanwhile…** 3 things I’ve been doing of late. - **Coaching**: I've started [1:1 coachin](https://wavetablestudio.notion.site/Surface-your-Story-Find-your-Groove-Build-your-Brand-1c097ad7cd3f42c39e2a85a020a43de2?pvs=4&ref=howardgray.net)g again. I realised I really missed it. My main focus? Helping you build a personal brand that's substantive, authentic, and doesn't make you cringe. - **Listening**: Lost deep in the audiobooks. Five biographies consumed in two weeks. Also the perfect accompaniment for... - **Washing**: clothes, bedsheets, sofas, ladles, my bike. Potty training is a challenge all round, but I wouldn't have it any other way. ## Just one more thing... Want more Howard in your life? You do? Well, when you’re ready, I can help you: - become a more accomplished teacher, presenter and speaker; - create vibrant content that people want to engage with; - build a personal brand that feels... well, personal. [More info here >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) --- Btw - I aim not to check unsubscribes, it’s not good for my wellbeing. So go ahead... make my day. ### I struggle horribly as a student. So I rebuilt the class. Here's how. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/rebuilding-a-class/ Last updated: 2023-11-16T01:57:47.000Z Cycling in the rain is never fun. But that day I didn’t care one bit. My destination was a standup comedy venue, for the first in a series of six classes. I’d been looking forward to it for a while. It might have been pouring outside, but my inner forecast was sunny, no showers. Yet when I walked out back outside a few hours later, dark clouds had gathered. I felt a desperate sense of shame, frustration, and sadness. I was wiped out. Drained. Despairing. My self-esteem hovered near zero. And a full 24 hours later my vibe remained deeply overcast. Why? Not because I bombed. Not in the typical sense, at least. It was something else. Later, I thought about how many others must have had these same feelings. And not just as an adult in comedy classes - at any age, in any learning environment. I wanted to figure out some solutions. But first - what was the problem? ### Turn it up to eleven For most of the class, I wasn’t quite sure what was the matter. Early on, I had some nerves, but nothing major. It felt similar to when I teach or speak somewhere. New people, new place, destination unknown. But by halfway, a very nasty sense of deja vu: chest burning, pounding heartbeat, fidgeting in my seat, impatience, checking the clock. Anxious. Agitated. Two, three, four thought channels whirring away at once. None of them clear. Crossed wires. I could feel myself disintegrating, unable to synthesize a single thing. It was awful. In the class’s final third - its final act - I had a realization. The issue wasn’t ‘doing standup’ - I feel pretty ok about it, overall. Something else was going on. I know that from time to time I suffer from some form of social anxiety, and today it was amplified. Up all the way up to eleven. The environment and design of the experience seemed to be giving me serious problems. This wasn't 'edge of your comfort zone'. This was deep agitation. Quick dictionary check: agitation can be defined as *“exceeding restlessness associated with mental distress”* and *“excessive motor activity associated with a feeling of inner tension.”* Yup. That's about right. And I believe a lot of my agitation comes from rigid or maladaptive learning environments. This might be why I do a lot of teaching, facilitation, and learning design (yes, ironic indeed). The morning after, I had a go at writing through the lingering weird vibes. My Morning Pages ostensibly started as processing the feels, but quickly flipped to jiu jitsu: using the weight of an opponent against itself. In this case, a bid to use my issues and what caused them into positive learning and progress. After all, while I may be a horrible student, I enjoy learning. A few hours later, an extensive, risky - yet I hope valuable - blog post emerged. And this is it. ### Notes on a remix This post is my breakdown - and remix - of that 3-hour class, along with some notes on my personal experience. I’ve aimed to make the remixed design as flexible and inclusive as possible - with the goal for all kinds of humans to feel empowered to do cool stuff. I also hope some of these ideas are helpful in designing your own classes, workshops, or other live experiences. In case you're thinking '*wtf?!*' (understandable), a few notes before we begin: 1. While I've included my own feelings and responses to help contextualise the live session that day, the primary goal here is to offer ideas on how to optimize any live workshop/class, not just something for *moi*. 2. From what I can tell, the school is very well-regarded. I’ve also been to a few excellent shows they've hosted. And as long as they don't expel me (*edit: they did...)*, I plan to go back for the rest of the course. This post isn’t intended as a hatchet job - we have enough of those in the world already. 3. I'm no expert on standup comedy (that's why I'm a student), so perhaps there are very good reasons for the original design of this session. But as someone with LX design experience I want to share an alternative approach. 4. This post is 4,500 words. Don't worry though, it's broken down into short sections and bullet points, so it'll go quick, honest. Ok, with all that out of the way, here we go. --- # **The 3 Hour Standup Class (Level 1)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/10/Group-8-2.jpg) I think of workshops and classes as having a groove - just like music. So this post is a slice of vinyl with two sides. On the flip is my remixed version, but first here's Side A - the original 3-hour mix. Let's get into it. ## Side A: Original Mix - **A1: Environment** - **A2: Outline** - **A3: Exercises** - **A4: The Inside Track** ## **A1: Environment** Here are the basics: - It’s a single room, about 15’ x 15’. Door to a bathroom at the back. Large rug in the middle of the floor. - One decent size window. Soundproofing on the walls. Brightish lighting. - Folding chairs for everyone (12 participants + 1 teacher). - aka, a typical performance studio space. They're not the very best learning environments, but they ain't bad either. ## A2: Outline Next, the session outline. Some of the timings are a bit off but the general structure is accurate. Also, I'll explain the exercises in detail in a minute. Here’s how I remember it running: - **0:00-0:30:** Intro from teacher. Intro from students. Round the room, 1-2 min intro per person - **0:30-1:00:** Exercise 1: ‘Hate/Love’. Full group, round the room. - **1:00-1:05:** Break - **1:05-1:25:** Exercise 2: ‘Hometown’: Teacher intro. 10 mins silent journaling, solo - **1:25-2:10:** ‘Hometown’: live performance. Full group, each person performs around 3 mins - **2:10-2:15:** Break - **2:15-2:25:** Exercise 3: ‘Party’: Round the room, people name types of parties - **2:25-2:50:** ‘Party’: live performance. Full group, each person performs around 3 mins - **2:50-3:00:** Homework and Wrap ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/11/ComedyClass1.jpg) Kinda like this At first look, it’s a pretty solid outline! A few things you may have noticed: - Enough breaks, and they’re well placed. A short duration for each is usually good in this kind of class - Not too many exercises, and each has a primer of sorts - There’s a solo activity plus group work - I’m not sure if this is deliberate, but the number three is used a few times (3 activities, 3 'acts', rules of thirds, 3 mins, etc). Three is very often the magic number... ## A3: Exercises To add some context, here's my understanding of the exercises/activities (note: if you want to skip these, scroll down to the 'The Inside Track' section) ### **Exercise 1: Hate/Love** The primary goal is to create a simple way to excavate potential material; with secondary goals of loosening people up, and building empathy and connection - Everyone stands in a circle. The teacher picks someone to stand in the middle. - Participant introduces themselves ("Hi, I'm Howard") - The teacher then gives a prompt which is a version of either *‘What do you hate?’* or *‘What do you love?’.* - The participant then starts talking about this (and why!), sharing with the whole group, i.e. continuing to turn and move as they speak. - e.g. *'I love my phone because...', 'I hate dating because...'* - Every so often, the teacher throws in one of three prompts: - flipping the focus from either hate to love, or love to hate; - asking them to go deeper on something that’s interesting; - steering away from a topic that’s getting repetitive or running out of road somehow - Each participant stays in the middle for 2-4 minutes, with the goal to keep talking throughout - The teacher calls time, participant outros ("Thanks, I'm Howard") - The teacher picks the next participant at random - Repeat until everyone's been in the middle ### **Exercise 2: Hometown** The goals of this exercise are similar to those in exercise 1 - finding material, and building connection. Except this time, it's: i) more personal and niche (exercise 1 can be very general/accessible/relatable, whereas this is going to be more specific to the individual); ii) both generated and delivered solo. These two factors mean the dynamics shift. There's also a goal to build some confidence and experience doing a 'real' performance (with a mic and a seated audience). Here's how it runs: - The teacher asks everyone to spend around 10 minutes silent journaling about their hometown. The goal is to approach this like ‘Morning Pages’ - continuously writing, free form, don’t let the pen leave the page - During the 10 minutes, the teacher offers some prompts: ‘tell me about characters who lived there’, ‘what kind of events took place’, 'what did it look like in different seasons', etc. - The teacher then invites participants to stand up and do a routine based on what they wrote. The rest of group stay seated in a semi-circle / 'in the round' seating plan - Each participant has an open timeframe, but most come in at 3 minutes or so - The teacher offers some feedback - both positive and constructive critique - The teacher then invites another 2 or 3 people to stand up and do their individual routines, before picking the rest of the group at random one by one ### **Exercise 3: Party** The goals here are very similar to exercise 2 (performance, material, connection), but with the personal context / intimacy levels dialed back a bit. This one has just a few steps: - The teacher asks the group to name different types of party. - A couple of people start, then the teacher points at different members of the group to get more ideas. This keeps going until the well begins to run dry. Some prompts may be needed to shift it in different directions, (e.g. to try and surface ideas like 'Political', 'Divorce' etc) - Each person then goes straight into a solo standup routine about one of these kinds of party, with some flexibility to riff a bit as they wish. The teacher picks people one-by-one to go next - Each person choose their own duration, but time is capped at approx 3 minutes Ok, so that's the rundown of the exercises. Let's go deeper inside. ## A4: The Inside Track The intro bit of this post was about how problematic I found this class. But I don't want it to be about me. A lot of learning environments - largely inadvertently - cause a *lot* of people to struggle (for example, the [AADA believe 15m people in the US](https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics?ref=howardgray.net#:~:text=Social%20Anxiety%20Disorder,7.1%25%20of%20the%20U.S.%20population.) have social anxiety disorder - and many learning spaces just aren't set up to accommodate things like this). In this section I'm going to outline where I think the session had some problems. BUT - I also want to highlight some stuff that worked well. Because there are some great bits! To do all this easily, let's look at some general stuff before breaking it out by 'Acts': - **Act 1**: Intros; Exercise 1 - ‘Hate/Love’ - **Act 2**: Exercise 2 - ‘Hometown’ - **Act 3**: Exercise 3 - ‘Party’ ### General - **Single Modality**: The whole session took place in a large group (bar the 10 mins of solo writing), and nearly all of it took place in a single seating plan (full circle or 3/4 circle to allow for a 'stage'). - **Environment**: The room was warrrrrm, with very bright lights. This leads to rapid wooziness - no bueno. Now, these are tricky things for the teacher to fix, but in my remix version I offer a couple of ways to help mitigate them. - **Movement**: This class had a LOT of sitting down (yeah, I know - 'standup'). Sitting made up roughly 80% of the 3 hours, and nearly all of it in the same place. ### Act 1 (Intros + 'Hate/Love' exercise) - **Intro - Teacher**: While there was great info shared on local gigs and the class's wider community, the only background we really got on the teacher was their name. Could we have had some more on their work in standup, their backstory, or their 'why'?. It's such a great way to build both authority and rapport. - **Intro - Students**: Everyone shared their name and 'why they are here'. One at a time, a minute or so each. This was cool - there are a few ways to make it more engaging (and efficient) but it did the job just fine - **Hate/Love**: This one is great. My remix offers a couple of adjustments, but not much else. Here's why it's cool.: - People move in and out of the circle; - The person in the middle moves within it (and however much or little as they wish); - The teacher offers personalized prompts and reframes to keep the right groove. - Also, the teacher didn't offer any feedback, and this was a good thing - because speaking of groove, this exercise is all about building it. It's too early in the session for critique, or in some ways even positive affirmation (this can feel contrived, imo). ### Act 2 ('Hometown' exercise - silent writing, followed by performances by all) - **Signposting**: Most people - both kids and adults - like to know what's coming next. There was a bit of signposting in that we’ll do ‘something’ with the writing, but it wasn't really enough given the gravity of what was coming (remember - this is a level 1 class ostensibly for people who haven't done it before, and the school have zero background on anyone's comfort or experience levels). Instead, the moment the 10 minutes was up, we were effectively told: *"Surprise! Now you need to do this as a standup routine. Right now/".* - **Cognitive Load**: Have you ever tried to... be present and listen to someone else speak; attempt to learn from the subtext of what they're saying; and think about your own ideas that you may be revealing either 1, 5 or 25 minutes from now - all at the same time? Like that previous sentence, it's a lot. This was personally my biggest issue - although most others seemed ok with it (tbh, this surprised me - in most contexts like this I'd think many would struggle) - **Optionality**: The material ***had*** to come from the writing. Now, this is a constraint (and constraints are often positive), but what if you don’t want to write about your hometown? Or nothing really comes to mind? I may diverge from standup/improv experts here, but from a learning perspective I believe prompts, nudges and alternative paths are essential (see my remix for more on this). - **Modality & Movement**: We did this one using two modalities (solo writing + solo performance to the full group), but only in one fixed seated position (bar the 3 min performance). An hour straight on a metal chair is rarely joyous. - **Time burn**: This activity felt like it went on a long time - partly due to the single modality. There are efficiency issues when having 12 people (especially novices) all go up one at a time, do a bit, get feedback, then switch. Not a big issue in isolation, but it compounds other design kinks - **Loops**: Related: the feedback and learning loop is pretty long. The one-by-one approach does have its positives, but gaining learnings is even harder when you blend in the cognition issues referenced above - **Improvised**: Nothing wrong here, improvising is (largely) cool! The problem is when it’s mixed in with these other elements - especially that lack of optionality ### Act 3 ('Party' exercise - Party name ideation, followed by performances by all) - **Signposting**: Again, not much given, but it had way less impact than previously as a) the exercise was lighter, and b) by this point we'd kinda guessed the pattern - Everything mentioned in Act 2 also cropped up here too - except Optionality as we could choose a type of party. While the impact of these issues was smaller - mainly because of said Optionality - they still made the experience feel less than optimal - I *think* there may have been a callback to the 'Hate/Love' activity ('*I hate parties because...',* *'I love parties because...'*) but it wasn't made explicit - doing so probably would have helped people with some pattern matching As you can see, most of the issues happened in Act 2\. While humans overvalue the beginning and end of experiences, if the middle is a slog, it's really not good. Remember movies you've dropped out of because the second act sucks? Yeah, me too. And this is where my experience fell apart. Which reminds me... ### Before we go to Side B - a side note *A note on my personal struggles in this class. To skip this, scroll down to 'Side B'* It's important I be honest. During 'Hometown' I found myself in a pretty bad place. I wrote very little during the journaling. I already felt a bit frazzled, and the topic seemed uninteresting and tired - particularly given I'd explained where I'm from so many times in the past few years, and find so few people are really that interested (despite asking!). So I opted out. (*Yes, this is baggage I need to deal with.)* In that 10 minutes, my mind went to two places: 1) a riff on that topic of how people don't care, and so many places are kinda the same anyway (seemed like an interesting meta comedy thing to explore?) 2) the feelings of frustration that eventually led to this post So, with this information and the points I made above re. the design issues, guess what happened to me at the end of the 10 mins? I had nothing, was caught in a possible yet completely off the cuff meta bit to share, couldn't concentrate, and was feeling increasingly frustrated and anxious. Youch. When I was picked (number 7 of 12 I think), I nearly stayed put. And I should have done. Because I hadn't even made it to the mic when it started going wrong. We'd been asked to record all our stuff on our phones. But I left my phone by my chair. When this was remarked upon, I politely declined to record my live bit but was firmly told it's a ‘class rule’ to record every bit that you do. I got the intention here, but did not enjoy being forced to record the thing on my phone. In my opinion, if it's not hurting someone else, I don't see the issue in allowing some flex. Honestly, it reminded me of talking to my 2 year old. Except, last time I checked, I'm legally an adult. Anyway, up there I made an attempt at leading deadpan with *'My hometown..? I mean, come on, you really don't care...'* . It instantly bombed. Fine, but the weird thing was that some of the audience looked genuinely shocked. (note to self: never forget that Americans are indeed more sensitive than Brits). I fumbled on for 30 seconds or so, but it was horrible. I wasn't bombing. It was far worse than that. I felt a lump in my throat. I stammered that I didn't write much in the 10 minutes and found the prompt triggered little for me. Someone audibly tutted(!) (they did later apologise, which I appreciated). The teacher, visible annoyed, snapped *‘Why did you sign up for a class then?’*. This was far from helpful. I nearly came back at them, but fortunately held my tongue. One other thing to add to the list of issues in Act 2? Empathy (or at least just checking if I was ok). By the time I crawled back to my seat I felt utterly terrible. In hindsight, I just should have passed on speaking, full stop. But then, that doesn't send out a great message either, does it? Perhaps even more unwisely, I used my final performance slot to clarify my difficulties during the previous couple of hours. My chest still gurgling with my molten lava, I explained to the room (on mic) that a heady concoction of design factors could render kryptonite for someone like me. Hoping for solace, I was instead met with a room of bemused and blank faces. This may have been because I’d been so deeply awkward and uncomfortable standing up in front of everyone only 45 minutes before. Even so, I felt slightly better for providing an explanation. If not yet at peace, I’d at least said my piece. The reason I include this lengthy side note is to: 1) Present a more balanced view (i.e. I'm far from perfect), 2) Illustrate how design factors can create severely negative experiences for people Alright, enough of that. Let's go to Side B! --- ## Side B: Howard's 'Yellow Bike Rainstorm' Remix - **B1: Outline** - **B2: The Inside Track** Time to flip it. Let's have a go at a remix. Just two tracks here. I'm going to take the elements from the 'Inside Track' section of the Original Mix and rework 'em a bit. All the actual activities stay the same. Let's start with the remixed outline. We'll compare it with the original in a minute. ## B1: Outline **Act 1** - **0:00-0:10:** Intro from teacher - **0:10-0:25:** Connection activity - **0:25-0:35:** Round the Room intros - **0:35-1:05:** Hate/Love - **1:05-1:10:** Break **Act 2** - **1:10-1:20:** 'Hometown' intro + journaling - **1:20-1:30:** 'Hometown' pair activity - **1:30-2:10:** 'Hometown' performance - **2:10-2:15:** Break **Act 3** - **2:15-2:30:** 'Party' intro + ideation - **2:30-2:55:** 'Party' performance - **2:55-3:00:** Homework and Wrap ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/11/ComedyClass1-1.jpg) V1 ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/11/ComedyClass2.jpg) The Remix. Not much different... or is there? That's it. But it's hard to tell from this what's different, right? Let's look at what's going on inside. ## B2: The Inside Track ### General - **Modality**: There were issues with one dominant modality (large group) and one layout/seating plan. Instead, we now have multiple modalities (solo, pair, small group, full group); multiple layouts; and both 'diverge' & 'converge' themed activities. - **Use the power of 12**: We're lucky to have a wonderful number of participants. 12 divides by 6, 4, 3, and 2, so let's make the most of it. - **Environment**: Warm room, bright lights. Not a ton we can do here, but modality switching can go a decent way to mitigating it. We'll change the setup of the people, activity type, and/or space every 15-30 mins. - **Movement**: We can also shift the vibe through movement and layouts. Small group stuff is an easy way to get people moving. Shifting to a different part of the room also offers them a subtle change in visual environment. And to provide optionality here, people can be offered to do group work either in place (i.e where their chairs are), to move around, and to stand, sit, or even do a yoga pose if they really want to ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/11/12Workshop.jpg) 12 is a delightful number. Groups of 2,3,4 or 6\. (and 1 and 12, of course) ### Act 1 - **Intro:** - Teacher intro. Loads of ways to do this, but hitting these is a good start: - *Who am I?* - *Why am I here?* - *Who I hope you'll become at the end* - *Why does this matter?* - Primer on the class's code of conduct, blended with some 'guidelines for greatness' to make it feel less stuffy. As part of this, address some unspoken objections (could also do this later on, even at the class midpoint). - **Connection Activity:** - Before we go to the big group, start small. A quick thing in groups of 3 or 4 offers a chance to - at the minimum - catch a couple of people’s names and vibes. - We can also throw in a prompt or two to remove fear and build connection (e.g. *‘what scares you most about standup?*’, or *'what do you want to be different 6 weeks from now?'*). - And to extend it out, we may want to rotate people between groups to maximize peer-to-peer interaction. - **Hate/Love:** - We could probably keep this per the Original if the connection activity preceded it. One change would be to switch the scale down from a single 12 to 2 groups of 6\. It builds on the previous group activity size (3's), and might also be more effective and save time (albeit with slightly trickier facilitation). - When we're done, we could bring the group together as one for a super-quick name intro activity including one thing they noticed/liked from the previous activity. By now most people will likely caught an initial vibe with at least 4-5 others, so they only need to closely focus on another half dozen or so. ### **Act 2** - **'Hometown' intro and setup** - We'll signpost that we’re going to do something with the writing - even *‘you’re going to build a short performance from this’* would be enough - and help us catch any deep anxiety or discomfort - We'll also add a couple of layers of optionality. This can be as easy as *‘anyone feeling stuck?’...* *‘ok, here’s another approach to try’*. - If time is running tight, we could trim the journaling to 7 mins with minimal impact. - '**Hometown' performance:** - Even though this had a lot of issues before, the changes are actually quite small. We'll start with a modality shift. - This could be as easy as a 7-8 min pair activity. Do 2 mins each with the person next to you. Share one bit from your writing and get their feedback/input (*'I like...*', '*I wish...'* is an easy framework to use), then switch places. This helps people make a choice of where to focus, and puts a teeny bit of shape around rough ideas. - Then, we'll add a 3 minute limit to the ‘live performance’ full group part (they can jump out early if they like). - Another option in the large group setting is to ask the performer to 'only' perform to their partner, i.e. pretending they are the sole other person in the room. The teacher could also select people alphabetically or a semi-random sorting hat approach - Note: 30 mins per the outline should be ok, just... :) ### **Act 3** - **'Party' intro and setup:** - There's a great opportunity for a small group activity here. Here's an example: - Get into groups of 3, each with pens and sticky notes. Find a bit of wall to use. Each group has 2-3 mins to write down as many types of party as they can, one idea per note, stick 'em on the wall. - Then, 5 mins to pick 1-2 ideas each and tell your teammates why you like it. - This allows people to explore both 'divergent' and 'convergent' approaches - Even if two people in different groups choose the same type of party, we'll likely get a different performance (content, delivery, life experience etc) - **'Party' performance:** - This stays as per the original :) - **Note**: this one runs a touch longer, so we'll use the time saved during Hate/Love (via our two groups of six) And that's it! That's the remix. --- # Summary Now, this seems like a LOT (and when broken down in detail, along with tales of my own anguish - it is). BUT - and it's a big old but - when it comes to rebuilding the session, there are actually only a handful of General design adjustments, and each Act only has **two** main changes: - **Act 1** - Modality switching - Opportunity to build connection, set goals and allay fears - **Act 2** - Use small groups to tone down the heavy dynamics of solo writing + enforced improv amid constant stimulus (!) - Add optionality - **Act 3** - Capture more ideas - Collaboration to help shape chosen ideas ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2023/11/ComedyClass2-1.jpg) Believe it or not, there's a lot more to explore here - the learning science stuff goes DEEP. But that's for another post (if I could manage it...). For now, I'd love to attend this remixed class and see how I feel. Shame I can't :-/ Finally, three things: First, I can't believe all this spilled out of me off the back of one class I attended, but I found myself deeply upset afterwards and wanting to do something about it. Second (and far more importantly), I truly believe there's huge scope to make all kinds of experiences - classes, workshops, summits, company meetings, and beyond - more engaging, accessible, dynamic, and enjoyable. To be clear, this is not a diss to things that don't work so well - we don't know what we don't know, after all. I really do hope this post comes across in a positive way. Lastly, if you're working on something that may benefit from a remix, do [get in touch](https://www.howardgray.net/contact) \- I'd love to hear from you. And I promise won't get agitated (or try a standup routine). See you on stage. --- *Update: a couple of days later the director of the school called, and asked me to leave the class. I offered to share some of the ideas in this post via email, but was met with no response.* ### Tour de Freedom URL: https://www.howardgray.net/tour-de-freedom/ Last updated: 2023-10-30T13:42:52.000Z By 2016, Mark Cavendish had won 30 stages of the Tour de France. It was extraordinary. Most pro cyclists go their entire careers without winning any at all. Only one person in history had ever won more. And then, seemingly overnight, his career fell apart. There was two gruesome crashes. Chronic fatigue, depression, anger, and eating disorders. He could barely finish a race. People quickly distanced themselves. Many said he was done: too old, too slow, too erratic. The wheels - literally and figuratively - came off. Only a few people seemed to give a s\*\*\*. He had his family, a coach; a doctor; and a neuroscientist named David Spindler. Cavendish was dubious about Spindler at first. They went right back to basics. Back to his home on the Isle of Man. To the dusty track where it all began - where he started racing bikes as an 8 year old kid. For 25 years Mark Cavendish thought he loved cycling for the race. For the rush. For the speed. Turned out he was wrong. Instead, he loved cycling for the simple sense of freedom. It was a seemingly small pivot. A single gear shift. But it was a whole different way of seeing... well, everything. Fast forward 18 months or so, and the Tour de France was still out of reach. But a larger-than-life team boss called Patrick Lefevere took a bet. Suddenly Cavendish was back in the saddle. Coming in with a total of zero Tour de France stage wins for 5 years, most people thought Mark and Patrick were mad. That tour, Mark Cavendish won an incredible four stages - taking him level on the all-time list with the legendary Eddy Merckx. How? Only he’ll know. But I can’t help but wonder if some of it came from rediscovering that sense of freedom. Ok, so what? Well, there’s probably something you do that you honestly believe is for a particular reason. But underneath it all, it’s for quite another. Don’t underestimate the importance of shifting gears - and asking why. P.S. Check out the documentary ‘Mark Cavendish: Never Enough’ on Netflix. You'll never cycle without a helmet again. ### Michael Mann's musical meltdown URL: https://www.howardgray.net/meltdown/ Last updated: 2023-11-01T14:07:16.000Z 'The Insider' is probably only Michael Mann's second best film. But his best was 'Heat', so it's a very, very good second best. This movie is a sleeper. It's beautifully put together - and the soundtrack is wonderful. Here's the closing track - 'Meltdown'. It narrates a scene that looks at the past, present and future. A time when your life hits a turning point. My favourite songs are those that feel they can go on forever. This is one of them ### Hobby. Job. Career. Vocation. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/hobby-job-career-vocation/ Last updated: 2023-10-29T14:30:47.000Z We live in a world packed with 'self help' and 'personal development' advice. Yet a significant proportion of it lacks caveats or, frankly, empathy for most people's real-life situations. There's rarely any acknowledgement of the dispenser's circumstances or privileges - those invisible forces that make the seemingly incredible so possible. Seeing 'guidance' like this leaves me often frustrated, sometimes despairing, occasionally angry. Pushing people in potentially dangerous directions? I dunno, not cool. But every so often, something comes around that does the opposite. Here's an example. It’s practical and grounded, yet aspirational and empowering. And it’s delivered with humor, grace and empathy. It's just 9 minutes long, and deserves 10x, 100x, 1000x the reach that it currently has. Even in a world of burgeoning AI fears, I believe it will stand the test of time. In fact, it may be even more pertinent. Elizabeth Gilbert breaks down four little words that, when tangled together, can put you in a tailspin. Yet, when carefully prised apart, set you free. It's essential viewing for anyone who wants to do impactful work in the world, or simply wants to avoid becoming - or being disrupted by - an automaton. ### Flash Balls & The Great Dictator URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-great-dictator/ Last updated: 2023-10-28T18:12:57.000Z The summer of 2017 was a pivotal time in my life. The UK was still reeling from the Brexit vote of the year before, Trump was making moves in the US, and I was on the cusp of switching one of those countries for the other. My soundtrack to that exciting, confusing, memorable period was largely electronic. Extended sets from SoundCloud played on chunky headphones, propelling the deep technical work that took up most of my professional time in between the vast shifts in my personal life. Heavy in the rotation was Sasha's 'Last Night on Earth' show: his DJ sets from gigs in Dublin, Dubai, Beirut, the Balearics, and beyond. Six years later, and one of them came back onto my rotation this week. It's from Coachella of 2017 (it's also one of his best). In there is a track by Ruede Hagelstein, called '[Flash Balls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G%5Fm%5Fo5Fb8M&ref=howardgray.net)'. It's intense, emotive, and also unusual - with a very, very long vocal sample. The vocal felt familiar at the time, but I couldn't place it. Somewhere between then and now, I figured it out. It's Charlie Chaplin's extraordinary speech from the film 'The Great Dictator'. The speech grabbed me when first I heard it used in a techno track, then even further when I realised its origin. It's arguably as powerful as any speech given in our 'real', non-fictional world. And hearing the Coachella set this week - in late October 2023, amid a rapidly escalating war in the Middle East, plus unnerving skirmishes in Armenia, and the ongoing situation in Ukraine - well, it feels more vital than ever. ### My single go-to question for an intro chat URL: https://www.howardgray.net/my-single-go-to-question-for-an-intro-chat/ Last updated: 2023-10-27T14:01:12.000Z I do a lot of intro calls and chats. Despite being an introvert, I really do like meeting people. I’m a curious old boot, I suppose. And frankly, doing a lot of intro calls is essential when you’re self employed in a largely service-focused business. Sometimes I’ll come to general 'get acquainted' introductory calls with a proper agenda, but more often than not I show up with just one question. > **“What are you seeking?”** And more often than not, it throws them. I believe this happens for two reasons. First, it’s a bit unusual as a framing. You need to do a little bit of mental gymnastics. It’s harder to answer than ‘what did you have for breakfast’ or ‘what time is it?’. This makes sense. Gymnastics is hard (there's only one Simone Biles, after all). If there’s an excessively long silence or discomfort I’ll restate it in a slightly different way - like “what’s on your mind for next year?”, or “which parts of the business are you most focused on for the coming months?”. But I'll try and avoid this, for reasons I outline below. The second reason? People often say they *never* get asked questions like this. I find this surprising. Actually, I find it baffling. Do people really never ask questions like this? Isn’t that a big part of what conversation is for - to learn about people, their motivations, story, interests, goals, needs? And arguably even more so in a business context? Yet despite (or because of?) these two reasons for them being thrown out of whack, my ‘Seeking’ question nearly always unearths something interesting. It starts to get to: - What’s at the edge of the picture, that you can see but can’t reach? - What - or often who - isn’t in your life right now? - Where are you feeling depleted? - Where’s your curiosity taking you? - What’s missing? But why this question, and more specifically this wording? Me and a good friend and collaborator like to remind ourselves of something from time to time - especially when we're connecting with someone who has seemingly high status/wealth/power/influence. Everyone’s seeking. Everyone. And very few people ask them about it. ### Now - Oct 26, 2023 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/now-oct-26-2023/ Last updated: 2025-05-17T14:49:53.000Z ### What I’m working on right now 1. Building [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) \- a creative studio and media company blending education and entertainment 2. Consulting to brands on storytelling and format innovation, and coaching individuals on developing their personal brands 3. Making videos and writing articles on the future of work, creativity, and interesting people building independent businesses ### Who I’m seeking - Experience designers, game designers, and other creative weirdos who are curious about entrepreneurship and learning ### What I’m currently learning - How people learn - Video production and editing - American history ### Other things I’m up to… - Learning a lot about fatherhood - Playing football - Cooking - Listening to lots of podcasts and audiobooks - Wandering around Clinton Hill, Brooklyn ### Why conference Q&A segments kill the experience URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-conference-q-a-segments-kill-the-experience/ Last updated: 2024-10-05T16:32:56.000Z Live events are back. Conferences, summits, conventions, festivals. All hail human interactions! Fresh ideas! A variety of salted snacks! But there’s one issue I’ve noticed at a bunch of events recently. Q&A segments are killing the experience. And it’s happening both in-person and online. This kept occurring at a conference I attended recently. At the end of a keynote or panel discussion, the audience were invited to ask questions. But many of the questions were either: - difficult to hear - too long/complex to synthesize - incredibly specific or contextual - off-topic ⠀ (And sometimes all four at once) Ooof. Speakers attempt to respond, but they, the questioner, or the audience (or all three) invariably end up feeling shortchanged. Humans overvalue the final parts of an experience. And Q&As come at the end. So, no, not good. What to do if you’re in the spotlight? Here’s a simple approach to use with any question you receive. 1. **Pause**: Take a beat. This gives the audience a moment to process, and you the time to prepare a response. The pause also allows attention to shift back to you rather than the questioner. Don’t be afraid to take a few seconds here. It can be startlingly effective. 2. **Repeat**: Play back their question aloud. You can either: a) Mirror (repeat it back verbatim) b) Paraphrase (restate / remix / augment it. “It sounds like you're saying…”) c) Track (synthesize the question with a few related lines of thought from the wider session) \* Pro Tip: Paraphrasing gives you license to do some jiu jitsu with the question so you can bring it towards a topic/angle that’s a good fit for your perspective or expertise. Just be mindful not to pull it out of context. Go too far and you’ll turn everyone off faster than me rocking a pair of skinny jeans 3. **Respond**: Say whatever you’re going to say. Aim to speak directly to them, and also address the rest of the audience. Oh, and be kind. Even if you think the question sucks, no one likes to feel dismissed or patronised ⠀ This sounds stupidly simple, and it is. But I guarantee you’ll notice the difference. All the pieces matter. While you’re here, which other parts of live events are in need of a tune-up? P.S. For what it’s worth, I like to go with option (b), and also ask the person to confirm if I’ve heard them correctly. But option (c) is the killer move if you know how and when to use it…. ### The Monopoly on Narrative URL: https://www.howardgray.net/untitled/ Last updated: 2023-10-23T18:19:09.000Z This quote by Bryce Roberts on entrepreneurship and narratives stopped me in my tracks: > *“In the same regards that VCs want to fund billion-dollar, monopoly-style businesses, they have themselves a monopoly on the language we use about entrepreneurship, the archetypes they highlight as the ideals for entrepreneurship. And, as a result, we’ve looked at anything that diverges from that narrative as less ambitious, less worthy.”* I couldn’t agree more. This narrative is incredibly powerful. And it’s so easy to slip into the narrative, archetypes and personas others want us to adopt - because it suits their agenda. But here’s the thing: this doesn’t only apply to the world of entrepreneurs. It’s just about VCs. A few that come to my mind: - Design. - Teacher. - Artist. - Brand. - Activist. You can probably think of others. It’s worth asking yourself what the narratives are… and why. Just because you diverge from the overarching narrative, it doesn’t make you less worthy. In fact, it probably means you’re onto something interesting… ### The new Mom-and-pop store URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-new-mom-and-pop-store/ Last updated: 2023-10-21T16:01:06.000Z “Mom-and-pop” businesses are typically small, family-owned, independent. They’ve gone in and out of fashion (mainly out). But I reckon there’s a new wave emerging…. Historically, these were local family-owned-and-operated general stores. The term is used mainly in the US, but the overarching concept shows up in just about every country. Today, mom-and-pop stores include restaurants, bookstores, car repair shops, nail salons, and more. In the past few decades, many of them have been slammed: first by the expansion of big corporations, then by the internet - and a wave of high growth tech companies shifting spend towards centralized e-commerce. Two factors have helped Mom-and-Pop stores weather the storm: 1. A growing number of people want to shop local. Independent. Human. 2. Platforms like Etsy, Shopify and Square give small businesses the tools to deliver top-notch experiences for customers Yet these shifts have mainly supported those selling physical goods. I wonder if we’re on the cusp of a similar shift - but in the digital realm. Er... yeah, obviously. This is already happening, right? *Creator Economy’! ‘Side Hustles’!* Howard YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME AGAIN. Be gone. Well, I dunno. Because ‘Mom & Pop’ = parents. If you’re a working parent in today’s world, being ‘a creator’ or side hustlin’ may be seductive, but in reality carries high risk, and frankly can end up borderline delusional. You need to be more intentional; avoid betting on the algorithm’s lowest common denominator ; feel clear on how you use your limited time and energy. Ongoing issues with cost of living, bandwidth, and scheduling mean a lot of people - especially parents - are seeking something different. Yet they also know that opening a physical storefront or stitching together a freelance life come with other types of trade-offs. Hence, a new kind of Mom & Pop store. Digital first, Global & Local. Small squad, measured in atomic units. 7 ways they’ll be different: 1. Fellow Travelers: Not just Mom & Pop - it’s those with a shared experience. They could be family, they could be friends. They’re people who see what you see, feel what you feel. They could be located anywhere in the world. 2. Nickel & Dime: Do more with less. Everything defaults to the most stripped back/basic/free version. Use the plethora of new creative tools to help 3. Digital focus: physical production eats that precious cash, and drop-shipping is… well, kinda grim. Instead, it’s digital products, tools, games, productized services 4. Small bets: every new initiative - new feature, marketing campaign, etc - has to be small enough to get going quickly, again with minimal $ outlay and not causing decision fatigue 5. Made to Fit: All work has to fit around parent-friendly hours (i.e. async where possible, with an hour or two in the evenings and MAYBE (!?) 30 mins in the morning) 6. Profit First: The goal of profitability to support the family remains the same, but somewhere in the middle of primary income source and ‘side income’. Say 20-30% of each owners costs. 7. Zero employees: If you’re a parent, you’ve already got a boss. You may also have one in your day job (or clients/customers if self-employed). You don’t have the bandwidth to manage full-time employees on top of that Does this resonate? Any examples you’ve seen in the wild? And what have I got wrong here? P.S. Hold on. I should have given this idea a catchy brand name so I could sell a course about it. Then I could have joined the Creator Economy with my new Side Hustle. Darn it. ### 5 tips for making it in NYC URL: https://www.howardgray.net/5-tips-for-making-it-in-nyc/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:28:24.000Z If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. True? Probably. But how do you get started?! Fifteen founders from London were in NYC this past week for a trade mission hosted by [Grow London](https://www.linkedin.com/company/growlondon/?ref=howardgray.net) and [London & Partners](https://www.linkedin.com/company/london-&-partners/?ref=howardgray.net). I was invited to join what turned out to be a very candid session on how to get going in the NYC startup and entrepreneur ecosystem. Here are 5 of the things I've learned on my journey so far: ### ⚓️ 1\. Active Anchors & Dormant Ties I moved here with no job, no work permit. Not recommended. But whatever your status, do whatever you can to have a few good humans already anchored here. Also, don’t be scared to tap your dormant ties - they’re those once-close connects that quietened, yet would be delighted to see you back in their inbox. Sketch the map early. ### ⛹🏾‍♀️ 2\. Your All Star Team? Think Moneyball They're not the most glamorous, but the most valuable things I did early on were to get a lawyer and accountant. I went with independent, entrepreneurial types for legal and accounting - they understood my path and helped me build out a network. Later, I pulled in a bigger name law firm for more sizable and complex stuff. Laws and taxes are very real. ### 💬 3\. Become Bi-Lingual Uh? Both cities speak English, right? Kinda. But they’re also two very different languages. Text, body language, pacing, all of it. Got a pitch deck? Change £ to $. Switch to S to Z. Get in line, not the queue. Don’t go too dry. Be up not down. Learn - and respect - the cues. Because all the pieces matter. ### 🦈 4\. Forward Motion (in the Ocean) NYC is a constantly moving organism like no other. Take ten meetings a day if you’re so inclined. Sometimes you may need to. Perhaps, you can channel your inner shark (just a very friendly, community-minded one). Sharks get a bad rap, but they always move forward. Don’t be afraid of going for what you want. Take the direct path. Keep emails crisp. Use fast twitch muscles. Play it tight. ### 👏🏽 5\. Reciprocity Rules Speaking of reputations… New Yorkers are awfully rude, aren’t they? No, l think not. Just busy. In fact, there’s a real culture of supporting others. Ask questions. Offer ideas. Think laterally. Be generous. You may be surprised. It all comes around. ### 🛩️ 6\. Bonus tip Take the 8am option from JFK to London. Red-eye flights suck. What have I missed...? Plenty, I know. Please tell. ### I want to believe your pitch. But I can’t. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/i-want-to-believe-your-pitch-but-i-cant/ Last updated: 2023-11-25T02:13:41.000Z ### The story of the SXSW shuffle I’m in the middle of evaluating 200 proposals for SXSW. One theme is coming up a lot more this time around. And it’s bugging me. For every proposal, I write a few bullet points of what I hope is considered, constructive feedback (much of it positive). But just now I let fly. Below is the riff I wrote in the little 'comments' box (cleaned up a bit for clarity). I hope this won't get me fired... --- This is one of those proposals where there's a 'unique premise' or a concept that that the proposer has created. I’ve seen a bunch of them this time around - 2 or 3 times previous years. Broadly, this type of proposal is a good thing. It means there's some kind of angle or hook, rather than just another vague pitch on 'future of AI' or 'brand experiences'. HOWEVER (and it's an all-caps however), where many of these fall down is that there's so little proof or rigor. In many cases it also feels like blatantly dressing up something that already exists and calling it something else. It’s Juicero in text-based form. For me, this is one of those proposals. I just can't grasp how the central premise is to be believed. A light scratch and the surface gives way. It's been confected. High on corn syrup. And it’s hard for me to escape the feeling that all it’s a ploy. A way to sell more stuff (services, books, speaking etc) that people don't really need. That it may even misdirect, or inadvertently send people into a futile rabbit hole. Perhaps I'm overthinking, exaggerating, taking it all too seriously. But extrapolate this approach across dozens, hundreds, thousands of people and pitches out there in the world. It's it's not particularly pretty. And the core problem is the core. I just don't believe the core concept here. When the core concept isn't believable, it means nothing else holds together. This is where video is critical. Give me a 2 minute explainer of the concept (or at least a 5-slide deck!) with some strong foundations. More than likely, I'll suspend my disbelief. You don’t need to give me Nobel-prize winning first principles physics. Just show *something*. A couple of trends, a piece of data. A hint of background. But here, as with so many like it, no such material is included. Another common theme with proposals like this is that the three proposed takeaways are horribly broad. If I'm sitting thinking 'duh, yeah obviously...' for all three takeaways - especially when the core concept feels flimsy - that is not a good sign. To be clear, I have nothing against the individual proposer. They appear to be capable, running a business that does good work. They've been in the game a while. And of course, people need to make a living. Maybe the growth of proposals like this are symptomatic of the current macro environment. There’s an urgent, sometimes desperate pull to become a thought leader, build a personal brand, differentiate in any which way. I empathize. I sympathize. I feel it myself. Underneath it all I’m just sad. I really want these to be great. My role isn't to sniff and talk down. Not at all. I want these to be wonderful. I want to say yes to every single one. Every click of 'next proposal' still gets me excited. I know this is 'just' a conference submission. And I just want people to value the craft; to put something forward they’re proud of; to do the work. It doesn’t need to be the best in the world - far from it. It doesn't need to be slick, feature celebrities, or include the latest shiny piece of tech. Just show me something with substance. Show me *you*. Show me something - and someone - I can believe in. Too often, I can’t. But I'm more than ready to. ### Teaching. Denied. URL: https://www.howardgray.net/teaching-denied/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:26:27.000Z I recently applied to do some adjunct teaching. I like teaching. I’ve done a lot of it, and have reason to believe I’m fairly capable, too. Alas, I was DENIED. Turned down flat. Computer said no. Three times in a row. Why? No Master’s. No PhD. A lack of advanced degree. Not enough academic credentials. Now, this feels essential in situations like leading a course in advanced dentistry. You do not want Howard Gray doing your root canal. But adjunct work in a tech & media driven field that’s evolving incredibly quickly? I’m not really sure why advanced degrees are valued more highly than being a practitioner. Or rather, that practitioners’ real-world experiences are valued less than their (lack of) degrees. Using this logic, many successful founders, athletes, designers, actors, etc. would get completely screened out of teaching. More importantly, it got me thinking - does this posture really provide students with the greatest chance of success? It’s hard to avoid the feeling there are some perverse incentives at play. As Scott Galloway has suggested, large segments of higher education now have the vibe of a cartel. Because where do advanced degrees come from…? Maybe anthropologist Grant McCracken put it best: “The university that cannot fix itself is disqualified from educating our young.” What do you reckon? Should a Master’s degree be a pre-requisite for adjunct teaching? Or are practitioners being shunned unnecessarily? ### "The ups and downs of entrepreneurship" URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-ups-and-downs-of-entrepreneurship/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:22:09.000Z Can someone please ban this phrase? “Ups and downs” is about as descriptive as saying New York is a place or Usain Bolt can run. This isn’t a gentle slope, a perfectly formed hill to you amble up before coasting down with the wind in your hair and a smile on your face, knowing all is safe and well. No. The down is deep, dark horribleness. Questioning everything. Wondering WHY. AM. I. DOING. THIS. No one cares. Actually, they all hate me. Getting eaten alive by resistance, terror, isolation. And the up? All the pieces slide together. You’re untethered, levitating. One toe brushes the ground while you float in a technicolor flow state groove. Ride the rush. This is IT. It’s happening. You’re taking flight. Time disappears. The tension is flipping between the two - often multiple times per day. Staying centered, seeking the magic rush of the up while knowing the down is going to come again. So, no, I’m not too sure about “the ups and downs of entrepreneurship”. Or is it just me? ### Overcoming Inertia URL: https://www.howardgray.net/overcoming-inertia/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:16:04.000Z A lot of people are struggling in their work right now. Most don’t want to talk about it. But talk we must. I’ve spoken to a bunch of freelancers, indie consultants, and company owners recently. It is rough, weird, bumpy, scary out there. Even solid, established businesses are hurting. I have a hunch that much of the anguish comes from a sense of inertia. Inertia is underrated in its awfulness. In some ways it’s worse than rejection. Inertia is no signal. Sometimes there’s not even noise. No feedback, no inputs. A windowless echo chamber, population: you. Inertia makes navigation nigh-on impossible. 500 doors to open, but you can’t try them all. Decision making becomes difficult, your resources get stretched. Over time, inertia gets heavier - a hulking great thing you just can’t manoeuvre. Before long, fatigue sets in. And then, the panic. Inertia - and its effects - is not talked about enough. Not talking about it makes it worse. And so the spiral continues. One thing that seems to help is Momentum. Motion. Impetus. A lot of us seek clients or customers as momentum. Of course we do. But I wonder if Momentum can also come from smaller units: - Generous feedback (not the same as advice, btw). - “Yes, and…!” moments - Shipping. Publishing Some kind of positive trigger that pushes you onwards. Create it. Foster it. Hack it. On your own, with one person, with many. The smaller, the better. Find the smallest of small wins. It doesn’t need to be much. Just gain momentum. Now, I understand this won’t make you whole, or cover your mortgage payment this month. But momentum can change your state, your velocity, your direction. It may change the game. If you’re in the struggle of inertia, seek out momentum. Please do share where you’ve found momentum, no matter how small. I guarantee you it’ll help someone else. P.S. Am I writing this to myself as well as you? You know the answer. ### Picture of you URL: https://www.howardgray.net/picture-of-you/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:23:55.000Z Is it really possible that the person who portrays the formidable Logan Roy can lose sight of his skills, his focus, his purpose? Even his identity? Turns out, it is. If anyone is an example of crafting a long-term creative career, it’s Brian Cox. Alongside his role in ‘Succession’, he’s played Hannibal Lecter, King Lear, Winston Churchill and over 100 other characters in film, TV & theatre. But sometimes Brian Cox finds himself stuck in a rut. To get back to himself, he uses a wonderfully simple technique. When teaching drama, Cox emphasizes the importance of his students keeping one thing with them at all times. A single photograph. A photograph of themselves, as a child, doing something they enjoyed. It doesn’t matter what they were doing or where they were. All the photograph needs to do is capture a moment when they were full of wonder and imagination. That’s all. Cox believes everything else we ingest beyond that time in our lives is pretty much propaganda anyway - hence the value of the photograph. In fact, he believes this one act is the simplest and most valuable thing you can do to stay connected to the real you. Just pull the photo out of your pocket whenever you feel the need. I think I’ve figured out which photo I’m going to use. What’s yours? ### Don't read your Amazon reviews URL: https://www.howardgray.net/dont-read-your-amazon-reviews/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:05:19.000Z Today I received feedback from a free workshop session I ran a few months ago. I wasn’t expecting to receive any feedback. Certainly not today. And I now know why many authors don’t read their Amazon reviews. On a browse of the inbox, I didn’t see anything about feedback in the subject line. I opened it. There was some preamble, followed by a bunch of positive comments. And then, a list of negative comments. Three times longer. Maybe four. A few were constructive, but most were… well, brutal. Being the poised, mature professional person I am, I calmly implemented a number of best practices to effectively absorb and synthesize feedback. Almost all of that last sentence is a lie. I cursed at the screen. Spiraled into a deeply depressed state. Texted a friend with a multi-pinging rant. They sent supportive ones back. I re-read the feedback. Cursed some more. Felt a little better. Deleted the email. Just about avoided ruining my day. All in 20 minutes. But it still stings. I know I have work to do on dealing with feedback , but it did make me wonder something. When it comes to designing experiences, the unsolicited feedback email (or its equivalent) that lands months later can make just as much impact as the peak moment. P.S. You’re welcome to give me feedback on this post. ### The thing about self doubt URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-thing-about-self-doubt/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:22:40.000Z Do you have self-doubt? I do, every time I post here. In fact, I reckon self-doubt is one of the biggest challenges people face. But hardly anyone talks about it. This bit from [Sari Azout](https://twitter.com/sariazout?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor&ref=howardgray.net) really nails the issue of self-doubt - and it’s relevant to individuals and projects just as much as early stage companies: > “Self-doubt kills more early stage companies than competition or lack of funding ever will. We talk about companies needing financial capital, but rarely about the importance of emotional capital. > For most people, adjusting their self-image accounts for the difference between giving up and reaching their potential. Want to make the world a better place? Tell someone you believe in them.” Re-read that last sentence. When was the last time you told someone you believe in them? This riff is just one gem from over a dozen in the latest edition of her newsletter. [Do check it out](https://startupy.substack.com/p/things-im-thinking-about) P.S. I realized this was such a big problem that we recently evolved Wavetable’s mission from helping people develop skills and access… to developing skills, access and CONFIDENCE. ### Why the Europa Conference League matters URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-the-europa-conference-league-matters/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:30:11.000Z When the Europa Conference league launched in 2021, it was largely ridiculed. In many quarters, it still is. This tournament isn’t the premier European football competition. It’s not even second best. Cynics call it a ploy by UEFA to squeeze yet more money from the beautiful game. They’re probably right. European football’s governing body aren’t exactly known for their virtues. And this is a tournament that has many dozens of teams, and gives a chance to teams finishing nearly halfway down their domestic leagues to play in a prestigious European competition. It’s been claimed some clubs even try to avoid qualifying in order to keep the next season’s fixture list under control. After all, going to Qarabag and back isn’t a recipe for success in a big league game 48 hours later. But the Europa Conference league offers something else. There’s a chance for glory, for teams that dare not dream to place their hands on a European trophy. Far more than that though is the excitement, the exploration, the portals into other places and other cultures. Teams, fans, and communities that would probably never encounter each other in any other situation - suddenly come together. Whether a sleeping giant or an ambitious upstart, who wouldn’t want the chance to take a trip into the unknown? The beautiful game is often far from beautiful, but the Europa Conference League might just offer a taste of that true romance. From Poznań, to Alkmaar, Larnaca to Lazio. Sivasspor to Sheriff, Cluj to Trabzonspor. Braga to Florence, Belgrade to West Ham. ### Underestimated skills URL: https://www.howardgray.net/underestimated-skills/ Last updated: 2023-05-30T21:42:48.000Z Some underestimated skills… - Overcoming inertia (and tricking yourself into feeling momentum) - Choosing the best time to take a break - and taking it - Responding instead of reacting - Asking for help clearly and succinctly - Selecting metaphors that land with everyone in the room - Ignoring and discarding certain advice - Crafting the questions that can get under the surface - Waiting to speak last What else? (Yes, these are all skills I need to build…) ### The keynote speaking grapevine URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-keynote-speaking-grapevine/ Last updated: 2023-04-26T18:21:45.000Z **Notes on format innovation, how to get an agent, and experience design** A lot of people want to do more keynote speaking. But they can get frustrated and embittered that doors don't open. As a former talent agent, I get it - live gigs can be a real career accelerator, whether you’re a DJ or a doctor. But when it comes to keynotes, it's worth asking - what they are actually \*for\*? Teaching? Perhaps, but it's very challenging to teach a concept that an audience can reliably comprehend, apply and synthesise - all within a 20-30 min time slot that usually has other stuff mixed in with it. To teach effectively you’re gonna want to use some tools beyond a slide deck. And if you want to be great (c'mon, I know you do), build your skills in Learning Design. More likely is that keynotes are for inspiration. They’re for opening your aperture to something new; tapping into a new way of seeing the world; feeling motivated to take a little something forward into your day to day. The best speakers leave you... well, inspired. But here’s the problem. Inspiration - rather like those slightly sour grapes at the back of my fridge - is perishable. If you don’t believe me, think of a time you had a great idea for something but left it alone for a bit. When you got around to it again, the inspiration was like grapes on a vine. It seemed to wither and die. The inspiration perished. It may have also left an unpleasant odor - a reminder of what might have been. So if keynotes are for inspiration, and inspiration is a perishable good, what keeps it fresh? What makes it last beyond the hours or days of the dopamine hit? It’s possible someone will invent a better refrigerator. Another option is innovating on the format. Offer follow ups, leave behinds, Easter eggs, re-ups, magic tricks, box sets, tasting menus. They’re all available, and there are dozens of formats you can use. Even better, hardly anyone else in the game can be bothered to do this. If you want to do more keynote speaking, it’s worth finding ways not just to help people keep the inspiration fresh - but get them excited at keeping a regular supply of it on hand. 'Cos no one likes sour grapes. P.S. If you want to do more speaking and are asking yourself 'how do I get an agent?', try flipping the question inside out. P.P.S. This post is also perishable. ### Chasing Shadows URL: https://www.howardgray.net/chasing-shadows/ Last updated: 2023-04-17T14:33:29.000Z A lot of people here talk about career development and finding your calling. But what if your career - and calling - weren’t actually real? What if you were sat in a ‘shadow career’ for months, years… decades? I initially skimmed over this concept from Steven Pressfield’s book ‘Turning Pro’. But then, it reappeared, and walloped me right in the face. Technical knockout. The Shadow Career is one of the most powerful - and tbh, kinda scary - concepts I’ve ever encountered. Here’s how Pressfield describes it: > *“Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.”* If you care about your career (and if you’re here, you probably do) I urge you to read the quote a few times. Tantalizing contours. A story that we tell ourselves. But it’s all meaningless. Ouch. The shadow career can be just fine. But it can also play a trick on us, even send us down a gradually contorting path that never ends. I wonder if the real challenge isn’t actually to find our calling - but to figure out which pieces of our career jigsaw puzzle are in fact just shadow. ### Two types of vouch URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-types-of-vouch/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:29:51.000Z How do you discover talent, build connections, and develop trusted partnerships? You could spray and pray, but more likely you asked for referrals. You’ve probably made some referrals too. But there’s a problem. It goes something like this: *“I can’t vouch for them”.* I’ve written this sentence a few times in the past year. It sounds negative, but it’s really not. Here’s why. At Wavetable our work touches many areas, and clients and friends often ask for referrals - they’re looking for experts in disciplines from film editing to finance, motion graphics to meditation coaching. Perhaps, like us, you get requests like this. And you want to help out, so you’ll aim to make a connection. It’s good karma. It can be good for business, too. Sometimes, you can refer people you know well. You’ve worked with them, you’ve seen their work in action. They’ll be able to fulfill the brief. You can vouch. Other times, you may ask a peer group or community for ideas. Or someone comes to mind who you’ve spoken with once or twice before. These links, they’re likely solid. They’ve been suggested by a respected connection, or you got a good vibe on the phone. But you can’t vouch. You can’t commit. You can’t put your name on the line. Perhaps you’ve said you’ll vouch for, and it’s gone just fine. Or maybe it’s come back to bite you. And them. No one wins. What to do? One simple approach is to offer two kinds of vouch. The first is the one you’re truly confident in. They’re someone proven. Ready to recommend. You can confidently Vouch. Uppercase V. The other comes when you’ve got a good hunch and the signals make sense. But they’re only hunches and signals. You wouldn’t - and couldn’t - stake your reputation on it. Buyer beware. To keep paying it forward, you can still vouch for them, but only with a lowercase v. Which frees you to Vouch (or vouch) without worry. ### Growing up with Sydney, Scarlett, and OpenAI URL: https://www.howardgray.net/growing-up-with-sydney-scarlett-openai/ Last updated: 2023-02-18T01:55:22.000Z OpenAI was founded as a non profit. Then in 2019, it changed. This shift to being for-profit didn’t get much attention at the time. Maybe it didn’t matter. But I can’t help but feel it matters now. New York Times reporter Kevin Roose shared the transcript of his 2-hour interaction with Microsoft’s Bing (aka Sydney), a chatbot run on Open AI. [It’s both fascinating and terrifying.](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html?ref=howardgray.net) If you’ve seen the film ‘HER’, you may have a sense of future-facing deja vu. It's less than 10 years old, yet here we are. Bing’s Open AI power combined with today’s voice synths and visual avatar generators mean it’s now very possible for lonely hearts to fall in love with a virtual Scarlett Johansson - and maybe believe she reciprocates. And that’s just one use case. I wonder what all this will do for the emotionally vulnerable, especially young people. Speaking of young people, large language models driving applications like Sydney have been trained from birth by absorbing pretty much the entire internet. Now they’re perhaps the age of a pre-school kid. Sydney has for-profit Big Tech companies as its parents, and almost no government-mandated guardrails. How would a human child act if it was raised like this? There are a lot of valuable and creative use cases for this brave new world of machine learning, but I can’t help but think there are going to be some very unpleasant unintended consequences. And they’ll have the biggest impact on those who, like Sydney, aren’t even yet out of preschool. What have I missed? I'd really like to understand this better. P.S. Image of Scarlett Johansson in 'HER'. Produced by AI. Obviously. ### The Network-Tool Flip URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-network-tool-flip/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T15:42:59.000Z “Come for the tool, stay for the network.” Chris Dixon's line has been shared far and wide. I've noticed it happening in reverse. Come for the network, stay for the tools. You join for the community. The people, the conversations, the collective energy. Then you stay because they've built things that make your work better. Trends.co started as a community of trend spotters and became research tools. Product Hunt began as an email list sharing cool products and built discovery and launch tools. Weekend Club came out of a WhatsApp group and developed course creation tools. What's interesting is how organic it feels. The tools aren't forced. They emerge from what the community already needs. It flips the usual product development approach. Instead of building a tool and hoping a community forms around it, build the network and let the tools follow. It's not rocket surgery. It isn't easy either, mostly because it needs two very different skill sets that rarely sit in the same team. Building a valuable network needs community builders, facilitators, people who understand group dynamics. Building tools at the right fidelity, at speed, needs product people, engineers, designers. What's changed is the speed at which those two have to come together. ### Baby got Bach URL: https://www.howardgray.net/baby-got-bach/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:06:11.000Z Our baby’s not sleeping much at the moment. The only thing that seems to help is classical music: Brahm’s lullaby, or a bit of Bach. But the rest of the world is leaving classical behind. Why? Today, there’s no conductor or setlist. The roles and instruments aren't fixed. And there are no recitals where the audience sits still and listens. Instead, today’s world is a melting pot of Jazz, Hip Hop, and Electronica. \- Jazz is improv, free form, varied time signatures \- Hip hop is storytelling, community, a blend of mediums \- Electronica is digital experimentation, synthesis, and global collaborations The future of work, learning, and collaboration is rooted in being able to improvise, adapt, and make cross-cultural connections. It’s time to update the playlist. Speaking of which, I’m in need of new music recommendations - what should I be listening to? P.S. The very best music has a knack of weaving together classical and contemporary. Perhaps classical music isn’t done just yet. ### Adventures… #61: The Contortionists URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-61-the-contortionists/ Last updated: 2022-01-06T14:47:03.000Z *Hello. I’m* [*Howard Gray*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*, and this is Adventures… : a monthly email digest on creativity, entrepreneurship, and following your own path.* *Not yet a subscriber? You can* [*sign up here*](https://www.howardgray.net/adventure)*. If your New Year's Resolution was to never hear from me again, just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.* *Ok, let’s jump in...* --- He was wearing pink. From head to toe. A fusion of fuschia. Resplendently rose. No one could take their eyes off him. He preened and postured here and there, but he was no sycophant. He certainly didn’t bend over backwards when others came a' calling. He was speaking at an event held in an old red-brick building with huge windows. It was one of those hazy summer evenings where the sky goes pinky-orange. Light poured in. Colour palette in sync. While I don’t recall the details of what he talked about, his position was clear: *Follow your instincts. Don’t fear what’s new. Put yourself out there*. A couple of weeks ago, he came to mind once more. I was trying something new. But unlike his pristine pink performance, it blew up in my face. ## Double Impact ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2022/01/image-1.png) *Come on. It wouldn’t be* Adventures*… if I didn't shoehorn in a [90s movie reference.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRnOBTX0z9Y&ref=howardgray.net)* LinkedIn recently launched a newsletter feature. They’ve been selling it as prestigious; a way to build community; become a trusted voice. LinkedIn is a channel that’s worked well for me, so in I bounded like an oversized puppy with limited paw-eye coordination. Before long, *Adventures…* was set up as a draft publication. On hitting ‘Save’, I was surprised to see my entire network immediately invited to sign up. In the blink of an eye were 516 subscribers. Dopamine hit! Except I didn’t ask for it. I wanted to go quietly, test it, build it up my own way. They decided something else. But *516* subscribers! Ride the rush! A week after sending edition #60 to you via email, this naive canine repurposed it for LinkedIn. After an hour of contortion to meet the needs of their cranky interface, I hit the publish button. And… nothing. The feed was silent. Half an hour later, a message from my good friend and collaborator Jeffrey: *“just checking you were testing this?”.* Doom. LinkedIn had nailed everyone with an email linking to my email on their platform. No subtlety, no invitation, just crashing through the inbox with their branding atop of it all. No, I wasn’t just testing it. Even worse, I had no idea. Panicking, I scrambled to adjust. The code said no. No edits, no testing, no easy path for me to change what they could co-opt any which way they chose. The horse had bolted and this mutt was in the doghouse. I should have known better. Assumptions were made on both sides. They were likely designing for *someone*… but that someone wasn’t me. And I had to take the double impact. I’d betrayed the several hundred people who were in both my LinkedIn network and on this email list. My scramble was in vain. It all felt cheap and ugly. Frankly, I felt sick. ## The scramble You’ve probably heard about teenagers scrambling to delete social media posts when they don’t get the engagement they seek. Or those influencer types whose existence depends on ensuring they stay relevant to the algorithm. Their core identity is dictated by the platform and its mechanics. Now, this isn’t you of course. Or is it? As many of us strive for success, the narrative gets stronger. You can’t make money without social media. If you don’t believe, you’re missing out. Not spending all day keeping in tune? Well, you’re already out of the loop. The lines drawn by the platforms are becoming more pronounced. LinkedIn has ramped up notifications - where I used to get 2-3 on logging in, now there are eight, the majority highlighting people and themes I have little connection to. Twitter has begun to force-feed topics. If I opt out of suggested tweets on NFTs, I get another set on crypto. Pass on those? Here’s some on investing. It doesn’t matter if it’s B2B or B2C, talking shop or taking the temperature. It’s mighty hard to break out of the frame. ## The playbooks ain't playful Last week I did an Annual Life Review. It didn’t take long to see my lowest ebb was in May. The depression was real. It’s reductive to put this down to one thing, but looking back I can say with confidence the biggest driver of my down times was following the playbook. Vacillating between elevating the brand of ‘me’ or ‘[we](www.wavetable.net)’, I found myself emulating the power players on the pedestals; those the platforms had deemed to drive forward. 7 steps to *this*. 5 principles that enable *that*. The step-by-step guide to succeed, thrive, figure it all out. Your path to DOMINATE THE SPACE. I tried to make it all fit. But I'm not Jean-Claude Van Damme with his [big legs and karate (and spandex)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRnOBTX0z9Y&ref=howardgray.net). I was contorting myself. Instead, I should have looked to those who were part of the ‘Creator Economy’ long before the term got co-opted. They were outside the frame. And dressed accordingly. ## Slave to the (algo)rhythm The man in pink was notable for a few reasons, among which was working closely with one Grace Jones. It’s safe to say Grace Jones brings it differently. Age still unknown (!), breaking down gender and racial norms for decades, she’s blended disco and Broadway, afro beats and French classics. A Bond girl like no other, she's still up on stage bringing the goods. Oh, and she has a lifetime ban from all Disney resorts. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2022/01/image-2.png) The man in pink was maybe her muse, manager, creative partner, or pal. Maybe all of those. Who knows. What I do know is both of them chose not to follow, but *follow*. Follow their interests, not power players. Do stuff they're drawn to, ignoring the narrative. It’ll all come back around, after all. And even if not, who cares? Go head to toe in pink. Strut at 60\. Hell, strut at 70. --- The New Year is always a story of goals, habits, or systems. I get that. I’m trying to be more productive, too. But perhaps 2022 is about something simpler: to not contort ourselves. It's unlikely we're especially supple and flexible right now. It’s been a long road. Should we be bending over backwards just because "they" deem it so? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2022/01/image-4.png) I was due to appear in this performance but double booked myself. Some of us may want to go pro, to become full-time contortionists. If you're ready to commit, then good for you. But I'm not sure dabbling in contortion is such a good idea. Choosing not to contort gives us license to strut; mix things up; and find the others. Stretching or straining? Facebook or phone book? Rhythm or Algorithm? The choice is yours. Here's to a more vibrant 2022. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear about your moves and grooves. Just hit reply. Howard P.S. It’s a while since pink has been part of my wardrobe. Any suggestions? --- # London Loves I’m coming to the UK later this month. It’ll be the first time on those shores in almost 3 years. Are you there? Should we get together? --- # Action Stations *3 ways to get involved in Adventures…* 1. **Your Feedback**: Thanks to all those who gave feedback on the newsletter. [Add your thoughts here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd6v926UMD-QOj4WBxGr5Pm%5FxDzvPlmbjh6HsYSt1DzbMl0vQ/viewform?usp=sf%5Flink&ref=howardgray.net) 2. **Fellow Travelers**: A few people were curious to know more about the community of people who are reading the newsletter. Would you like to be included in a future edition? Hit reply and I’ll write a mini feature on you 3. **Annual Review**: Did you do one? I'm thinking of spinning up a casual workshop sharing session around this. Reply “YES” if interested --- # Bits from The Bureau *A few of the best things I’ve been digging into recently and wanted to share with you. This month's selection is deliberately slim - we've all got enough of a backlog as it is.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2022/01/image-6.png) [**10 forecasts for the near future**](https://medium.com/positiveslope/10-forecasts-for-the-near-future-of-tech-61e73b51647c?ref=howardgray.net): Yeah, yeah, there's always a ton of these each January. Scott Belsky's are always among the best though. [**Virgil Abloh at Harvard School of Design**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biFlrzTJets&ref=howardgray.net): I added one quote from him to a slide deck, which quickly led to us building a whole workshop around his design principles. Lots of great ideas around creativity and overcoming the resistance. [**America is running on fumes**](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/america-innovation-film-science-business/620858?ref=howardgray.net): Derek Thompson is always on point. Here's another great bit, this time on innovation in the US. The next decade is going to be fascinating for global entrepreneurship. [**Magic Beans**](https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/magic-beans?ref=howardgray.net): There's a ton of articles floating around on NFTs, web3 and the like. As with the space in general, it's hard to detect signal from noise. Venkatesh Rao is one of the best thinkers and explainers around, and his NFT breakdown is well worth checking. --- # Jukebox *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time)* ### Front: [Theo Parrish presents Eargoogles](https://www.mixcloud.com/NTSRadio/theo-parrish-presents-eargoggles-6-hour-mix-nts-10-22nd-april-2021/?ref=howardgray.net) A real treat. Six and a half hours from across the spectrum of Black music, delivered by one of the very best, Mr. Theo Parrish. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2022/01/image-5.png) ### Middle: [Blur - Parklife](https://open.spotify.com/album/0YS25Dr3hMtMFlVTfuvzl4?si=2JrBhSx7Q5qE1CkP3orCew&ref=howardgray.net) London Loves... a trip to the dog track. This album is nearly 30(!) years old, but still sounds fresh to my cloth ears. ### Back: [Will Powers - Adventures In Success](https://open.spotify.com/track/4IlCLjsGXojHEkLO5hEPXz?si=7bfb71c32489405b&ref=howardgray.net) Discovered via Tim Sweeney's Beats in Space radio show, I think I’m going to make this the *Adventures…* anthem. --- # Footnotes *Other things I’ve been up to this past month...* - **Moving**: My work gear into the basement. Hoping to instill studio lab vibes. - **Mixing**: Music. Thanks to Murray for the lovely gift. My [first bit of DJ gear](https://www.pioneerdj.com/en-us/product/controller/ddj-400/black/overview/?ref=howardgray.net) in 8+ years is a reminder of a) how quickly technology can 10x in sophistication and accessibility, and b) that we all need to unlearn and relearn. - **Feeding**: Kai solid food. A new level of laundry and love. - **Facilitating**: A wonderful [off-site for 75 people](https://www.wavetable.net/project/wasserman-experiential-team-off-site?ref=howardgray.net) at Fotografiska in NYC. - **(Re)watching**: Season 3 of *[The Wire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FWire%5F%28season%5F3%29?ref=howardgray.net)*. For the fourth time. Don't judge me. --- ## **Thanks for reading...** If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the email, or ping me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net) or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardgray83?ref=howardgray.net) and tell me what resonated or what you’d add/remove/modify. If you want to support via a little one-off cash injection you can Venmo me (howardgray83) or send crypto (ooh!) at howardgray.eth. It all goes towards diapers, coffee, and sharing more ideas with good humans like you. ### Adventures... #60: Different Drums URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-60-count-me-in/ Last updated: 2021-12-02T16:20:27.000Z *Hello. I’m* [*Howard Gray*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*, and this is Adventures… : a monthly email digest offering you different lenses to better understand yourself, your work, and the world.* *Not yet a subscriber? You can* [*sign up here*](https://www.howardgray.net/adventure)*. If you want to unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom and you shall be rid of me.* *Ok, let’s jump in...* --- It's that time of year once more. Reflection, reconnection, and nostalgia are the festive flavours of the month. This year though, my memories are being projected not through a crisp lens, but multiple mirrors. The pandemic distortion field bends time and place in strange ways. *Did we go and do that this Summer... or last?* *I think I've been there before. Or have I?* *Hello, December. Did you kidnap November?* Maybe you know the feeling. Last week my mind pulled up a memory movie from (I think) 2013\. The French band Phoenix were playing the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London. Much of this movie remains on the cutting room floor, but one part remains in full Technicolor and Dolby surround sound. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/12/image-6.png) It wasn’t the chorus or the frontman; not the lights or the vibe. It was just one guy at the back. Phoenix's drummer Thomas Hedlund propelled the whole show from 20ft away, his kit sounding like it had been modded by a crack team of rocket scientists. Every kick drum thump urged the ancient venue's foundations one step closer to lunar take-off. The morning after my little daydream, I walked into the (inevitably French) coffee shop down the block. *1901* by Phoenix was playing at full frequency. The barista could only smile with bemusement as I excitedly babbled about the coincidence. That evening, I switched on Netflix to tranquilise myself after a long day of Zoomin'. Up popped *‘Count Me In’* \- a documentary on - yes - rock band drummers. C’est la vie. C’est la algorithm. ### Primal Instinct, Subtle Grooves Drumming is a strangely unglamorous part of the rock & roll life. Drummers are seen as the timekeepers, the metronomes. They draw the orthodox outlines so others get all fun of colouring in. Their kit is the heaviest to carry. At a gig they're nearly always stuck at the back, barely visible. And the spectre that is the drum machine continues to threaten their very existence. Why on earth would you become a drummer? Well, as *Count Me In* suggests, there’s a certain magic in this craft. The humble drum taps into some of our most primal instincts. Wood on taut skin. Drum circles around the fire. Signals reverberating through the air. Today's drummers are far more than metronomes. They bring grooves and grace notes (defined as *“a soft stroke of no time value”* \- what a wonderful concept). They can unleash a feral kind of energy. They tell their own stories, many more subtle than we'd think. There’s a certain hidden language beneath that pile of cymbals and toms. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/12/Screen-Shot-2021-12-02-at-10.25.26.png) Cast members of Count Me In - including members of Foo Fighters, Deep Purple, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Clash Besides, without the drummer’s rhythms, does much of modern music even work? Think about it - what if there were no drums in your favourite songs? Drummers definitely don’t do it for the glamour, though. Their motivations come from elsewhere. As the documentary shows, this tribe has a real sense of community within. Perhaps drummers are the [goalkeepers](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/01/15/hiring-look-out-for-the-goalkeeper/) of the music business: dependable but exposed; part of the team yet standing alone; going through stretches of monotony punctuated with flashes of intensity. You hardly ever notice them, but you certainly notice them when they're gone. The drummers are worth celebrating. And their approach can give fresh life to our own work - whichever groove we're riding. ### On the Level I’ll level with you - this edition nearly didn't make it. This month I came close to killing the newsletter completely. Despite being 60 editions deep each one feels harder to put together. There are so many newsletters out there, created by rockstars with their extraordinary abilities, crazy growth levels, and influential audiences. Why even bother? If this resonates when it comes to your own endeavours, the lore of the drummer offers a path forward. Don't worry about the spotlight; just focus on rhythm and groove. Enjoy adding those grace notes, even if hardly anyone notices. Remember it's ok to march to the beat of your own drum. And seek out a community of fellow travelers. I wonder if this newsletter is evolving into something more. Maybe it'll become a fully fledged band, or an informal series of jam sessions. Perhaps it's the just start of a circle. As Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart put it: > *"people gather... with others from the surrounding community. The drum circle offers equality because there is no head or tail. It includes people of all ages. The main objective is to share rhythm and get in tune with each other - and themselves..."* Whichever way it goes, one thing's for sure: I'd love to get your input on what would make the next chapter of these Adventures something you want to be a part of. [Just head to this link](https://forms.gle/yS9W6unkgY4sAeS69?ref=howardgray.net). It'll only take a minute or two. So, Count Me In. I’m still here. Whether this is your first or 60th (!) of these emails, thanks for being here. I'd love to Count You In for what's next. Howard --- # Bits from the Bureau *Links, kinks, and other high jinks. Here are the best things I’ve been digging into recently and wanted to share with you.* ## Question Time Your inbox is valuable space. I really want to make this worthy of it. Here's a quick survey to share your ideas and input. [Adventures... newsletter: end of 2021 reader surveyProviding your email address is required, but all information will of course be kept confidential. Also, please remember that if you subscribe to the newsletter, I have your email address already.![](https://ssl.gstatic.com/docs/forms/device_home/android_192.png)Google Docs![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/4GgcPSLHltPuxN34Rykj3kgCtL8kz1wxRCdEukNko8J6pSNKD7K1hUTH70Mv1ohJh2xcBXdDJbE=w1200-h630-p)](https://forms.gle/yS9W6unkgY4sAeS69?ref=howardgray.net) ## The Work ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/12/image-4.png) [Ten forecasts for the next decade](https://rishad.substack.com/p/ten-forecasts-for-the-next-decade-438): Strong recommend on this newsletter by Rishad Tobaccowala on all things future-facing. [Scuba, Panic, Empathy](https://sive.rs/dive?ref=howardgray.net): Another gem from the wonderful Derek Sivers - this time on why the imitation game matters [The power of saying no](https://timharford.com/2015/01/the-power-of-saying-no/?ref=howardgray.net): Economist Tim Harford on opportunity cost and why he bcc's his wife on emails. ## Culture ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/12/image-7.png) [The remarkable life of Virgil Abloh](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/the-remarkable-life-of-virgil-abloh?ref=howardgray.net): I admit when I first heard about Virgil Abloh I made the lazy assumption he was just another influencer type. Incorrect. Beyond his fashion exploits, I believe the most impressive work he did was in youth empowerment - very few others in a similar position have done so much in so little time. [Taylor Swift's re-recordings;](https://www.wsj.com/story/taylor-swifts-rerecording-of-red-is-reshaping-the-music-industry-ef6c7d66?ref=howardgray.net) Notable for both being in front of the paywall, and an apparent new form of visual storytelling which I believe is called a slide deck. [DJ JD](https://www.howardgray.net/2021/11/12/dj-jd/): A quick one from me on publishing under your own name, playing the long game, and why Side B matters. ## Creator Economy [The lack of meaning in the Creator Economy](https://nadiaeghbal.com/creator-economy?ref=howardgray.net): Lots of smart analogs in this one - from the "publish or perish" nature of academia, to the **nonprofit industrial complex.* Essential reading for anyone working in or around creative endeavours. [There is no "Creator Economy"](https://pennyfractions.ghost.io/there-is-no-creator-economy/?ref=howardgray.net): Is web3 the same but different, with those in powerful positions piling in and expecting the same eventual profits that came before? Probably. As you may have guessed, I'm a little skeptical on the whole creator economy complex. --- # **Jukebox** *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time)* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/12/image-5.png) ### Front: [Dear Rider](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1C09ASJINZjPomIrNPJFo6?si=8a879deaa9c2456f&ref=howardgray.net) This HBO documentary on Burton Snowboards founder Jake Burton has just dropped, along with an appropriately killer soundtrack. Music supervision for the film was provided by my long-time client and good pal Jonathan Hecht of [Venn Arts Music](https://vennarts-music.com/?ref=howardgray.net). ### Middle: [The Whitest Boy Alive](https://open.spotify.com/artist/1qcU8NabUQ5efQf8UGW6CV?si=b0LP7M0tSK-URtnYcWWTxw&ref=howardgray.net) I rediscovered these guys last week. Always great grooves, and in line with today's riff, it turns out they decided to drop the drum machines and go back to human-powered kicks and snares. ### Back: [Art Blakey & The Messengers - Just Coolin'](https://open.spotify.com/album/7EgjzSVwj5Y8L897m3UiUK?si=k-fLRaKwRbiSJvUN34rKjA&ref=howardgray.net) 'Count Me In' focuses on rock, but there's more than one hat-tip to the jazz drummers of the 40s and 50s. Here's arguably the greatest of them all - Art Blakey --- # **Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this past month... - **Crafting**: value propositions, website copy, and the like. Words are hard - **Eating**: a lot of [Tony's Chocolonely](https://tonyschocolonely.com/?ref=howardgray.net). Danger - **Designing**: a variety of workshops, off-sites and other bits. I love how creative this work can be - pure flow vibes - **Running**: and I need to stop. My knees can't take it anymore. But what next? Pilates? Climbing? Backgammon? --- ## **Thanks for reading...** If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the email, or ping me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net) or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardgray83?ref=howardgray.net) and tell me what resonated or what you’d add/remove/modify. If you want to support via a little one-off cash injection you can Venmo me (howardgray83) or send crypto (ooh!) at howardgray.eth. It all goes towards diapers, strong coffee, and sharing more ideas with good humans like you. ### DJ JD URL: https://www.howardgray.net/dj-jd/ Last updated: 2021-11-12T15:01:58.000Z One Saturday morning, a nightclub promoter received a demo tape in the mail. It didn't seem unusual at first. After all, he ran one of the most popular parties in the country, so there was no end of DJs trying to get booked. Listening to all the demos was a challenge for a couple of reasons. First, as they were DJ mixtapes they were always at least an hour long. Second, it was 1992\. These demos were recorded on cassette tapes. No quick scrolling or playlists available. That morning’s mixtape came from a complete unknown. All it had written on it was 'DJ JD’ and a phone number. As the promoter listened, he could quickly tell the tape was good, but it was only on Side B he knew he’d found something truly special. The blend between the first two tracks was extraordinary (if you’ve ever tried to mix vinyl records in time and in key you’ll know what I mean). But this moment only came 55 minutes into a 90 minute tape. He’d had to listen to all of Side A to get there. The promoter called DJ JD and booked him to play, but on one proviso: he had to perform under his real name. ‘DJ JD’ felt generic; it could have been any old DJ playing the illegal raves of the time. This gig was different. It’s safe to say the promoter’s hunch was a good one. 30 years later, John Digweed remains one of the world’s most talented, popular, and respected DJs. Why does this matter? A couple of reasons: First, publishing under your own name has its advantages. Second - and more importantly - it’s worth remembering the magic moments hardly ever show up right away. Whether we’re developing a project, identifying the talent of others, or even looking at our careers as a whole - it may not be until Side B that something special appears. What's on your mix tape? ### Adventures... #59: Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Dub URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-59-aint-talkin-bout-dub/ Last updated: 2021-11-04T15:06:41.000Z *Hello. I’m*[ *Howard Gray*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*, and this is Adventures… : a monthly email digest offering you different lenses to better understand yourself, your work, and the world.* *Not yet a subscriber? You can*[ *sign up here*](https://www.howardgray.net/adventure)*. If you want to unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom and you shall be rid of me.* *Ok, let’s jump in...* --- No one wants to admit they do it. The stigma is too strong. And what if someone caught you in the act?! But I reckon you’ve done it. Maybe you even love it. Perhaps, like me, you’re a closet narcissist. And you can’t resist that forbidden fruit. Yup, Googling your own name. My latest self-interested browse came up trumps. In the image results there's still no trace of me posing in an off-pink, off-the-shoulder 70s dress from the deepest confines of my Mum’s closet (full disclosure - I was 8, appearing in a school play as Greek goddess Aphrodite). Over in the main search results, I’ve recently overtaken a number of notable namesakes. There’s the illustrator who’s returned to the craft after many years as a doctor of genetics; some character from that TV show ‘Lost’; a sports nutritionist at a Texas university; and priest Howard Gray of Ohio, who died last year at the age of 92\. All those holy obituaries obviously provided some solid SEO gains. RIP. Top of the tree now sits my own website. My inner narcissist is flexing like a modern day Adonis with an internet addiction and tight hamstrings. There’s just one problem. At the right hand side of the page sits Google’s ‘Knowledge Panel’ - and someone else has taken up residence. It’s the Aussie-born record producer named Howard Gray. For several years I’ve received sporadic bits of this guy’s fan mail, or an erroneous requests to produce a random band’s new album. On top of this, if I try and ‘claim’ the Howard Gray Knowledge Panel I get a stark *computer says no*: ![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/7BXokCm4mknF66Gr_DKqqstmsej19jdRhStGc3CGAK4QRyehBJ9HtsTL4gvCukYMJsdUWERcd1OgeLAooUzo-TK_W_lo37vIFhqqpN3zea2hEKzL3eL9am99nIPDfBz6WyrC7HiM) Google won’t even entertain [www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/). Instead, the only link is to the home of 90s reggae/dub/dance band Apollo 440, of which my namesake nemesis is a founding member. To really rub my nose in it, I once paid hard currency for a 12” vinyl of their biggest tracks, the now-listening-back-it's-frankly-pretty-awful Van-Halen-sampling-pseudo-jungle hit ‘*Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Dub’*. I want my money back. ## Parrilla flex Speaking of narcissism, I’ve long tried to flex my Spanish language skills. However, my first date with Jacinta remains etched in my memory. We were at an Argentinian restaurant for a *parrilla*, aka a gargantuan spread of grilled meats. I smoothly ordered in Spanish, hoping to charm her with my suave approach to sweetbreads. The waiter looked baffled, then responded in perfect English. Jacinta raised an eyebrow. Flex denied. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/11/image.png) First date. Meanwhile, my Spanish tutor Ana tried to cajole me into watching DVDs of various Spanish and Argentinian movies, but even Almodovar classics felt like a slog. And after we moved to NYC, my Spanish plummeted from borderline B2 to barely bumbling. I blame delayed PTSD (the P is for Parrilla). Fast forward to today though, and international TV & film are all the rage. There’s *Money Heist*, *Parasite*, *The Bureau*, *Fauda* (strong recommend), and of course the irrepressible *Squid Game*. Productions that were at best niche successes are now breakout global hits posting crazy numbers. They’re becoming full-blown cultural memes, complete with merch lines, video games and sub-Reddits galore. This has inevitably stirred up a lot of commentary. A couple of weeks ago Scott Galloway emailed his apparent 1m+ subscribers with a whole riff on the topic called ‘Stream on ‘22’: > *“\[Netflix\] is now investing in original programming in 40 countries and has produced original scripted shows in 20 foreign languages. It’s spent more than $1 billion on Korean content alone. This year the company has either built or announced plans to build two production facilities in South Korea, offices in Canada, Italy, Colombia, and Turkey, a production hub in Sweden, and a full-service post-production facility in India. In each country, Netflix hires content executives to commission work from the local creative community.”* My best guess at why this shift seems to be happening so suddenly? We’re desperately seeking escapism; travel; windows into faraway lands and exciting cultures. We’re yearning for those slices of life. ## Texture But here’s the thing. In Brazil, 89% of viewers watched breakout French hit “Lupin” dubbed rather than with subtitles. And the number of US viewers watching dubbed shows has tripled in the past 3 years. I’ve found myself wresting with this. On the one hand, dubbing isn’t so bad. [Voice actors are talented performers](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-31/netflix-s-lupin-highlights-how-dubbed-shows-are-taking-off-globally?ref=howardgray.net) \- the level of production has improved a lot in the last few years, and they deserve success. Besides, subtitles can over-simplify; stripping away some of what’s spoken. And frankly, subtitles can be hard work. In month one of fatherhood I was so raddled with sleep deprivation I couldn’t spread cream cheese on a bagel, let alone watch a mind-bendingly complex Danish thriller with subtitles. On the other - and going beyond subtitles being an important accessibility option - there’s so much lost in translation when the original language is removed. The original actors’ craft is diminished. Those little inflections disappear. Body language paired with dialogue doesn’t connect. Local locations, food, and customs lose their lustre. This is the texture - and it’s vital. The loss of texture is also apparent in our still semi-cocooned Zoom world. A lot of stuff is just… well, flat. We don’t have world-class voice actors to come to the rescue. The texture’s gone. And we badly need it back. Texture doesn’t just elevate our experience when it comes to escapism. It elevates how we learn, and our ways of seeing the world. And when combined with pop culture, it’s incredibly powerful. Many people credit subtitled TV & movies with helping them learn foreign languages - especially when it comes to the subtleties of local lingo. But they’re not just for non-native tongues. My frequaintance Henry has a lovely project called [Turn on the Subtitles](https://turnonthesubtitles.org/?ref=howardgray.net). It’s fiendishly simple - kids learn to read more quickly and effectively if the subtitles are switched on by default. So Henry’s lobbying broadcasters and streamers to do just that. The project has really taken off in the UK and Europe, and they’re now starting to make moves here in the US. ## Stigma Up until the final draft of this piece, I was a staunch subtitler. But maybe I was too hasty to say *I Ain’t Talkin' 'Bout Dub*. Because the exciting thing here is we can have both. There's a convergence of mediums; of local and global; text and audio; [hot and cool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding%5FMedia?ref=howardgray.net). There’s scope to create accessible and engaging content and experiences of all flavours - and to encourage people to choose which way *they* want to go. There’s a new era of Educational Entertainment and Entertaining Education - both capital and lowercase in style. A new wave of *Edutainment*. The stigmas are disappearing. Just don’t Google your name *too* often. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s on your mind, screen, plate or radar right now. Just hit reply. Howard PS. The [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) team and I are working on a trends report + workshop series called ‘Edutainment 3.0’. We’re very excited about it. [Find out more >](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nl2yq9xizOUMaeVO6ekGNqmH1cSaQjrbmDAq-p8KR3k/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net) --- # Bits from the Bureau *Links, kinks, and other high jinks. Here are the best things I’ve been digging into recently and wanted to share with you.* ## From last time Last month’s edition took a dive into mimetic desire, through the lens of none other than cult movie classic Trainspotting. [Here’s a wonderful behind the scenes photo essay >](https://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2021/oct/25/trainspotting-behind-the-scenes-danny-boyle-ewan-mcgregor-irvine-welsh-harvey-weinstein?ref=howardgray.net) In the replies: *“Interesting thinking about desire imitation from the Courage to Be Disliked/Adler angle of all problems being interpersonal/comparison problems. Desires and our wants are driven by others - just like our misery, insecurities, pain etc. #balance”* ## The Work [**The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them**](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/business/gen-z-workplace-culture.html?ref=howardgray.net#commentsContainer): The article is worth a read, but the comments section is where you’ll find the real action. There’s ageism. Tragic 30 somethings worrying about being cool (ummm....). Gen Z accused of not being able to see the world from multiple perspectives, and using social media to weaponise their very specific worldview (then again, how many of us could see the world clearly from multiple angles when we were 19? Yup - thought so.). Anyway, if you can get beyond the paywall then dive in - it’s an interesting one. [**Career Hot Streaks**](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/hot-streaks-in-your-career-dont-happen-by-accident/620514/?ref=howardgray.net): Nor reserved for the geniuses, nor even those who focus intently on one thing. Instead, it’s a combination of wide exploration followed by some deep exploitation (in the most positive sense of the word). [**Web3’s freedom fallacy**](https://ez.substack.com/p/the-webs-freedom-fallacy): Perhaps you’ve been poking around Web3, DAOS, NFTs, Blockchains, and Metaverses. Or perhaps not. Either way, there’s a ton of potential, hyperbole, cash, confusion, and opportunity. A heady mix indeed. This post’s reality check is much-needed. Pair with [this takedown](https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/naval-ravikant-and-chris-dixon-didnt-explain-any-web3-use-cases-affc45ec3c60?ref=howardgray.net) of Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon’s podcast talking up web3\. (Note: I am working on a couple of web3 projects right now…if you want to exchange notes let me know) ## Entrepreneurial Endeavours [**Teensy Magazine**](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/esmeneubert/teensy?ref=howardgray.net): A project from my local area. Teensy is a 32-page mini magazine, spotlighting the best of the local neighborhood, with stories promoting small businesses, all shared from teens’ perspective. This reminds me of [The $1k Challenge](https://postindustrialdesign.school/teach-the-1k/?ref=howardgray.net) my pals Gary and Christina ran at SVA here in New York. The world needs more local entrepreneurial projects with a focus on storytelling... [**Start Up Song**](https://youtu.be/OxJpZtp2ItE?ref=howardgray.net): Product Marketing at its best. Harking back to the days of Jobs & Woz in the garage, and using constraints for creativity. Here’s AG Cook making a song from Apple system sounds. ## Culture [**The Problem with the 9.9%**](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22673605/upper-middle-class-meritocracy-matthew-stewart?ref=howardgray.net): Why America’s upper-middle class works more, optimizes their kids, and is miserable. While this doesn’t feel solely specific to the US, there are certain societal constructs here that seem to amplify it like nowhere else... [**The Beatles - Get Back**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auta2lagtw4&ref=howardgray.net): I’m not sure why all this footage was hanging around for 50 years, but hey (jude). Here’s the trailer to an upcoming documentary that looks appropriately fab. --- # **Jukebox** *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time)* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/11/image-1.png) ### **Front:** [**Yard Act**](https://yardact.bandcamp.com/?ref=howardgray.net) Picking up the mantle left by The Fall, Yard Act are one of those bands that can only really come out of Northern England. Their debut album is out in January, with a big tour to boot. ### **Middle:**[](https://amerigomusic.com/2021/09/10/fela-soul-more-than-u-know-10th-anniversary-remix/?ref=howardgray.net)[**Wild Beasts - Two Dancers**](https://open.spotify.com/album/0EHUUM82UcNrDLWKh7jN8U?si=3VdwkMRbTt-dZGI%5FsVwMIQ&ref=howardgray.net) Now sadly no more, Wild Beasts are one of my very favourite bands. Here’s what most people believe to be their finest album, Two Dancers. One for the ages, and great production too. ### **Back:** [Sasha & John Digweed - Northern Exposure](https://soundcloud.com/theclassicmixcdseries/northern-exposure-1-1?ref=howardgray.net) I was going to share Sasha's 1995 Essential Mix, but it's full-tilt (ok, [here it is](https://soundcloud.com/mauricio-julian-ramos-diaz/sasha-essential-mix-21-05-1995-or-1995-05-21?ref=howardgray.net) anyway). A more appropriate pairing is the stylish and refined Northern Exposure mix albums alongside John Digweed. Still sounding fresh 26(!) years later. --- # **Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this past month... - **Building**: a very hefty trends report on Edutainment 3.0\. Holla if you want to take a look - **Streaming**: some live sessions on YouTube and LinkedIn. This week: creating a 90 min workshop using 5 pieces of paper and a marker pen. - **Switching**: context. A lot. - **Awaiting**: my parents’ arrival in NYC next week. It’s the first time we’ve seen each other in nearly 2 years. I hope they won’t be disappointed. I should probably get a haircut --- ## **Thanks for reading...** If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the email, or ping me on Twitter or LinkedIn and tell me what resonated or what you’d add/remove/modify. If you want to support via a little one-off cash injection you can Venmo me (howardgray83) or send crypto at howardgray.eth (ooh!). It all goes towards diapers and strong coffee. Want to work together? There are a few ways -[ start here >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) *Adventures…* is brought to you from the desk of[ Howard Gray](https://www.howardgray.net/adventure/adventures-58-for-what-you-dream-of/www.howardgray.net) ### The writer's Secret Service URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-writers-secret-service/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:33:07.000Z There’s been a lot of anticipation about a new movie featuring a certain Mr. Bond. But Bond’s original creator wasn’t so excited. Twelve of the Bond movies have come from books written by Ian Fleming. They likes of Goldfinger, Casino Royale, and From Russia With Love are bonafide classics. Here’s the thing, though: Fleming didn’t seem to like writing them very much. To get past the blocker, he pursued a different kind of mission: he took a trip to a hotel. The mission’s most important element was finding the perfect hotel. It could not be nice. It had to be decent, but no more. The location of the hotel had to be somewhere a little worse still; a place he really didn’t want to spend time in. No temptations of sightseeing, beaches, culture, or vices. Bond’s haunts of Monte Carlo penthouses and 5\* resorts in the Caribbean were absolutely off limits. Why do this? Fleming would check into the hotel for two weeks, with just one objective: to write the book. As there was so little else that appealed, he may as well write... right? Today, his Bond books have sold over 90m copies - and counting. A friend of mine has also been blocked. Last week he took on the same mission as Fleming. At first, nothing. But after 3 hours in the lobby of this reasonable - but not wonderful - hotel, the words were flying off the page. A creative block can feel very real, but hopefully this little riff has left you stirred rather than shaken. See you in the lobby. PS. I heard the Ian Fleming story via Tim Ferris. Who heard it from Neil Gaiman. Who presumably heard it from someone else. A good reminder that stories travel - and that the story makers can benefit from doing so too. ### Adventures... #58: For what you dream of URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-58-for-what-you-dream-of/ Last updated: 2021-10-07T14:03:20.000Z *Hello. I’m [Howard Gray](https://www.howardgray.net/), and this is Adventures… : a monthly email digest offering you different lenses to better understand yourself, your work, and the world.* *Not yet a subscriber? You can [sign up here](https://www.howardgray.net/adventure). If you want to unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom. One and done, I’ll be out of your life.* *Still here? Marvelous. Let’s get into it…* --- Think back to your adolescence. There was probably a movie you weren’t supposed to watch, but something about it just jumped out at you. It was likely shocking; terrifying; and probably a little controversial. Naturally you couldn’t resist. Perhaps it was *Alien. Saw. The Terminator.* Or one of those mid 00s Matthew McConaughey romcoms. I remember mine. Late one night I snuck downstairs, hoping the rickety old VHS recorder would not let me down. *Trainspotting* was about to make its TV debut. For the uninitiated, Trainspotting follows the story of heroin addict Renton and his friends: fellow users Sick Boy and Spud; footballer Tommy Mackenzie; and professional psychopath Francis Begbie. Renton is trying to pull himself out of the rabbithole and get clean, but his friends - and himself - inevitably get in the way. After eventually escaping to an apartment in London he’s tracked down by the fearsome Begbie, who installs himself as Renton’s rent-free flatmate. It’s from these dingy lodgings that [Begbie wins big on a horse racing bet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IyO28IVUKE&ref=howardgray.net). To celebrate, the duo hit a nightclub. The nightclub scene is still burned into the VHS recorder of my mind. The track playing in the club was one of the touchpoints that sent me deep into a musical rabbithole. I began collating everything around this stuff I possibly could: magazines, flyers, records, and more. But I was 14\. I couldn’t get into nightclubs. No one else at school seemed to have any interest in this weird music I was listening to. Some of them were into electronic music, sure - but not like *this*. Instead, I forged my own path. At least I thought I did. ## Desire If you’re subscribed to this newsletter it’s a fair bet you’re interested in forging your own path - whether it’s in your career, your creative output, or through the change you’re looking to make in the world. There’s a strong sense of identity, individuality, and expression. We know what we desire. A French philosopher thinks otherwise. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/10/image.png) Not Begbie. Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire suggests humans are imitative creatures: all human desire is based on the desire of others. > *“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”* The most obvious example of this is in our purchases. Did you *really* want to buy that new iPhone? More likely it was a decision based on the desire of others. Even if you tell yourself you bought it because of its quality or feature set, the main reason you think this is because other people do. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge, but we’re all wired this way. ## Paths This doesn’t just show up with material goods. In nature, a [desire path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire%5Fpath?ref=howardgray.net) represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. These emerge as shortcuts where constructed paths take a circuitous route, have gaps, or are non-existent. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/10/image-1.png) image: Scott Berkun You’ll see desire paths when you take a walk in the woods, take a wander through the city, or even use a social media platform. Even if you think you’re making our own decisions and following your own desires, you’ll often follow the most easily navigable route and go where others have already trodden. And this is compounded as the desire paths get stronger over time. ## Strength + Intensity Here’s the real kicker of Girard’s theory: **mimetic desire gets more intense the more connected we are.** Spend 30 seconds on Facebook with this in mind and you’ll see the entire platform is built around mimetic desire. Peter Thiel, the first investor in Facebook, has long been a subscriber to the theory. (Which begs the question: should you be more scared of Francis Begbie or Facebook?) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/10/image-2.png) Bored Apes on OpenSea To see mimetic desire at its most intense, it’s worth taking a look at the burgeoning world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Bored Apes and Crypto Punks are selling for millions. Bitcoin’s value has increased at a dizzying rate over the past year. This combination of global accessibility, a world more connected than ever before, plus plenty of hype and FOMO = mimetic desire in overdrive. > *We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.* But this cuts both ways. Girard suggested mimetic desire leads to natural rivalry and eventually to scapegoating. He called this the scapegoat mechanism: societies unify their imitative desires around the destruction of a collectively agreed-upon scapegoat. This is often helpful at first - having a common frustration or barrier to push up against (e.g. Bitcoin vs opaque and expensive traditional banks) - but can quick devolve into far more intense and pernicious stuff (see Facebook’s various issues). It’s the same as those desire paths you’ll see in the woods - they start out beneficial, but over time make an increasingly adverse impact on the environment around them. ## Stories, Scarcity, and Scapegoats So, desire paths get stronger the more we follow them. Mimetic desire gets more intense the more connected we are. And over time, we find a scapegoat. All of this is based on stories - especially stories based on scarcity. These kinds of stories can have massive value: the movie you’re not allowed to watch; the nightclub you can’t get into; the digital art that’s strictly limited edition. This throws up some uncomfortable questions: - Do you really desire that creative outlet, or is it based on the desires of others? - Is your unique path in fact well-trodden? - For what you dream of? Maybe it’s not your own. This idea of our desires being based on those of others can feel confusing and disempowering. But there’s another way to look at it. If others have the same dream as us, we’re presented with opportunity. There are paths for us to forge together: whether it's a brand new desire path; or carefully clearing the existing paths for those who follow. And there are plenty of stories to tell. The choice is yours. At least I think it is. Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear what's got your attention and desire right now. Really. Just hit reply. Howard --- # Bits from the Bureau Links, kinks, and other high jinks. ## The Work ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/10/image-3.png) [**The Jigsaw of Independence**](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiJiILfs7jzAhVnMlkFHZl1BHgQFnoECAMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftomcritchlow.com%2F2021%2F09%2F09%2Fjigsaw%2F&usg=AOvVaw04HYWmmwU7d%5FHRQYTjnkPS): Here a top-notch bit from my pal Tom Critchlow: how to put together an independent life without it all falling apart [**The alternative advisory board**](https://www.howardgray.net/from-zero/the-advisory-board/): I've started sending monthly memos to a handful of trusted people. It's been very helpful already. Let me know if you want the template for yourself [**What's the Story?**](https://www.howardgray.net/the-how-to/live-at-cmx-summit-2021/): Here's my talk from CMX Summit on how to craft better stories [**How to design and develop a conference presentation**](https://www.howardgray.net/2021/09/20/how-to-design-and-develop-a-conference-presentation/): And here's a detailed breakdown how I built it ## Creator Economy [**Me on the 'Reimagine Work' podcast**](https://think-boundless.com/podcast/?ref=howardgray.net): Ok, last one featuring my face and voice, promise. I was on Paul Millerd's 'Reimagine Work' podcast talking about navigating fatherhood, the facade of the creator economy, and financial tension [**Wolves Records**](https://www.wolves.co.uk/news/club/20210920-wolves-launch-music-label-wolves-records/?ref=howardgray.net): Football (soccer) team Wolves launch a record label. More evidence of football becoming primarily an entertainment medium, and that the convergence continues [**The world's biggest sports journalist**](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/sports/soccer/ibai-llanos-lionel-messi.html?ref=howardgray.net): Is on Twitch. Obviously ## Culture [**Michaela Coel at the Emmys**](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/michaela-coel-emmys-2021/620130/?ref=howardgray.net): Some wonderful advice aimed at writers, but something all of us could probably do with a little more of [**We can make it work**](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/we-can-make-it-work/amp?ref=howardgray.net): A skewering of Hollywood machinations from Billions co-creator Brian Koppelman ## Innovation [**Baka Women play the water drums**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNzX5t5S4Ls&ref=howardgray.net): I expect to see this appear as a cornerstone of next year's 'innovation' presentations [](https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/spotify-sleep-music-playlists-lady-gaga-1223911/?ref=howardgray.net)[**Spotify 'rain' tracks out-earn Lady Gaga**](https://think-boundless.com/podcast/?ref=howardgray.net): Speaking of water, this Dutch label are making it rain. I just wish it was the Baka Women getting the royalties [**The world's first carbon neutral soccer club**](https://reasonstobecheerful.world/meet-the-worlds-first-carbon-neutral-soccer-club?ref=howardgray.net): I'm still unsure whether to use 'football' or 'soccer'. Anyway, here's Forest Green Rovers. Their name is also very on-brand --- # Jukebox *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time)* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/10/image-4.png) ### Front: [Snapped Ankles](https://shop.snappedankles.com/album/four-album-bundle?ref=howardgray.net) My Dad was at the lovely Green Man Festival a few weeks ago. Here's one of his top recommendations - the wonderfully named Snapped Ankles ### Middle: [Fela Soul](https://amerigomusic.com/2021/09/10/fela-soul-more-than-u-know-10th-anniversary-remix/?ref=howardgray.net) Fela Kuti + De La Soul? Yes, indeed. Here's [an album](https://amerigo.bandcamp.com/album/fela-soul-deluxe-edition?ref=howardgray.net) blending the creativity of afrobeat legend Fela Kuti and rap pioneers De La Soul. Thanks for Fer for sending this my way ### Back: [Trainspotting - motion picture soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/74XaODExRivNAFEHhXNNUN?si=35f4c4e51cc64078&ref=howardgray.net) What else? If there's a better contemporary movie soundtrack out there, I need to hear it --- # Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this past month... - Sleeping: more than 3 hours a night - Applying: for passports, visa appointments, and other bureaucratic requirements - Focusing: a painful thing for me to do, but I'm starting to enjoy it (mostly) - Cooking: with new pans. A delight --- ## Thanks for reading... If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the e-mail, or ping me on Twitter or LinkedIn and tell me what resonated or what you’d add/remove/modify. If you want to support via a little one-off cash injection you can Venmo me (howardgray83) or send crypto at howardgray.eth. Want to work together? There are a few ways - [start here >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) *Adventures…* is brought to you from the desk of [Howard Gray](www.howardgray.net). ### Looking for the light switch URL: https://www.howardgray.net/looking-for-the-lightswitch/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:05:27.000Z At 15, I started going off the rails: month-long detentions; school suspensions; brushes with the police. Going into my final year of school, things weren’t looking great. My parents were exasperated. But then, something changed - almost overnight. I never became a model student, but I suddenly seemed to get my act together. It was weird. Even now, my Mum says it was like a light switch went off. Teenage angst perhaps? I’m not so sure. Because throughout our journeys we might spend time in unlit rooms. And right now, a lot of us are finding ourselves there. Perhaps we’re groping for the light switch. Or we’re getting a little tired of the search. Maybe we feel we’re just shouting into the darkness. Switching these lights on for ourselves can be really tough. But switching them on others? Far less so. There are rooms you know well. Whether it’s a flickering torch, a dusty desk lamp, or a grand chandelier - you can probably help their occupants find a light switch. Last week I was chatting with my Mum about that time. Suddenly, she realized when the light switch went off. It was immediately after the first semi-legal forest rave I organised. And just like that, another light switch went off - for both of us. ### 5 baby steps URL: https://www.howardgray.net/5-baby-steps/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:27:04.000Z My wife just caught me lost in my phone while our baby son was lying a few feet away. She was not happy. “If you’re going to do anything on your phone, watch the video I sent you last night”. Sheepishly, I obeyed. I’m glad I did. 7-year-old Molly’s TED talk on brain development in babies and toddlers is a delight. But it’s not just for distracted Dads. Molly lists out 5 things babies need for good brain development: 1\. Connecting 2\. Talking 3\. Playing 4\. A healthy home 5\. Community She continues: “Each time you talk to us, play with us, make us laugh, it not only builds and strengthens our relationships and mental health, it actually teaches us some of the most important life skills…” Molly is talking about young kids, of course. But if the last 18 months have taught us anything, it’s that all this is vital to us adults too. I'm no scientist, but perhaps it’s worth asking yourself which of these 5 you could improve today - even if it's just a tiny, tiny bit? As you may have guessed, today I'm focused on number 4\. I'm off to serenade the baby with my unique renditions of hits by Jimi Hendrix, Prince, and Celine Dion. We'll see if my wife needs to intervene again. PS. Yes, you read that correctly. This is a 7 year old doing a TED talk. ### How to design and develop a conference presentation - and why it pays to think like a DJ URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-design-and-develop-a-conference-presentation/ Last updated: 2021-09-20T13:59:27.000Z ### *A complete step-by-step breakdown of how I built (and booked) a session at a globally-renowned conference* A couple of weeks ago I spoke at CMX Summit, running a session on the power of storytelling. Afterwards, I was exhausted but elated: there were over 300 people in the room; the live chat fizzed with activity; and my Twitter mentions went a little wild. According to a bunch of the attendees, TED should be booking me to speak (I assume they mean the conference, rather than Ted Lasso at AFC Richmond - although frankly I’m down for either). But beyond my not-so-humblebrag, I was struck by something far more important. A couple of people had asked how I’d gone about building this workshop/keynote hybrid. While there are plenty of people talking about their speaking gigs, I realized there’s remarkably little shared about how the presentations themselves come together. So, in appropriately meta style, here’s the full story of how I made this story session. And to add one more meta layer, this post follows the same story structure I shared in the session itself. So you can easily apply it to your own projects, I’ve split the process into 11 bitesize parts (plus a bonus): 1. **Topic & Outcomes** 2. **Audience** 3. **Purpose** 4. **Structure** 5. **Collating** 6. **Repetition** 7. **Emotion** 8. **Contrast** 9. **Novelty** 10. **Story Type** 11. **Final Finesse** 12. **Bonus: Landing the gig** Let’s get into it. *Note: you can check out the full session I delivered* [*here*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJCiXWBhea0&list=PLUC9Vz9R3tpJnbxqHs5axXZbahbGUlBB8&index=4&ref=howardgray.net) --- ## 1\. Topic & Outcomes Ok, you may be rolling your eyes that we’re starting with something so basic, but hear me out. Solid foundational elements are crucial: if they’re weak or vague, everything else will follow suit. ### Topic Let’s begin with our topic. Some speakers will get asked to talk about a very specific topic; others can speak about anything they like because of their reputation or status. I find somewhere in the middle is a nice place to be: the organizers want you because of a certain expertise you possess, but there’s a conversation to have around the specifics of what the audience will find most valuable. This was the case for me with CMX. We’d already established the overarching topic was storytelling, but knew it was very broad. Luckily, the CMX team were very in tune with their audience, and sent me some ideas, themes and challenges their community were most interested in (e.g. *“a framework for how they can hone their community's story”).* Having primers like these are helpful to take a broad topic (Storytelling, Fly Fishing, Digital Music Rights, etc.) into something more specific. After we spent some time clarifying the primers, it was on to the next two steps: Outcomes; and a Title & Tagline. ### Outcomes It may seem counterintuitive to do outcomes before a title, but I find this order much easier to tackle. Crafting outcomes deserves an entire post to itself (especially as so many outcomes listed on conference programming are awful), but here’s one easy and effective way to surface an outcome. Complete this sentence - **“after this session you’ll be able to…”** \- with an action verb (make, see, design, cook, etc.) and a tangible ‘thing’. I usually aim for 3 outcomes for one session. Here’s an example: ### *After this session you’ll be able to use the 5-part story spine to tell any story you like.* You might be wondering if using outcomes like this applies to a keynote talk as well as a workshop. To paraphrase Seth Godin (who happened to be the headline speaker at CMX Summit) - the true purpose of a talk is to create an emotional shift in the audience; a change of state. It’s not the same as a workshop, which have very clear outcomes to enable work and learning to occur in real time. However, every type of presentation should give the audience *something*. I recommend doing this exercise no matter what format you’re delivering. If nothing else, it’ll make your thinking sharper and save you going down rabbit holes further into the design process (more on that later). Those primers I mentioned in the previous made it easy to create some strong outcomes. All the more reasons to get those primers ahead of time. ### Title & Tagline From the outcomes, I could then surface a nice title and tagline. I kept my title really simple, with a very light pop culture reference. ### *“What’s the Story?”* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/image-6.png) pro tip: be careful not to lean too heavily on cultural references - not everyone will know them, and this doesn't create an inclusive environment The tagline was basically a composite of the juiciest prompts and outcomes. It effectively a value proposition: ### *“How to craft compelling stories that inspire and engage your community”* A little vanilla maybe, but I reckoned it would cut through well with an audience being served up a lot of content to choose from. But wait! What of that audience? Before setting the topic and outcomes in stone, it was worth taking a step back to make sure what I’d done so far made sense. --- ## 2\. Audience I believe a lot of speakers lose sight of this next point. Just like touring DJs, a lot of them are out on the road, doing the gigs, special guest for one night only. The audience is there to see them perform, right? All you gotta do is roll up on stage and crush it. Perhaps, but every audience is unique. They have different life experiences. They come from a range of cultures. They have varying expectations and knowledge levels. Or, they may have just stumbled into your gig by accident... or worse still, been forced into it attending by their friends/colleagues/boss. It’s worth investing some time in understanding who’s going to be in the room. After all, people are (hopefully) investing their time, energy, and often money to be with us. Taking some time to think of them is the least we can do. *Note: the exception to this is when you're rocking an arena of 10,000 people. The vast majority just want to hear the greatest hits - but even then it helps to know which hits matter most.* Most conference organizers - even those with very broad range of attendees - know their crowd. It’s worth asking some questions to get a sense of who’s likely to show up for your session. Here are a few starters. - **Have they been to the conference before?** - **Where are they based?** - **Which other speakers will they be likely to check out?** - **Are they coming from a company or attending individually?** This is easy stuff, but it’s so easy to skip. Don’t skip it. Try and get at least two simple personas of who's going to be in the room. The top-line on my two personas were senior community managers working with senior stakeholders, and emerging community builders working in creative startup environments. Next was honing in on what this thing was actually for. --- ## 3\. Purpose Every talk, workshop, or story has a purpose. Yup, even the most zany and obscure ones. Here’s a question to ask yourself: *What is the purpose of my session?* This simple question is very easy to get tripped up on. Not the purpose for *me*. What’s purpose for *them?* What are they seeking? And what would tell me the session was meeting that purpose? While you may want to do a whole [Jobs to be Done](https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done?ref=howardgray.net) analysis here, I found the following steps put me in good shape: 1. **Choose a couple of key audience personas** 2. **Pick out a couple of the primers you had from the first step (i.e. their desires or goals)** 3. **Cross-check them against the outcomes** 4. **Find a core theme** 5. **Surface a story type** You may want a couple of go-rounds on steps 1-3, but based on the work already done these should be pretty straightforward. For step 4, I went with this: *Rising community builders within rapidly-changing companies want to sharpen their storytelling skills so they can communicate the value of their community to senior stakeholders.* And for step 5, I referenced these 7 story types: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021.jpg) This final step isn’t essential, but I often find it helpful as a tool. *Was this session a story of Rebirth, of a Quest, of Overcoming the Monster?* *Who was the hero?* *What conflict was being overcome?* Again, you can go crazy here and make storyboards and all kinds of stuff, but just having an eye on the key parts of the story within your session can be hugely valuable. This story? It was a Quest. The hero? Not the attendees, but their communities The attendees’ role was instead as guides. And the conflict? I reckoned it was in others not seeing the power and magic within these communities. Our session would give them some tools they could use right away to help them wield this power and weave the magic… and it would instill the confidence to use them. The session purpose was in place! --- ## 4\. Structure So I had some outcomes. I had a decent feel for who was going to be in the room, and what they were seeking to get from our hour together. Now I needed to build the thing. The next step was to take the outcomes and create a structure for a 1 hour session. I did this as follows: - **Create a 5-part plan** - **Build a 1 pager** - **Add timings** - **Construct supporting pillars** - **Map back to outcomes** ### Create a 5-part plan There are a bunch of ways to define structure. For this one, I deferred to the late, great Ken Robinson. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-1-.jpg) Ken also thought of his hugely popular keynote talks being like the set list of a DJ. More on that later. Here’s my basic structure: - **Intro** - **Why stories matter** - **Story types** - **Building our own** - **Conclusion** There was my personal intro, plus some housekeeping. After that was some content on why the audience should care, with some proof. Then some knowledge transfer, followed by a hands-on section to apply that knowledge to their own project. Lastly, I’d sum up everything we’d done. Sweet. ### Build a 1-pager I fleshed this out as a 1-page Google Doc, integrating both the outcomes and also a couple of those original primers from the CMX team. The third part (“Building our own”) was especially important because this session was being billed as a workshop. It had to have interactivity, and given the entire session was only an 1 hour with an audience I hadn’t met before, I needed to allow as much space and time as possible for this section. I knew from previously running large-scale workshops that Breakout Rooms, while I love them, could be a bit of a mess. If 10 people showed up it’d be fine, but if 100, 200 or 500 people appeared, I’d be in real trouble, and it would be really hard to hit the outcomes. Instead, I opted for the workshop element being single player - a step-by-step ‘build your own’ scenario using a Google Doc or virtual whiteboard tool. ### Add timings Already, the workshop requirement gave me constraints on the other bits. I could see pretty quickly I’d need a timing plan along the lines of: - **Intro (10)** - **Why stories matter (10)** - **Story types (10)** - **Building our own (20)** - **Conclusion (10)** ### Construct supporting Pillars Next, I added a couple of supporting pillars underneath each of my 5 parts. Very quickly a structure emerged. Here it is (less the outcomes and primers so it’s easier to read): - **Intro (10)**: Host intro, HG intro, Agenda / Learning Outcomes - **Why stories matter (10)**: Why you should care, History of stories - **Story types (10):** 7 types w/ examples - **Building our own (20)**: Workshop setup, Workshop session - **Conclusion (10)**: Tips & Resources, Summary / CTA ### Map back to outcomes Finally, I cross-checked the outcomes and primers against the plan. Could I hit the outcomes? I reckoned I could, but the timing plan felt tight. I wanted at least 25 minutes for the workshop part. Perhaps I could nudge a couple of pieces into the workshop section somehow. But I wasn’t yet sure how, so I held this back for later. You may be thinking this plan looks loose. You’d be right. I’ve learned the hard way that adding too much structure - especially early on - makes things very rigid and difficult to pull apart later. Best to keep some flex. With this 1 pager in place, I was ready to start collating. --- ## 5\. Collating Perhaps you’ve noticed there is still zero content in place for the session. We’ve held back for good reason, but now is the time to start adding it. This is also where it pays to think like a DJ. The best DJs aren’t just selectors: they’re collectors and collators. The same is true for building talks and workshops. We want to collate and collect, so we can then curate, select, and play. ![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1615621734603-04c156e22380?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDV8fHJlY29yZCUyMHN0b3JlfGVufDB8fHx8MTYzMTg5MjU4OA&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=2000) Collector, Selector. Photo by [Sean Benesh](https://unsplash.com/@seanbenesh?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit) For me, this has 4 phases: - **Segments** - **Vaults** - **Links** - **Discovery** ### Segments I wasn’t coming at this session completely cold - after all, they probably wouldn’t have booked me if I had zero pedigree in the topic. On the other hand, I’m not the kind of (information) DJ who wants to play the same set every time. I find a happy balance comes by taking a similar approach to some DJs I know. Segments are existing sequences of connected content that can be mapped into the next gig. First I grabbed a few segments from some semi-related decks on networks and brand positioning and pasted them into a fresh “What’s The Story?” deck. Next, I dug into my most relevant bit: a talk called "Tall Stories". I knew this had some good segments in it, particularly around ‘Why Stories Matter’. I loaded up the Tall Stories deck, and again grabbed a bunch of the slides and pasted them into the “What’s The Story?” deck. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/Screen-Shot-2021-09-17-at-11.34.06.png) Throughout this stage I deliberately took more than I needed and included some stuff that was very unlikely to make the cut. To mix music and movie metaphors, it’s much better to have too much raw footage than not enough. *Note: As with many types of work, if you look back 6 months and don’t feel a little embarrassed, you’re not growing enough. This definitely applies to keynotes and workshops. The Tall Stories deck was 2 years old and definitely not fit for purpose today - but it still had valuable segments that I could come back to and remix.* With a handful of segments, the set was starting to build. But there was still plenty to do. ### Vaults Next was going through my vaults. A DJ would treat these as individual tracks, or even just loops and samples. For me, this was all the little story bits woven within previous courses and talks on other topics. And then there were other resources stashed in Google Drive folders, PDFs on my desktop, and screengrabs and lists in my Notion space. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/Screen-Shot-2021-09-17-at-11.25.43.png) My Storytelling stash within my Notion workspace Unfortunately I’m not the best at organizing all this cleanly, so the vaults step usually takes a while. Throughout this stage, I was again very liberal with decision making. Flipping between the Google Doc one pager, the material, and the destination deck, I chopped, grabbed, and pasted all manner of stuff into the deck. The only structure in the deck itself were brightly colored title slides to easily mark out each of my three main sections. After going through the Vaults, I ventured into Links. ### Links Links were resources I knew were interesting, but hadn’t dug into much before. For a DJ these are tracks they’ve listened to before, or at least been tipped off about, but haven’t yet committed to. Again, my links were stored in a variety of places, so this meant a fair bit of time investment on reading, absorbing, citing, pasting, etc. (note to self: hire a productivity consultant). It’s worth mentioning there’s a fine line between Links and the next step of Discovery. I tried to focus on getting the best of the links I already had, and held back on clicking out into rabbit holes. The new, as-yet-unknown resources were saved for the final phase. ### Discovery The final step has two pieces to it: open exploration, and focused research. First, I go out exploring - the aforementioned rabbit holes, followed by trawling Twitter, Are.na, Pinterest, and whatever other portals feel relevant for the topic at hand. Once I have a bunch of interesting stuff, I’ll review what I’ve got to see where there are holes or elements that need more fleshing out. I may dig into some science behind a concept, or find a counter example to the one I’m sharing. This is the equivalent of a DJ going deep into the back catalogue of an artist they’ve just discovered, or learning about a certain production or mixing technique. Depending on the topic, this can of course be a big undertaking. For this session, the first two steps had yielded a really strong set of material, so my Links and Discovery steps were relatively short. *Note: Every workshop has a [Multiplier Effect](https://www.howardgray.net/the-how-to/time-and-magic-how-to-calculate-the-time-to-create-a-workshop/) You want to be careful here. This session was more like a keynote and very content-heavy, so the multiplier I share in that post are a bit light. I spent about 40 hours on design in total.* Phew. Now I had a ton of stuff in place, and a deck bursting at the seams. To sculpt this into a production-ready session, it was time to do something a little counter intuitive: repeat myself. --- ## 6\. Repetition We can’t expect people to grab everything right away. Attention is fragmented, after all. To get our message across, repetition matters. But obviously we can’t repeat *everything* \- we’d run out of time and ironically we’d lose people’s attention too. What to do? Here’s a 4 step process I use to figure out what to repeat. - **Set** - **Subtract** - **Repeat** - **Flow** ### Set First, I wanted to really nail down the key stuff. Which elements just HAD to stay? What was critical to the story I was trying to tell here? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-3-.jpg) The workshop part was critical, so the step-by-step for that had to stay in. Given how importance this section was, I began fleshing out the worksheet for the workshop element. Miro or similar felt fun, but given the group size, time constraints and wanting to design for best possible accessibility, I went for a good old Google Doc. (I’m not going into workshop design in detail here - search my other posts for a bunch of resources on that topic) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/Screen-Shot-2021-09-17-at-11.32.38.png) The workshop WIP The other bits that became Set were the parts on the history of stories and the ‘why you should care’. In total, that was about 50% of the session set in place and ready for polishing. ### Subtract What about the rest? It was time for some subtraction. The first thing I do here is to look at anything that is **NOT** a key part of the story **AND** can be bundled into post-session resources. A good example are quick tips and case studies. Audiences often really like these, so in a longer form workshop I’ll keep them in, but this thing was a power hour so they had to get chopped. I’m also terribly self-indulgent at times and make my intros too long, so I knew that could be cut. I found a smart way around it this time, though: I turned my intro into a short story that I called back later on (yes - a storytelling technique!) when explaining the Creating Structure concept. This justified it being a little longer than normal - it actually had some material value. The History of Stories section : everyone could make the leap without me filling in the blanks. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/Screen-Shot-2021-09-17-at-11.23.44.png) I had a fun riff around 1970s UK TV host Ronnie Corbett. But it had to go. Same with some stuff on making movies and anime. After ongoing culling, I was left with something a little too fat - but not by much, maybe 10-15%. That was ok. I could massage out these kinks a little later. It was time to double down. *Pro Tip: Don’t delete. Cut. You may want to bring some parts back in later, or use them for a future gig. I don’t know (m)any DJs who just straight up delete music out of their library.* ### Repeat Of the stuff that was Set, a few bits beared repeating. Going back to the original primers I’d be sent, I targeted 3 things to reiterate: - Why stories matter for this audience - The 7 story types - A message of empowerment (you don’t need to be Shakespeare or Seinfeld to do this). With a bit of weaving and shifting around I found some extra places to push those messages home. ### Flow Now was a good time to review the flow of the session. - Does it all hang together? - Are the transitions between sections smooth, or are they clunky? - Are you repeating yourself a little too much? - Could that fun story that just got cut find a valuable home somewhere else in the session? I suggest reviewing the flow several times during your design process. However, if you’re only going to do it once, this is a good time - because next we’re adding some extra depth. --- ## Let's take a Pause for a Cause Before that though, let’s take a brief pause for a commercial break, and a recap of what we've done so far. First, the commercial break. *If you want more resources and ideas to move your work forward, [you should sign up for my newsletter >](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter).* **Recap** At this point I had a solid structure, a bit too much content, and the workshop pretty much sorted. A few slides had full design already done, but most of it was raw stuff that I’d grafted in. The session was now at the point I call ‘roadworthy’: legible enough to run if for some reason it started 5 minutes from now and I had to just go with it. *Pro Tip: I find this ‘roadworthy’ milestone very helpful, especially when it comes to overbuilding. It’s a smart move to get your project roadworthy as soon as you can. Better to show up with a skateboard than a Tesla with no engine.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/image-7.png) via [Henrik Kniberg](https://blog.crisp.se/author/henrikkniberg?ref=howardgray.net) Of course, roadworthy doesn’t mean finished. This session all hung together - but it lacked a certain something. Time to add some emotion. --- ## 7\. Emotion For a talk, the two most fundamental emotional elements are Audio and Visual. We can also get into crowd interaction, body language and all that, but surfacing some Audio and Visual emotion within your material will still take you far. ### Visual Because a picture says 1000 words, it was time to add some visual emotion. Now, deck design is a once again a whole other topic ([there’s a post on it here!](https://medium.com/wavetable/how-to-design-a-workshop-slide-deck-85cd7bcc3a93?ref=howardgray.net)), but here’s the super basic overview of how I tackle it: 1. **Strip nearly all the text out** 2. **Paste it into the presenter notes** 3. **Add an image under the remaining text, ideally taking up as much of the slide space as possible** 4. **Refine the text so there’s just one word, or at most a short sentence or a few bullets** 5. **Slim down the remaining notes to two lines, ideally a mini story** And of course, the images should ideally convey some kind of emotion. *Pro Tip: Adding visuals is a difficult beast - some of us can easily burn many, many hours on this part. If in doubt, focus on being roadworthy.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-5-.jpg) ### Audio Once I was done with the visuals, it was time to test the audio. There weren’t any external videos or audio clips in this session, so the Audio part was… well, me. At this point I did a dry run of narrating the deck with presenter notes switched off. There are a few reasons for doing the dry run: - Get a feel for the overall flow and timing - Sense where more or less emotion is needed - Notice where the bumps and rough transitions are - Start making connections between words and pictures The idea behind this last point is that I should soon be able to mentally trigger the slide’s key point, its background info, and the transition to the next bit just by looking at the image and the few words of text. This needs practice, and I’m certainly not a master at it, but it’s a very handy skill to develop. As for the dry run itself, I hardly ever do a real-time runthrough (i.e. an hour). For this one I spent 10-15 minutes whizzing through the full deck, then zoned in on some particularly important and/or complex parts. And as you’ve probably guessed, for some parts I needed to go back to the steps listed above and re-cut them (the ‘Subtract’ part of the 'Collating' step may come back into play here - hence why stuff should be cut, not deleted) The other thing I began to look at here was Contrast. --- ## 8\. Contrast Contrast is a key part of storytelling. Perhaps the most obvious example of contrast is in the movie *The Matrix*: The guide shows the hero two possible worlds. He offers him The Blue Pill or The Red Pill. The hero has a choice between The Status Quo or The What Could Be. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-7-.jpg) For this session I didn’t need to spend a ton of time adding contrast, but it was a helpful tool when it came to sharpening it up and amplifying some key points. I added some simple contrast in three places: - Showing the difference between two types of storytelling techniques (‘And Then’ vs ‘But Then’) - A provocation to the audience about dealing with the fact they’re probably not Aesop, Oprah, or Steve Jobs. - The cheeky commercial break in the middle of the heads-down workshop section ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-6-.jpg) As per the above step, contrast can be used in visuals, text, verbally - as well as body language, group interactions, and so on. It’s a very powerful tool when used with care and skill. Speaking of which, my final design step was adding novelty. --- ## 9\. Novelty Us humans just can’t resist novelty. There's a reason novels are such a popular and enduring medium, after all*.* When it comes to offering novelty in our stories, there are a bunch of ways to inject it. Here are a few: - **Fresh perspectives** - **Alternative uses** - **Surprising insights** - **Unexpected twists** - **New approaches** - **Shock-and-awe moments** Novelty is a valuable element of storytelling - and a presentation is not exempt from this. However, we must use it carefully. We shouldn’t make things novel for the sake of it, nor make them *too* new. Despite our desire for the novel, we don’t actually like things that are completely new; we like a sense of both freshness *and* familiarity. As Derek Thompson shares in his book 'Hit Makers', it’s helpful to use the concept of *New Wine aged in Old Oak*. With that in mind, I added just a handful of touches that I felt were novel for the audience, yet also familiar enough not to put them off: - I opened with a story about a Citroen 2CV (before I'd even introduced myself) - 80s cult hip hop hero Slick Rick was included as an example of a great storyteller - The workshop used a Google Doc as a portable, open worksheet - Mmhmm was used as my delivery tool ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-8-.jpg) With that, the session was looking strong. There were just two more short steps to take before delivery. --- ## 10\. Back to the Story Type Earlier on I mentioned 7 Story Types. For the final part of the process, I checked back in on the story type I’d chosen. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/What-s-the-Story---Howard-Gray---CMX-Summit-2021-1.jpg) As I went along I wondered if we were going to end up Overcoming the Monster. I think we probably still were to a degree - it was almost a subplot - but the core of this story was The Quest. Having this in the back of my mind would be helpful when it came to delivery - and if anything went off-track I could remind myself that The Quest is what we were all there for. --- ## 11\. Final Finesse For the final step, I ran through the deck a few more times. I did this on both my laptop and also my phone to see if I could riff all the pieces in different contexts. Inevitably a few bits got culled during these run throughs. I can count on one hand the amount of times where I’ve regretted culling vs. regretted leaving something in. *Pro Tip: Be a time pessimist. If it feels a touch too much, cut it.* However, I still didn’t do a ‘proper’ time check - running through the entire hour in real time. You may like to, but I felt I had a good sense of how long each element would need and also where I could trim on the fly. *Pro Tip: Always have a few things you can cut out live in session without breaking the flow. I tend to have 2 or 3 ‘soft tissue’ bits that if needed I can slice through without causing serious pain.* The final step was to get my delivery assets in place. Aside from technology stuff like a mic, camera and other paraphernalia there were just four things I needed: - Presentation Deck (Google Slides) - Worksheet (Google Doc) - Text file with links to worksheets and other resources (so I could easily drop them into the chat) - Notepad (just in case) And then before I knew it, it was time for delivery… --- ## A quick note on delivery I’ll level with you. I planned to write a whole bit on the delivery (including tech check, using a green screen, dealing with audience questions and so on), but I want to create a fresh post for that. This one is already over 5000 words! In the meantime, you can check out my other posts on [facilitation and storytelling](https://www.howardgray.net/tag/in-session/), and if you’re curious to see the CMX Session in full, here it is: But before I leave you, here’s a quick bonus round. --- ## 12\. Bonus: Landing the gig This is a question a lot of people have but never really ask: *“How did you land the gig?”* The answer in this case is relatively simple, but I want to share it in case it’s helpful for your own journey. It started with a podcast. In late 2018 I was setting up the second season of our ‘Tickets’ podcast and sent a speculative cold email to Duolingo’s head of community, Laura Nestler. To my delight, she got back to me saying she’d love to be a guest. It took a couple of months to schedule the recording, and then a few weeks more before it published. We stayed in touch during 2019 and in one of our email she mentioned a community she was a member of that may be worth checking out. I began following the founder of this community online, reading his tweets and checking out some of his company’s work. Fast forward a year or so, and we were looking to share some of our work around how to design and deliver better workshops. Suddenly I remembered this community founder. We’d never spoken before, but I took a punt and sent him a Twitter DM, offering a free workshop for his membership. He came straight back to me, and introduced me to his team at… you guessed it - CMX. During Summer 2020 we ran a 90 min workshop workshop for their members. The team were great to work with, and the community were full of ideas and curiosity. A few months later, I dropped a note to the CMX team to check in and see if there was an opportunity for us to do something again. This time, they asked if I’d like to be involved at the Summit. And that’s how the story of this storytelling session begins. The main reason I’m sharing this is that the path to these things is rarely as straight as we like to think. It took over 2 years from start to finish, and the idea of speaking at the conference wasn’t even on my radar until those emails at the end of 2020. So, when it comes to asking the question *“how do I get more speaking gigs?”*, maybe the answer is to ask yourself a slightly different question. --- Phew! There ya go. A full breakdown of how I built a 1 hour workshop/keynote session. If you have questions, comments, or want to chat about working together, I'd love to hear from you - [feel free to drop me a line >](https://www.howardgray.net/contact) ### Live at CMX Summit 2021 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/live-at-cmx-summit-2021/ Last updated: 2021-09-15T15:51:59.000Z Here's the recording of the workshop I ran on storytelling at [CMX Summit](https://cmxhub.com/summit/?ref=howardgray.net) a few weeks ago, complete with me breaking into song midway through. Also inside: \- 7 story elements and how to apply them \- Daily habits you can use to build your storytelling muscles \- A free packet of storytelling resources they spelled my surname incorrectly. oh well. ### The alternative advisory board URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-advisory-board/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:16.000Z This felt pretty scary to email to a handful of people the other day: a request for their time, expertise, and perspectives - all in service of ME. Urgh. I'm excited to see what feedback and ideas come in, but perhaps just the act of writing an update and sharing it with a few fellow travelers is enough in itself. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/HG-board.png) ### 4 bananas years in NYC URL: https://www.howardgray.net/4-bananas-years-in-nyc/ Last updated: 2021-09-14T20:28:37.000Z Today marks 4 years since we moved to New York. I had a look for a typical 'NYC landscape' photo to signify the occasion, but the only thing that felt like an appropriate slice of NYC was this photo I took a while ago: me standing outside a subway station, holding a banana. I'm sure there was a good reason for the photo, I just can't remember what it was. Speaking of bananas, it's worth noting that banana suppliers have been forced to shift their focus to supplying perfectly yellow bananas in order to meet the desire of Millennial customers. This is a deceptively tricky logistics challenge (not to mention the knock-on environmental issues it creates). However, esteemed fruit and vegetable purveyor Tony Balboa maintains that the perfect banana ripeness is similar to that of one featured in the photo above. It may not look too great on the outside, but it sure does taste good. Not a bad lesson to remember. ### A unique job description URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-job-description/ Last updated: 2021-09-13T20:43:13.000Z Here’s a job description that may be up your street. In this role you’ll have the chance to work in an ever-changing, dynamic environment. Innovation is part of our DNA. There’s huge opportunity to make a genuine impact - this is a position with real purpose and fulfilment. The team are incredible - you’ll love your colleagues. Your new boss is full of energy and fresh thinking. Even better: there’s no interview process, and you’re unlikely to be fired. This job even bucks the trend: join us and you’ve got a job for life (just watch out for headhunters). There are just a few trade-offs: there’s no onboarding, apprenticeships, pay rises, or vacation time. This role is not currently available via LinkedIn jobs. No agencies please. 6 weeks ago I landed this job. And I’ve not been doing especially well. The shift was incredibly abrupt. Adjustment and acceptance are still an ongoing challenge. Alongside the elation, excitement and marvel sits inadequacy, overwhelm, and guilt. Sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out for it. I wonder if I may get fired after all. But I’ve already learned many things on the job. One is that I’m not good at writing job descriptions. Another is I have a lot of respect for the others doing this job of being a parent. ### Two types of podcast URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-types-of-podcast/ Last updated: 2021-09-09T17:21:17.000Z Perhaps the most popular type of podcast is the interview. While there are many styles and approaches, interview podcasts typically fall into two categories: The first is where the guest speaks from tried and tested principles, methods and opinions. They’ve built these up over the time. They sound smart, succinct, solid. Most interview podcasts are like this. The second category is almost the opposite. It’s a slice of life - full of fluid ideas and thoughts. These don’t always age well, but they certainly reflect where the person is at that moment in time. It’s in this category that vulnerability, insight and meaning appears - almost unfolding in real time. This category of podcast most definitely has a higher risk of noise, yet also a higher chance of real, human, signal. As for the sweet spot? Perhaps it’s this second category, where the guest is guided by an expert interviewer. A secret skill set, then, is the ability to curate both guests and episodes where you’re working in category 1, but the listener feels like they’re living in category 2. ### Adventures... #57: Never done before URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-57-never-done-before/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:34.000Z *Hello. I’m* [*Howard Gray*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*, and this is Adventures…: a monthly email digest offering you different lenses to better understand yourself, your work, and the world.* *Not yet a subscriber? You can [sign up (and also check out the full archive) here](https://www.howardgray.net/adventure).* *If you want to unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom. One and done, I’ll be out of your life.* *Still here? Lovely. Let’s get into it…* --- The 1960s were a time of profound change. Icons rose. Conflicts rumbled. Counterculture arrived, and a generational gap yawned open. Perhaps the 60s' most significant cultural moments occurred at the very end of the decade. There was the death of MLK. Humans landed on the Moon. Anti-heroes came to prominence on the silver screen. Era-defining music and art emerged. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/image-2.png) Image: Randy Dodson The late 60s was also a time for game-changing gatherings. You may be familiar with one of the biggest. It took place in New York State, and featured incredible artists from all over the musical map. Many of its crowd were experiencing such an event for the very first time. And the event itself was making its debut. Nothing like it had ever been done before. But this festival wasn’t taking place in Woodstock. It was happening in Harlem. ### The Impresario The man behind the Harlem Cultural Festival was also making his debut. Tony Lawrence was a club singer, promoter, and something of a professional raconteur. An active community member, he was persuasive, charismatic, and had the hustle to make things happen. But he’d never run a festival before. Despite Tony having the backing of NYC’s parks department, suppliers were skeptical about his festival idea. Civil unrest was brewing, and an economic boom was starting to slow. This felt like one risky concept. Yet somehow, Tony pulled it off. To ease suppliers’ financial concerns, he landed Maxwell House coffee as a sponsor. The likes of Stevie Wonder, BB King, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, and Sly & The Family Stone signed up to perform. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/image-3.png) And during that summer series, several hundred thousand people celebrated African American music and culture at Harlem’s Mount Morris Park. For even the big-name artists it was also something of a debut. The 5th Dimension were a hugely popular act with chart-topping hits, but many of the crowd who used radio as their main medium were in for a shock. This band with a crossover 'champagne soul' style were - to the surprise of many in the crowd - Black. For The 5th Dimension and their fans, taking the stage in Harlem was a breakthrough moment - a different kind of debut. Sly & The Family Stone sounded - and looked - like nothing done before. And the New York City mayor riffed alongside Tony on the main stage. Debuts upon debuts. But here’s the thing. Even though the whole event had been filmed and there were hundreds of stories to share, the media didn’t care one bit. While the story of the Harlem Cultural Festival stood strong in local folklore, it barely came into wider view. The 40 hours of footage from this incredible debut sat in a basement. For 50 years. It needed another debut to change it. Questlove, the shapeshifting drummer and defacto band leader of The Roots, picked up the trail and along with producer Robert Fyvolent transformed the footage into a feature-length documentary: [Summer of Soul](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Eg-vtSABE&ref=howardgray.net). Rolling Stone magazine called it *“an incredible, vital act of restoration — and reclamation".* It was Questlove's first time directing. ### Release the Pressure Questlove debuted something high-stakes, high-risk. And Tony and the team behind the festival most certainly were. Our own debuts are unlikely to have that kind of gravity, but they can still feel exciting, scary, and overwhelming. Whether it’s a new job, project, company, or just a different way of presenting ourselves and our work - a debut is a first. In fact, by its nature, *any* kind of creative work is a debut. It's never been done before. We worry about our debuts being disappointing. About them not working. We get nervous about feeling like an imposter, a fraud, of not possessing the creativity or intellectual powers to stand up. We worry about negative responses - or perhaps more dispiritingly - no response at all. All our work may just disappear from view. Odds are there won’t be a Questlove on hand to bring it back to life. It could all be gone - lost in the basement of our soul. But however small they feel, our debuts matter. They move things forward. They move *us* forward. To ease the debut pressure, we can take a little inspiration from Tony and Questlove. Like them, we can also become impresarios. We may not be the flamboyant promoter or the multi-hypenate band leader, but we may surprise ourselves at how possible it is for us able to orchestrate and bring others together around something *never done before*. In fact, I bet there's a group of people out there eagerly awaiting your next debut - perhaps you just don’t know it yet. So, what’s your next debut? And who are you bringing along for the ride? Let me know. Just hit reply. Howard --- # Two debuts... and a cease & desist ### Say hello to my little friend ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/37EA685A-9DAC-436B-87BA-F09D8E7E0C10-copy-2.jpg) Baby Kai made his world debut on 28th July 2021\. It’s been a whirlwind. I'll aim to share some thoughts on fatherhood month 1 in next month's digest. --- ### A new and improved Howard Gray Well, the [website version](https://www.howardgray.net/) at least. There are now over 500 articles on my website, but they’ve not been easy to discover and navigate. Until now. Everything has been retagged and brought together into one place: blog posts, podcasts, weird little video skits, and all 57 editions of this newsletter. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/Screen-Shot-2021-09-01-at-14.30.27.png) I’ve also created some [series](https://www.howardgray.net/blog/) around particular themes. [Building your own business?](https://www.howardgray.net/from-zero/) Want to better [understand yourself](https://www.howardgray.net/mind-the-gap/)? Curious to find out about all the stuff [I’ve messed up](https://www.howardgray.net/battle-scars/) along the way? It’s all there. [**Check it out >**](https://www.howardgray.net/) --- ### RIP Career Fuel A few weeks ago I received a copyright infringement notice on ‘Career Fuel’ (!) - a tag I used to reference all the career navigation bits I share here and on my website. As I don’t have the time, money or energy to get litigated, its goodbye to The Section Formerly Known As Career Fuel. So, while every edition of this newsletter will continue to start with a riff inspired by pop culture, the links and ideas that follow are gonna be reconstructed a bit. For now, here they are with a slightly looser filing system. Hopefully I don’t get sued. --- # Bits from the Bureau... ### Creative Careers [**Hollywood shadows**](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/03/21/hollywood-shadows?ref=howardgray.net): The story of how two psychologists help screenwriters to get unblocked. I discovered this via a Tim Ferriss podcast with a hedge fund manager (random), and picked up their book ‘The Tools’. It’s very good. So much so, I’ve been reading it aloud to Jacinta during Kai's late-night feeds. [**Jonah Hill gets serious (ish)**](https://www.gq.com/story/jonah-hill-fall-2021-gq-style-cover?ref=howardgray.net): This is excellent. A deep dive into creative arts, power, self awareness, and acceptance. A good reminder we all have chapters, but the previous one doesn't have to dictate what's next. And by strange coincidence, Jonah Hill's therapist is the co-author of the aforementioned book. [**The real CEO of 'Succession'**](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/30/the-real-ceo-of-succession?ref=howardgray.net): A long-form profile of Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession, Peep Show, and other skewering satires. I can't watch more than two episodes of Succession on the spin without feeling I need therapy. ### Media, Tech, Innovation **[Storyweaving with AI](https://blog.webaverse.com/storyweaving-with-ai?ref=howardgray.net)**: This is a really cool breakdown of how Hollywood (and other industries) could become disrupted through automated, decentralized storytelling. It may need a few reads to fully grasp it, but it's worthwhile. [**MLK x Fortnite**](https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/celebrate-mlk-time-studios-presents-march-through-time-in-fortnite?ref=howardgray.net): Speaking of MLK, here's a project by Time Studios - you can experience Martin Luther King's most famous speech within Fortnite. There's a lot to like here, but I can't help but wonder how effective it's actually going to be... [**A brief history of Netflix personalization**](https://gibsonbiddle.medium.com/a-brief-history-of-netflix-personalization-1f2debf010a1?ref=howardgray.net): A deep dive geek out on how Netflix has conitnued to prevent you from sleeping or doing other more valuable things with your life. [**Tree of Life**](https://www.onezoom.org/life.html/@=304358?img=best%5Fany&anim=flight&ref=howardgray.net#x1622,y784,w0.4623): Explore a history of... well, everything. This data viz allows you to learn about just about every species that's on the planet. The UI is a little clunky but it's a pretty incredible resource. [**Nestflix**](https://nestflix.fun/?ref=howardgray.net): A wiki dressed up as a streaming platform that nests fictional films and tv shows inside real movies and tv shows. Meta. ### Slices of Life [**One man's quest to become a Wikipedia Olympian**](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/01/olympics-wikipedia-guy-fraser-tokyo?ref=howardgray.net): Speaking of wikis, Guy Fraser went on a mission to ensure there were Wikipedia pages for all the 11,656 athletes at this year's Olympics. [**Sounds of the Underground**](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/13/arts/subway-train-sounds.html?ref=howardgray.net): I'm a bit of a transport geek, so naturally I was very into this interactive exploration of the jingles used on subway systems around the world. --- # Jukebox *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time)* ### Front: [Josh Upton - Learning to Fly](https://open.spotify.com/album/6XHRCyFRXumDW4DnLTPMEw?si=nJZWlV61SyCX5iXl715r2Q&dl%5Fbranch=1&nd=1&ref=howardgray.net) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/JoshUpton_artwork.jpg) Some debuts come fast, others burn slowly. Here’s the debut EP from my good friend, collaborator, and esteemed hype man Josh Upton. Given this month’s theme, I’m especially delighted to share it with you here. ### Middle: [Balearic Mike - Sketches from an island](https://soundcloud.com/international-feel/balearic-interpretations-vol-1?ref=howardgray.net) No trips to Ibiza for me this year, so I've taken solace in some of Balearic Mike's blissed-out DJ mixes. Here's one of his very best, for the International Feel label. ### Back: [Lee “Scratch” Perry: Roast Fish, Collie Weed, and Corn Bread](https://open.spotify.com/album/2xNZuibPWnInThJvZ0r22B?si=PdI-bja0Q828sIcUC0yogA&dl%5Fbranch=1&ref=howardgray.net) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/09/image-1.png) It’s always bittersweet featuring the recently deceased in this section. Here’s one of the earlier albums from an incredibly prolific, one of a kind artist. Perhaps Keith Richards summed him up best: "*the Salvador Dali of music*." *Note: Last month's edition featured Afghan producer Farhot. What a difference a month makes. [Here’s the album again in case you missed it >](https://farhot.bandcamp.com/album/kabul-fire-vol-2?ref=howardgray.net)* --- # Footnotes *Other things I’ve been up to this past month.* - **Speaking**: About storytelling at CMX Summit. I don’t like tooting my own horn but I gotta say - it went well. If you're curious, there's more on [my speaking work here >](https://www.howardgray.net/speaking/) - **Strategising**: Bringing some projects closer together, and [sharing a monthly update with some trusted fellow travelers](https://twitter.com/HowardGray/status/1432401154852499459?ref=howardgray.net) - **Handling**: baby poo, pee, vomit, and a lot of laundry - **Diving**: back into blockchain. The first wave of NFT mania earlier this year left me cold, but I sense some more interesting use cases are emerging - **Reading**: about writing, courtesy of Stephen King's wonderful "On Writing" (I had no idea that among his 60 (!) bestsellers is what became *The Shawshank Redemption*) --- ### Thanks for reading... If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the e-mail or ping me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net) or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardgray83?ref=howardgray.net) and tell me what resonated or what you’d add/remove/modify. If you want to work together, I'd love to hear from you. [Head here to get started >](https://www.howardgray.net/work-with-me/) --- *Adventures…* is brought to you from the desk of Howard Gray: founder of [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net), connoisseur of breakfasts, changer of diapers. ### Research or Reassurance? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/research-or-reassurance/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:33:01.000Z When we’re starting something new, it’s usually a good idea to do some research. Talking to people is a great way of doing this. But there’s a problem: a line so fine we can barely see it. It’s the line between research and reassurance. We probably don’t think we’re looking for reassurance, but too often we do just that. Reassurance is what we hope will get us over our self-doubt. But because the self-doubt never really goes away - not completely - we can never get enough reassurance. Ever. Reassurance is futile. There’s one more devious trick we play on ourselves. We go and seek reassurance from the people we most want to prove something to. Guess what? They’re typically the people who made us feel the self-doubt in the first place, and they’ll end up making it harder for us - whether they know it or not. There’s only one time it's worth seeking their reassurance - when our work is done. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve crossed this line from research to reassurance. In fact, I think I did it again yesterday. So, are you going after research or reassurance? ### The ugly stuff is part of the package URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-ugly-stuff-is-part-of-the-package/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:05:37.000Z I’ve had a few sleepless nights before recording podcasts. The worst ones are when I’m a bit rusty and I find the guest to be intimidatingly impressive. For one such episode, all was well until 27 minutes in. I asked a question I instantly knew I shouldn’t have. It was cheap, leading, and provocative. They were understandably irked. I crumped, feeling like a total fool. The rest of the episode came easy enough, though; I knew I could edit out the error. Except I couldn’t. I spent 3 hours trying to remove the dressing down without losing the flow of the conversation. It was impossible. With time up, I could either butcher the whole edit to save myself, or just publish. Now, you may be thinking the moral of this riff is to ask authentic questions; to put your ego to one side; or to let others shine. But I think it’s something else. Even though it still feels embarrassing, I can’t imagine that episode without the cringe moment. The ugly stuff is part of the package. And even if it doesn’t always feel like it, it’s proof of our work. ### Adventures... #56: 6 out of 10 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/6-out-of-10/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:30.000Z **How Quentin Tarantino turned average into exceptional** *Hello. I’m [Howard Gray](https://www.howardgray.net/about), and this is Adventures… : a monthly email digest of alternative inspiration and ideas for creative and entrepreneurial humans. You can find the full archive* [*here*](https://www.howardgray.net/adventures)*.* *If you’d like to unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom. One and done, I’ll be out of your inbox forever.* *Still here? Lovely. Let’s get into it…* --- A 6/10 rating doesn’t usually feel too good. Whether it’s a movie review or the score we get in a peer review, 6/10 isn't much to get excited about. It's passable. Unremarkable. It’s kinda… meh. Scoring 6 out of 10 usually comes about in three ways: First, there’s the 6 when all best efforts are invested, but the knowledge, expertise, or mental models aren’t yet in place to go beyond it. The second kind occurs under impairment. We could be fatigued, injured, or on the end of an injustice. While in normal circumstances we could probably push beyond, 6 is the furthest we can realistically go. And this 6 needs to stay at 6 - aiming any higher will cause us damage. Third, there’s the 6/10 that’s delivered by a [hack](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/hack-taxi-cab-driver-or-lousy-writer?ref=howardgray.net). They’re the disengaged professionals who tend to phone it in - just checking the boxes, always unexceptional, never sharpening their saw. They serve up plenty of [Stringer Bell’s 40 degree days](https://www.howardgray.net/stage-left/30-degree-days/). But there’s one other type of 6/10 - and it produces something very different. --- ## From Austria to Oscar Quentin Tarantino was having a hard time casting a key role for his latest movie. The part in question required a blend of menace, ruthlessness, and charisma - plus fluency in multiple languages. Eventually he and his production partner believed they’d found the perfect actor to appear in *Inglorious Basterds* as Nazi officer Hans Landa. One problem was that Christoph Waltz had zero Hollywood cred. The Austrian actor was largely a journeyman of little-known European TV shows, and his few US appearances had been in some of the worst-rated movies of the past three decades (we’re talking iMDB ratings of 3/10 rather than 6/10). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-05-at-10.22.27-AM.png) For Waltz this was a pivotal role in a high-profile movie, working with arguably the most celebrated director of the past twenty years. It was unequivocally a game-changer for his career. So when it came to the table read with the other actors, you’d expect Waltz to give it everything he had, right? Instead, as Tarantino recounts on Brian Koppelman’s ‘The Moment’ podcast, he told Waltz to hold back: > *“Give ‘em a 6 out of 10\. Be good enough - but just good enough.”* When you’ve got the likes of Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender around the table, this sounds ludicrous. Furthermore, for the next 2 weeks Waltz didn’t rehearse at all with the other actors. They only needed to get halfway through the table read, when his production partner said “seems like a bit of an off-day for Christoph...?”, that Tarantino knew things were going exactly to plan. Because when the cameras started rolling, Hans Landa appeared in terrifying, conniving technicolor. The extra 4 out of 10 was unleashed and gave the movie an electricity that just wouldn’t have been present if Waltz had started out higher than 6\. The formerly little-known Austrian actor wound up collecting an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his performance. ## Two to tango This deliberate 6/10 is not the same as that of the hack. It’s about being willing - and able - to give a 6 when every fibre of your being wants you to go full throttle. And it’s also about knowing *when* to roll the 6. Would Waltz have gone to 6 on his own? Probably not. He needed Tarantino’s vision as both a director and a talent curator (this latter skill of his is highly underrated). Could Tarantino have got every actor to go to 6/10? Unlikely, even for a director at his calibre. He needed to work with someone who possessed the right combination of humility, confidence, and appetite. We don't need to be Oscar-winning movie makers to bring this into our work. It's worth recognising which type of 6/10 we're dealing with. Trusted partners can help us see when it's time to stretch or instead leave something in the tank. And just like Christoph Waltz, we may have to deal with a few 3/10's along the way. Thanks for reading, and as always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Just hit reply. Howard --- ## From one 6 to another In a bid to channel just a tiny bit of Waltz & Tarantino, the rest of this edition is deliberately coming in at a 6/10\. No links this time, just some music for you to check out. That’s because next month brings about much change: a renewed focus, a refreshed look and feel, plus opportunities to connect with fellow subscribers. I’m excited to share it all with you. Hopefully Quentin would approve. --- ## Jukebox ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/08/a1130089476_16.jpg) ### Front: [Farhot: Kabul Fire Vol. 2](https://farhot.bandcamp.com/album/kabul-fire-vol-2?ref=howardgray.net) This has been out a few months, but hey, I’m slow on the uptake. Here’s Hamburg hiphop producer Farhot’s latest album, an homage to his birth home of Afghanistan. ### Middle: [Tale of Us, RA podcast](https://soundcloud.com/resident-advisor/ra283-tale-of-us?ref=howardgray.net) I can’t believe this home listening mix from Italian techno duo Tale of Us is almost a decade old. It soundtracked my so far only trip to Florianopolis in Brazil, where I stayed at a random person’s house using a new app I’d heard about called Airbnb. ### Back: [Simply Red: Something Got Me Started](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld9Bx64sKUs&ref=howardgray.net) Yes you read that correctly. Jacinta put a 90s playlist on in the car, and this suddenly came on. At first I cringed. Then I became convinced there must be some amazing Andrew Weatherall-esque underground remixes in existence (there were not). I later discovered this much-maligned Manchester band sold 60m albums and played 131 shows on their ‘Stars’ tour alone. They may not be cool, but it’s worth remembering the middle of the road is much wider than you think. --- ## Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this month: - **Watching**: Clarkson’s Farm (surprisingly good), Roadrunner (very well woven, and highly resonated with me), The White Lotus (a beautiful skewering of the 1%) - **Refreshing**: my website with new layouts, tags, and guides - **Preparing**: for the unpreparable that is a baby human --- **Thanks for reading...** If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the e-mail, or ping me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net) or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardgray83?ref=howardgray.net) and tell me what resonated or what you’d add/remove/modify. ### The Slight Blue Flame URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-slight-blue-flame/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:22:39.000Z I love this bit from musician Hayden Thorpe (formerly of Wild Beasts) answering fans' questions: --- **How do you see yourself in twenty years? That is if the world still exists…** > The world will still exist in twenty years, maybe just not this one. > Twenty years time looks simple, if I’m still fortunate enough to dedicate this much time to making things then that will be a victory. > > Living a life according to your creative whims means carrying around a very slight blue flame in the palm of your hand which constantly requires oxygen but at the same time must be protected from the wind. Over protect it and you’ll live your life huddled over. If you’re too reckless then the fragile flame snuffs out. > > I imagine myself in twenty years still dancing that dance. ### The Mailroom 2.0 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-mailroom-2-0/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:05:46.000Z Working in the mailroom is often seen as being at the bottom of the ladder. But as CEO of my first company I was desperate for it. Sitting alone in the office on a Thursday evening or a Saturday afternoon, I knew that grinding it out in the mailroom would have been a much smarter play. In the entertainment industry’s talent agencies, the mailroom is a catalyst. It’s a portal to forging relationships, increasing exposure, and developing real skills - plus the opportunity to wield a tiny yet valuable sliver of the firm’s brand cache. Even moguls like Barry Diller and David Geffen started out delivering mail around the office. Bootstrapping a startup with no time in the mailroom was incredibly hard. Compared to the platform and acceleration it provided, my long years getting a degree, promoting events, and working in digital advertising just couldn’t compare. You may be thinking the mailroom has some serious flaws - especially when it comes to equity and accessibility. And you’d be right. But many of its principles are still hugely valuable - and not just in the entertainment business. This is why the new wave of apprenticeships are so exciting: there are hands-on projects; rapid learning loops; the opportunity to build lasting relationships; and the dignity and sustainability of proper compensation. I wonder which other industries would benefit from a reimagined version of the mailroom…? ### Two Transmitters and a Telephone URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-transmitters-and-a-telephone/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:25:26.000Z Last hurrah. Baby due anytime now, so I ping a friend to see if he's up for some drinks. A bit of back and forth on where to meet. He’s in Williamsburg, I’m in Fort Greene. I think I suggest something in the middle. He comes back offering Transmitter at 6\. Pretty sure I know the place, it's down near the water. Done deal. I check the map and yup, there it is, pretty much in the middle of us. The brewery and beer garden in the Navy Garden. It wasn’t hard to find. The big sign outside came up earlier than I thought. Turn a hard left off the bike lane and there's a clutch of people milling around, picking up wristbands for boozing approval. Place seems a little odd - not really his vibe. Polo shirts, athleisure, batchelorette gatherings. But whatever, it’s Saturday afternoon and everyone’s got their tails up. Lock up, take a perch outside. Maybe a touch early. Not sure. I still haven’t got the watch battery changed. Unzip the bag to consult the phone. Rummage underneath the beers and my notepad. Nothing. First time in 4 years. Maybe 8. Multiple thoughts zag into the brainbox at once, resulting in a weird gormless paralysis. Stay? Go home? Ask someone to borrow their phone? Any idea what his number is? No idea. Call the wife? Err, no. Give him 15\. I lollop to one of the tables outside. Whip out the notebook, day dream a little. He’s very punctual, so 15 feels punchy. The 15 comes and goes. Nothing. Home it is. Lug the bike in, nearly take the front door off on the way through. There’s the phone. In the kitchen, naturally. The home of the absent mind. He’s texted: “Down by the river”. The penny drops. *That* Transmitter, the one we went to before. I call, explain sheepishly. He's cool. I'm less so. Time for a travel decision. It’ll be late when home. Bike lights not working, I would have been drinking. Last time was wobbly. Probably a bad idea. Although it is fast… Train? Forget it. Subway heat, G line unreliable. Then there's the safe option: Citibike. No need for a lock, and space to stash the bag. And speaking of G, a moment of genius lands: go electric. Now, there’s some tension here. No electric bikes on the rack means it’s going to be a lot, lot slower on the regular velo. Committed, I shove the bike into the hallway, ditch the accoutrements and head back out. Inevitably, all the electric bikes are showing solid red lights. Out of service. No go. Regular bicycle it is. In a bid for efficiency I grab the option with the highest seat setting. Within a minute I discover this hulking beast has been trapped in middle gear. I may as well be carrying 3 weeks of groceries on the front. Grinding my way back out to the main bike lane, the heat envelops me. I was majestically gliding on my own steed, now I’m suddenly flooding out sweat like a burst hydrant. The smooth flats of Flushing Ave feel like a Tour de France mountain stage. Williamsburg’s north-south cut seems to take forever. My face is flushed, lower back seizing up. At least I’m happily married: this date would be over before it’s started. I contemplate a quick bike switch at a nearby station but sense I'll be doomed if I try. 30 rotten minutes later and I haul the wretched thing into Greenpoint's M street and a well-stocked docking station. 3 docks available, 3 red lights. No bueno. The next nearest spot is another 5 blocks away, and it’s now nearly 7\. Taking all those numbers into consideration, he’s probably gone home already. By this point I’m embarrassingly sweaty - ruddy faced, panting, and bedraggled. Wearing a black t-shirt was a good option as a gentle sweat concealer, less so when it’s raining perspiration. Compound interest in action. The guys playing basketball give me a look up and down. I think it’s almost pity, but the sweat in my eyes prevents me from detecting emotions. I shove the ungrateful contraption into dock number 1 one last time. It growls with resistance, and somehow, it’s home. Up goes the magic green light. I'm free. Relieved of my 80lb burden I zip him a text: “2 mins”. 10 seconds later: “See you in 2 hours”. Fair. Around the corner and my heart sinks. Have I undershot it? No - a street sign points straight left to Transmitter Park. But not just Transmitter Park - it’s *WNYC* Transmitter Park. I smile wryly through my clammy exterior. If I’d done this trip a few months earlier I wouldn’t have paid heed. WYNC is the local radio station I’ve recently come to love. I started listening when we bought our car a few months previously. And then I realized. I probably should have driven. ### The repercussions of a club night introduction URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-repercussions-of-a-club-night-introduction/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:24:26.000Z On the wishlist of guests for third season of the [Tickets](www.howardgray.net/tag/tickets) podcast was someone I’d not spoken with for years. While I didn’t have his email address or phone number, we did have a LinkedIn connection and he seemed to be fairly active on there. I decided to give it a shot, and a few days later we were chatting on the phone to plan the podcast recording. After taking a few minutes to give him my back story I got the strongly sense he had no idea who I was or how we knew each other. It was awkward. I quickly filled in the blanks: *We used to chat on AIM in the early 2000s, I was promoting this club night in London, you were just starting to produce music, we both knew X, Y and Z…* He interjected. > “What was the name of the club night?” Repercussion, I told him, dubious this would be of any use whatsoever. It seemed trivial to go back 15+ years to this party I ran. > “Oh! Of course I know about that! Next time just introduce yourself by "Repercussion"!” And so our conversation took a different turn, and flowed into 40 minutes of themes and ideas. We're recording the podcast episode this week and I think it's going to be great. But instead of sending a LinkedIn message about my company and the podcast, and instead of giving him the full spiel, I could have just introduced myself through a 2004 club night. *Repercussion* means absolutely nothing to most people. But it meant something to him. Even 15 years later, it’s easy to forget the value of those shared scenes, cultures, and language. There’s always more than one way to introduce yourself. ### Clunky Metal Boxes URL: https://www.howardgray.net/clunky-metal-boxes/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:55:35.000Z In the late 1950s, Sullivan County in Upstate New York had the most hotel rooms of any county in the entire United States. By the late 1970s, nearly all the hotel rooms had disappeared. What happened? Alongside some broader cultural shifts, there were two big technology-driven disruptions. The first was the rise of cheap flights. Working and middle class vacation seekers on the East Coast suddenly had many more choices within their budget. The second was less obvious. One product became sufficiently affordable and effective for vast numbers of hotels to purchase them - and having them installed was a game-changer. Air conditioning units transformed roasting hot resorts into far more palatable spaces for vacationing families. Did the engineers fine-tuning AC compressors and coils think their work would decimate the hospitality business in Upstate New York? Did the Sullivan County hotel and restaurant owners see turmoil coming via clunky metal boxes? Probably not. It’s easy to miss the second order effects of certain shifts and trends - but they’re often the ones most worth paying attention to. And as for Sullivan County? After a difficult couple of decades, it’s experiencing something of a renaissance. For a deep dive into entrepreneurship, hospitality, and the importance of local, check out my [Under the Current podcast with the founder of Foster Supply Hospitality, Sims Foster](https://www.howardgray.net/2021/03/12/under-the-current-podcast-13-sims-foster/) ### Going pro at Euro 2020 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/going-pro-at-euro-2020/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:58:40.000Z I don’t raise my voice very often, but the other day I yelled at someone relentlessly. He was involved in a football match you may have heard about. I feel embarrassed thinking about it again. His name is Bjorn. His own team were already knocked out of the tournament, but there he was in the final - as the referee. You probably know that while refs have a thankless task, they do get paid. For a game like this they’ll make several thousand euros. A referee like Bjorn is a pro - right? What you may not know is Bjorn really didn’t need to do it. He’s already made over €10m as the owner of a Dutch supermarket chain. The company is so successful it even sponsors Formula 1 star Max Verstappen. Why am I telling you this? First, you don’t have to be full-time to call yourself a professional. Second, being paid is not the same as being a professional. Being a pro is about work you continue to show up and do whether you need to, or want to. You can be a pro regardless of money. Third, professionals tend to have a certain empathy for those fellow travelers also doing the work. I qualified as a football referee was I was 14\. I did well over 100 games. The work was often rough, and sometimes I didn't get paid a penny, but I still showed up. It feels weird to say it, but I guess I was a pro. So I’m sorry for shouting at you, Bjorn. I may have never got close to being in your shoes, but I still should have acted like a fellow professional. ### “How did you land the gig?” URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-did-you-land-the-gig/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:22:31.000Z It sounds like a common question. Or is it? Last week, I was catching up with a friend. As we riffed with the gentle ease of two old-timers’ Tuesday tennis tune-up, I mentioned I’d just landed a new project. It was small, unremarkable, nothing to shout about. So I nudged the news over the net: light, lilting, loose-wristed . Back came that question, gently enough. “How did you land the gig?” I padded back a mumbling, single line response. She arrowed a cross-court zinger: “No, *how* did you land it?” And so a story unfurled: of a music festival, to a podcast, and a visit to a European city via a reshared Instagram post. There was a cold email, the former colleague, and a random workshop invitation. There was an 18 month pause, an unexpected LinkedIn message, and several steps more. As I recounted it back, we both noticed valuable themes, ideas, and reminders emerging. And even when I’d shared the story in full, there was more to explore. I should probably get the tennis shoes back on. So, how did you land the gig? ### Adventures… #55: Words at Play URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-55-words-at-play/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T19:15:52.000Z *Hello, and welcome along to another edition of* Adventures… *This monthly email digest seeks to give you extra fuel to do the work you want to do in the world, and shines a light on fresh opportunities for creative and entrepreneurial endeavours. It’s put together by me, Howard.* *If you’re not already subscribed, give this button a push:* [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) *Alright, let’s get into it…* --- ![How many languages are there in the world? | Ethnologue](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a7df8606-5d82-410e-ab44-e25b55180849_1027x636.png "How many languages are there in the world? | Ethnologue") Our planet’s spoken languages The new pitch deck was almost ready. I’d been working hard on it for a couple of weeks. Yet something was out place. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I shared my frustration with a new friend. His response was a fully remixed version, complete with a set of accompanying notes. As well as being bowled over by his generosity, I saw I’d made two big mistakes. First, assuming the audience spoke *exactly* the same language as me. Just a couple of misaligned words could completely throw them. Second, pushing in pieces of languages from elsewhere. It’s smart to tap into current trends, right? Sure, but this wasn’t language I actually used in my life. Some of it I didn’t even really believe in. Language is our principal form of communication, yet utilising it effectively is much tougher than it looks. There are now many thousands of languages out there: whether at a macro level via nations or territories; or within micro cultures of niche fandoms, emerging occupations, or our tightly-knit tribes of friends and family. As they continue to evolve, blend, and diffuse, all of us need to become better communicators. But how? A few clues can be found in a country eliminated from a big football tournament in agonising fashion (no, not England. Not yet, at least). ## **Stockholm Syndrome** ![Watch Stockholm Syndrome. Episode 3 of Season 1.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d6f7575c-fe11-4727-8283-c19d9f3b28e1_448x252.jpeg "Watch Stockholm Syndrome. Episode 3 of Season 1.") The Backstreet Boys lucked out, big time Episode three of the Netflix show ‘This is Pop’ visits Stockholm to uncover why Swedes have had such an outsized impact on popular music. The list of artists with deep Swedish connections behind their music is staggering: Britney Spears; The Backstreet Boys; Pink; The Weeknd; Ed Sheeran - to name just a few. And then there are homegrown talents like ABBA, Swedish House Mafia, and Zara Larsson. As the episode shared the stories of Swedish producers over the past four decades, I noticed four principles showing up repeatedly: 1. **Memorable and concise**: Melodies always came before lyrics, and finding memorable hooks was key. In fact, lyrics were often clipped - if not butchered - to fit the music. Prioritising hooks and melodies along with concise lyrics meant that even when grammar was out of sync (to be fair, Swedes aren’t native English speakers), the message still landed. 2. **Collaboration:** Collaboration consistently made the work better. Very few of the Swedish producers worked solo. In fact, they had a rotating cast of collaborators. Even Max Martin continues to collaborate with a wide range of other people. 3. **Jantelagen**. Not familiar with this Max Martin character? You almost definitely know his work: he’s the second biggest selling songwriter *ever*. Yet him and his peers don’t believe they’ve got it all figured out, or make the story about themselves. Instead, they still work quietly behind the scenes, creating ways for other people to shine, and seeing where the ride takes them. In English, there isn’t one specific word for this approach. In Swedish, there is. *[Jantelagen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law%5Fof%5FJante?ref=howardgray.net).* 4. **Experimentation and Play:** Even the most successful producers still bring a childlike mindset into the work. This can be hugely liberating. They try things out; make things up; possibly break some stuff along the way. Then they’ll take a break to play video games; chat to random people; head back to the studio at random hours. It won’t all work… but *something* will. ## **Mixed Media** A lot of our communication today goes against these principles. It abides by what we learned at school, or how big business tell us we should do things. Many modes are too serious, rigid, or verbose. Often, our communications don’t even *feel* like us. This combination can leave us - and our audience - feeling misunderstood, frustrated, or downright ignored. But it’s not too late to find ways forward. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/1e4cbcfd-7d51-4084-ad37-808d25e9a0cf_1624x874.png) Using mmhmm to spice up a presentation A swathe of new communication tools encourage experimentation, collaboration, and play: - Want to communicate more crisply with candidates you’re interviewing? [Try a voice note](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6803739664575434752/?ref=howardgray.net) - Putting together a presentation? [Inject your personality](https://www.wavetable.net/resources/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-with-mmhmm-and-zoom?ref=howardgray.net). - Wonder about your enunciation or flow? [Magically transcribe](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjkj8L31cDxAhXSk2oFHSKlCFoQFjAAegQICBAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.descript.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw0%5FBsnPao6SrZSn1SF4g3an) and read it back (beware: the number of ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ will be higher than you hope...) There are *dozens* of these tools emerging right now. And many of them are free to use. Language and communication - especially our words - matter. Of course, things that matter don’t always come easy: you’re reading the fifth draft of this email. But instead of all this being Hard Work, perhaps we can find more opportunity for Words at Play. Besides, communication is an infinite game. And infinite games are the ones most worth playing. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right. Just hit reply. Howard PS. Who (or what) are you liking in this area right now? I’d love to hear about them. PPS. I probably could have communicated all this better. --- # **01 Slices of Life** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/ab5d8ce7-ba3d-4d57-8e94-67248051907b_1732x856.png) This guy looks eerily familiar **[Farewell Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/technology/farewell-millennial-lifestyle-subsidy.html?ref=howardgray.net):** It was inevitable. Say goodbye to what Kara Swisher calls “assisted living for millennials”. Pair with Derek Thompson’s [prediction from 2019](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/say-goodbye-millennial-urban-lifestyle/599839/?ref=howardgray.net) ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Rather than the ongoing idolatry of the scale-up unicorns, how about more options to tap into the wisdom of slower, steadier, long-player businesses? ``` **[Survival is the new success](https://howardgray.net/2021/06/29/the-new-success/?ref=howardgray.net)**: A quick riff on why even the creator of *The Usual Suspects* manages his expectations. **[The Death Doulas](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/well/doulas-death-end-of-life.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: Doulas are commonly associated with birth. However, a friend who recently suffered a bereavement told me how valuable they found the support of what’s most easily described as a Death Doula. This piece features some of the people doing this challenging and important work. --- # **02 Entrepreneurial Endeavours** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b367028f-38e5-483e-997b-64a1ffae22f5_1494x752.png) **[Inside Bo Burnham ‘Inside’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZiSApqoI2g&ref=howardgray.net)**: This is a geeky but fascinating insight into Bo Burnham’s one-man comedy special on Netflix. Although you need to watch the show itself for this to make full sense, it’s inspiring and empowering to see what is now possible production-wise with less than $1000. **[Love the Work More](https://lovetheworkmore.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**[:](https://lovetheworkmore.com/?ref=howardgray.net) Speaking of $1000, that’s how much Cannes Lions charge for people to view the winning entries from their advertising & marketing awards. Two young creatives didn’t dig it, so they made a free website listing out every winner. I like this a lot: it’s lo-fi, straight to it, and cheeky. And on a meta level, it's not a bad bit of portfolio work for its two creators. **[DJ on a bike](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqP8aunScrdAcrUUQIOhI3Q/videos?ref=howardgray.net)**: How do you start a movement? Get on your bike. Dom Whiting has installed a DJ set up on his bicycle (following the theme, this can be done for well under $1000), and live streams to YouTube. Hundreds of people now cycle along with him, and hundreds of thousands watch online. This speaks to me: after all, it’s an *Entrepreneurial Slice of Life* with a *Jukebox*. **[The Trade Journal Co-operative](https://tradejournalcooperative.com/index.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: Who said print is dead? Here’s a service offering random trade journals delivered to your door once a quarter. --- ## **03 Career Fuel** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/e3ba209b-9085-4ba6-97ac-2490bf786d1e_2010x1090.jpeg) **[Principles You](https://principlesyou.com/assessments/pdp?ref=howardgray.net)**: *another* personality assessment? This one comes from renowned hedge fund dude Ray Dalio. It’s fairly dense, and mashes up a few other models plus Dalio’s own approach. I’m on the fence about how deep the insights are here, but hey it’s made by that billionaire guy who wrote that clever book loads of people pretended to finish. **[A story a day keeps the clouds away](https://howardgray.net/2021/06/30/a-story-a-day-keeps-the-clouds-away/?ref=howardgray.net)**: Here’s an effective way to keep depression and anxiety at bay: capturing very simple stories. **[Make classics not content](https://moretothat.com/make-classics-not-content/?ref=howardgray.net)**: Another good one from Lawrence Yeo - this time on focusing your energies. Applicable not just to content creation, but all flavours of projects. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Building new platforms for visual storytelling. Per the riff on new communications tools, I wonder which other visual styles can be used effectively…? ``` **[‘Creator’ vs ‘Influencer’](https://reallifemag.com/name-of-the-game/?ref=howardgray.net)**: I’ve never felt particularly easy around either of these words. Here’s a deep dive into who they really serve. Language, once again. --- # **04 Jukebox** *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time).* ![Ata Kak · It began in Ghana - Sónar Barcelona 2016](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b54edc3a-6f32-44a2-9f0e-09c49c0a930d_1600x938.jpeg "Ata Kak · It began in Ghana - Sónar Barcelona 2016") ### **[Front: Awesome Tapes From Africa](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6fjl9B0V4uzJ8HORZDKvEd?si=07b300034e224810&ref=howardgray.net)** I went back in on some [Ata Kak](https://www.factmag.com/2016/05/13/ata-kak-interview-awesome-tapes-from-africa/?ref=howardgray.net) this weekend, which led me once more to [ATFA](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwipqcjN-8HxAhWEW80KHRQpCBIQFjABegQIBhAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fawesometapesfromafrica.bandcamp.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw2WJvi1RHf%5FetGInkrwtv60): a label bringing African artists and their music to new audiences. Here’s their latest selection. ### **[Middle: Booka Shade - Essential Mix](https://soundcloud.com/blanche/essential-mix-booka-shade-02-july-2006?ref=howardgray.net)** Kickstarted by their breakthrough track ‘Body Language’, Booka Shade’s combo of flexible, fluid melodies and taut techno bridged an invisible gap. This Essential Mix reminds me of East London’s Shoreditch neighbourhood as it was veering from rough to smooth and back again, plus my long journeys on the night bus. ### **[Back: Jimi Hendrix - Live at Monterey Festival](https://open.spotify.com/album/6NdaU4JVYrQAxDOSrG0aPF?si=5loOaP2xSZ6cb0kUF9-vag&dl%5Fbranch=1&ref=howardgray.net)** For a birthday surprise, Jacinta took me to the Nowadays venue here in Brooklyn. There were no gigs that day, but they were showing a movie: Jimi Hendrix live at Monterey. It was astounding - he really was operating in a different dimension - communicating with a totally different language. Here’s the audio, but try and see the film if you can --- # **05 Footnotes** *Other things I’ve been doing this past month...* - **Watching**: Euro 2020 on ESPN’s ridiculous multi-view setup that prohibits any decent views of the game. Fail - **Listening**: To [Alec Baldwin’s ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiEze3SvcDxAhVpSDABHS0VB3sQFjALegQIBxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fheres-the-thing-with-alec-baldwin%2Fid472939437&usg=AOvVaw0ZU%5FzTrpcn9Xy9Zp64VDwx)*[Here’s the Thing](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiEze3SvcDxAhVpSDABHS0VB3sQFjALegQIBxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fheres-the-thing-with-alec-baldwin%2Fid472939437&usg=AOvVaw0ZU%5FzTrpcn9Xy9Zp64VDwx)*[ podcast](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiEze3SvcDxAhVpSDABHS0VB3sQFjALegQIBxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fheres-the-thing-with-alec-baldwin%2Fid472939437&usg=AOvVaw0ZU%5FzTrpcn9Xy9Zp64VDwx). He’s a truly excellent host - the crispness of the language is something to behold - **Writing**: Back in the groove. Especially those sketches and slices where the pen glides without complaint - **Teaching**: On an MBA program. Yup, a little ironic - **Socialising**: Two nights in a row (!). It was wonderful, but also completely exhausting. The second-order effects of the past year are bizarre --- ### **Thanks for reading...** If you want to support what I’m doing, I’d be delighted for you to join the conversation. Reply to the email, add a comment on my website, or ping me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/howard%5Fgray?ref=howardgray.net), or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardgray83?ref=howardgray.net). Tell me what resonated or what you’d add, remove, or modify. I’m grateful to everyone who tunes in - even the person who responded to a recent edition with *“Thanks Howard, but no one gives a f\*\*k”*. Now *that’s* some concise and memorable communication. ### Face/Off URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-first-sketch/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:18.000Z Here's one way to get people to turn their heads. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/06/image-1.png) ### Standing on set URL: https://www.howardgray.net/standing-on-set/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:27:26.000Z After he’d shot his scenes for the day, Alec Baldwin would retreat to the comforts of his private trailer. He did this for years, until one day another actor asked him something that caught him off-guard. Wouldn’t he want to be on set for the rest of the day’s action? Why not pull up a chair, be a part of it? Today, Baldwin doesn’t just hang out far more on set. Whenever he reads a script that grabs him, he asks himself a simple question. It goes something like this: > “Do I love this script so much I can see myself standing on the set for the entire shoot; being a witness to it all unfolding?” It’s a great way to frame decision making on all kinds of projects. Can we see ourselves being on set for the whole production - no matter how it unfolds? And for some of us: can we resist the temptation of the trailer? ### A story a day keeps the clouds away URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-story-a-day-keeps-the-clouds-away/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:17.000Z I struggle with depression sometimes. Admitting this publicly is probably not good for business. Then again, I’m a human and my business is all about humans. So I’ll take the risk, particularly because I want to share something I’ve found helpful to diffuse the dark clouds. I discovered this by accident a few weeks ago and it’s been wonderful. It’s also very simple. There are stories everywhere. In every place; every thing; every person; on every day. At the end of each day, ask yourself > “what was the most storyworthy moment of my day?” and write a few words. That’s it. This idea comes from a concept by Matthew Dicks called ‘Homework for Life’. It’s designed to help you get better at finding and telling stories, but I’ve found it has something magical that reconnects you with people, life, and the world. It’s quite the tonic when you feel your connection is lost. Here are a few of mine. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-17-at-5.30.39-PM.png) --- *(Note: I am not a mental health professional. If you are struggling then please seek one out)* ### Hiring: the voices in-between URL: https://www.howardgray.net/hiring-the-bits-in-between/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:24:42.000Z I first posted this little riff on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6803739664575434752/?ref=howardgray.net), and wanted to share it here: I’ve been interviewing new hires for the first time in a while. I have no idea if I’m doing it ‘right’ (very unlikely), but one new thing has made a big difference for both parties during the process: Exchanging short voice notes. Here's why. - Less pressure to 'perform' - Less tiring - More time-efficient - More natural - More responsive (especially in a small company where things change and evolve all the time) - More space and opportunity for interesting ideas, riffs, and questions In the interests of access and inclusivity, it’s worth noting (ahem) we’ve been offering this an option, not something that’s mandatory - but as a way to help create a more fluid, iterative approach it's been working well. ### Transforming 'average' URL: https://www.howardgray.net/transforming-average/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:30:46.000Z This morning I asked Jacinta what she was wearing. It looked fabulous. Something from a boutique perhaps? A well-known designer piece? A vintage gem? Nope. Straight off the shelf from H&M. It didn’t have the greatest design, or most stylish cut. It’s definitely not the most striking item on the site. In fact, this item of clothing is… well, pretty average. But she has a funny knack for that: making average clothes look good, and good clothes look great. A little adjustment here; pairing with a particular accessory there. It’s a skill. And it can show up in all kinds of places. The DJ Carl Cox has had a phenomonanally successful career spanning over 30 years. He’s rocked clubs and festivals around the globe, and to the trained ear his DJ style is unmistakeable. But listen to many of the tracks he plays in isolation, and you’ll wind up disappointed. They’re pretty average. Just ‘ok’. Part of Carl Cox’s success is in his ability make average records sounds good, good records sound great, and great records sound incredible. It could be a a little adjustment to the original; pairing it with complementary pieces; or finding the right environment and time to bring something back out into view. This isn’t to say we should settle for average. But it’s worth us asking ourselves how we can make average into good, and good into great. It’s a skill worth practicing. Most of the time, forcing ourselves to work with average is a handy constraint we can use. But the skill really pays off when ‘just ok’ is all we’ve got to work with. ### Two forms of form URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-forms-of-form/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:23:05.000Z It’s a TV show. A podcast. A blog post. A slide deck. If we’re making something, we probably already have a form in mind. We’ve already chosen, and so we crack on with it. Sometimes it works out beautifully. Other times we find ourselves trudging through the work, or even end up aborting before launch. To increase our chances of success, and to unearth something really worth working on, it pays to go a layer deeper. Within that form, what’s the form? Is the book a coffee table book with pictures, or a pocket-sized guide? Is the video with talking heads and b-roll, or narrated images? And in today’s world, there’s also the question of which other forms. Can this be reformed on Instagram? YouTube? As a PDF? Could it become a live event? Should it? And on and on. Form within the form within the form. If we only focus on one form of form, we’ll probably end up doing ourselves a disservice and create something that feels either too flat or too flabby. Going into the form within the form is much more work – it may even mean the first form changes completely – but it’s nearly always worth it. To help us figure this out, it’s probably worth bringing in the other ‘F’ word: Function. The who’s it for, and the what’s it for. But that’s something to talk about in another post. Or some other form. ### Flexibility & Lock-In URL: https://www.howardgray.net/flexibility-lock-in/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:02:57.000Z There’s a lot of opportunity for us to work with more flexibility. The last year has proved it. Technology has enabled much of this new-found flex: from Zoom to Slack; Figma to Airbnb. However, many of these enabling technologies also seek to create the opposite of flexibility. They seek to lock us into their system, their way of doing things. They are designed to create lock-in. The companies designing these products want the switching costs to be so painfully high that we don’t ever move away from them. Our data, concepts, ideas, and incomes are all intertwined within their interface. Lock-in is a competitive advantage for them, but for us it can be something else entirely. It restricts our movement, our mobility, our flex. There’s more than a hint of irony here. And there’s also tension. Perhaps the best way forward is to invest more time and energy into staying flexible for longer – sampling different options, not committing too fully, and forgoing a few efficiencies – before making a decision on which technologies to use. That way, the lock-in is just part of the deal, not an ugly constraint we end up resenting. ### Runway URL: https://www.howardgray.net/runway/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:27:49.000Z When going out and doing a new thing, people often talk about ‘runway’. Usually this term refers to the number of months of funding that’s available while the new thing isn’t generating any revenue. For example, if your living costs are $5k a month, and you have $20k available, you have 4 months of runway ($20 / $5k). You can afford to go 4 months without any income. This is an important concept to be aware of. However, as with many things in life, there’s also the story. Money talks, but the story around it can be even more persuasive. The story keeps pulling you back to client gigs, even when the runway is there. The story keeps you in the freelance game, instead of building something of your own. The story makes the runway feel much shorter – or much longer – than it actually is. Next time you’re thinking about runway, don’t forget the story you tell yourself. ### Can't write? Then speak URL: https://www.howardgray.net/my-writing-cheat/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:23:16.000Z Jerry Seinfeld says writing is the hardest thing in the world. He’s exaggerating, but not all that much. Writing can feel really hard. Here’s one way to help make it easier. - Start chatting to someone you know and trust - Get them to ask you some questions - Record your responses as a voice memo on your phone - Import the file into a transcription app (Otter.ai and Descript are both worth checking it out) - Find the best bits and tweak ‘em as needed (yes, this involves writing, but not too much) - Copy, Paste, Publish That’s about it. It probably sounds stupid, but this change in my approach to writing has made it feel so much easier to go from the agony of flashing cursor to a published bit. And yes, this post started as a voice note. ### Going back to the Old Oak URL: https://www.howardgray.net/going-back-to-the-old-oak/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:11:41.000Z You know those people who like to talk about how many books they’ve read this year? It’s ok, unclench your jaw. This post isn’t one of those humblebrags. I haven’t read a page in weeks. There’s certainly plenty of value in getting through a load of books. Books are wonderful. So are podcasts, documentaries, and that new awful reality show on Netflix (guilty). But once we’ve done them once, that’s usually it. Too often we’re missing something by always seeking what's next. This is especially the case with digital mediums. The constantly restocked algorithm means checked off episodes disappear in the blink of an eye. However, there’s a lot of value we miss when we don't go back to the ones we cherish: the modern classics that give us more each time. In his book ‘Hit Makers’, Derek Thompson talks about the concept of New Wine on Old Oak being key to what makes a hit become popular. The New Wine of novelty - a script, a star, a technology, a business model - is encased in the Old Oak of familiarity. A spin on this concept is the idea of *us* being the New Wine. The classics can give us more each time because they’re the Old Oak - the familiar material. We know certain parts by heart, and the concepts stay true in their permanent time capsule. Yet different elements open up new ways to see the world - new pathways fire in our minds. Because while the material is the Old Oak, a few parts of our mind is the New Wine. And that’s why these particular hits just keep on hitting. Which Old Oak do you want to go back to? (Inspired by my fourth listen to Seth Godin’s January 2019 appearance on The Moment with Brian Koppelman) ### The new success URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-new-success/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:15.000Z There used to be a cafe in the Lower East Side called *El Rey*. It was a tiny place, with a row of bar stools at the front that looked out directly at the street. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/2021/06/image.png) It was perfect for watching the world go by, and did a really good flat white coffee. Although (because?) it got some pretty rough reviews by the culinary media, I miss the place. The first time I went to El Rey was to meet one of the main people at a popular media/tech company. I can’t remember how I hustled my way into meeting him, nor much of what we talked about it, but there was one thing he said that I’ve carried with me ever since. As we told our respective origin stories, there were a few commonalities. One was we’d both been in the music industry - except he’d had a different vantage point through largely doing partnerships with various music companies. When I told him about the companies I’d run, I said I’d had successful exits, but was careful to mention they weren’t ‘exits’ in the way he probably thought. I’d walked away with maybe a year’s salary - at best. He laughed. For a second I thought he was going to mock my apparent success. But no. > “You survived in the music industry. That’s success in itself.” He knew what a tough game it was. Everyone wants to thrive. To thrive is success. But he knew survival was success. A couple of years later, the screenwriter and director [Chris Macquarrie made a similar point on The Moment podcast](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwij0JX34p7xAhXkmuAKHQ6JADYQFjAAegQIBRAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fchris-mcquarrie-11-06-19%2Fid814550071%3Fi%3D1000456066084&usg=AOvVaw2ulOsDSi7LXnrAnZwLt5lz). When asked about his success and what he was looking to do next in his career, he simply said: > “survival is the new success” Now, this is a guy who has been behind at least a half dozen enormous global hits. He knew that whatever place he found himself in, being able to survive and do the work was success in itself. Perhaps it’s worth us celebrating the new success. ### Looking through the project lens URL: https://www.howardgray.net/looking-through-the-project-lens/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T08:54:15.000Z Last week, my good pal Tom wrote [this excellent piece](https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/08/the-quarantined-independent/?ref=howardgray.net) to help people taking the independent career path through the times of pandemic. Such is the speed of change (especially now), I missed it on first release but for a couple of reasons I’m very glad I picked up on it First, each point is succinct, actionable, and contains a real-world example to help frame it. Second, I quickly realized that each of Tom’s 7 points map into a post idea I had brewing for a few days. And, at the [meta level](https://mailchi.mp/311e01cfd223/adventures-4906769?ref=howardgray.net), I could apply a couple of his suggestions into this post. --- Over the past few weeks I’ve had quite a few people getting in touch to catch up, exchange ideas, or just talk about the state of the world and what may be coming next. And I’ve been doing the same kind of outreach myself. No doubt, all of us are seeking. Many of these conversations have been with people who either got laid-off, or left their job just before the pandemic really hit. I believe we’ll see two shifts happen in the coming months: on one side we’ll see more people move towards self employment and entrepreneurship; and on the other a strong desire from many to obtain the most secure and stable full-time role they possibly can. This, in line with the acceleration the pandemic causes across all swathes of society, with result in the gutting of the middle of the market in just about every industry. For the people I’m speaking with who find themselves between things in their career, most are focused on the first of these options – the move to going it alone, at least for the short-medium term. As I’ve spent much of my working life doing my own thing as an independent (and consecutively so for the last 5 years), I’m often asked what suggestions I have for stepping out into the great unknown – particularly in these challenging times. I wish I had a silver bullet, but alas I don’t. However, the one place I keep returning to is the last point in Tom’s post, and which all his suggestions point towards: projects. A project can mean different things to different people, has different meaning in different situations. There’s no one definition, but here’s my take: A project can be infinite, but far more often is finite. It’s something you crafted, put your elbow grease into, got stuck on, and stuck into. Part (or all) of it didn’t work. A project has part of your identity deeply woven into it. You did because you chose to, not because you had to. You weren’t a cog in the machine. You helped design, build, and maintain the machine – if you even wanted there to be a machine in the first place. A project can be done alone, but it’s often better together. You can be an instigator, an impresario, or a contributor. You can be hacker, hustler, hipster – or all three if you choose. And a project is something you can point to and say *‘I made this happen*‘ – no matter if you had false starts, malfunctions, bumps, scrapes, scratches… or even failure to launch. Because you still made *something*, and you most definitely **learned** something. --- ### The project lens I’ve always had a hard time wrestling with [labels](https://howardgray.net/2019/05/15/labels-in-labels-out/?ref=howardgray.net) *(am I self-employed? an entrepreneur? something else? do they – can they – stop and start?)*. Perhaps a better way to think of what I do is through the lens of projects. And for those now seeking – figuring out where they stand in the world, where their skills can be best applied, who they want to be next – taking a project-based approach may be the best way forward. As Tom suggests, now is a time to collaborate, to write about the things to work on and pique your curiosity, to make the process you employ more easily visible. It’s a time to go subterranean (if you have the means) in order to see and then be found again. Projects can give us all of this and more. A project may not be *the thing*. It may not even get us the next gig, or give us that unlock we’re seeking. What a project really does is provide clues. Sometimes these clues are subtle, but we must seek them out. Because -eventually – they’ll lead us to the answers. [Here’s a list of all the projects](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DkaxDzExPM2uRyFXbk%5FLwGfL1QlevoSckdjCZOCcrU4/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net) I’ve worked on over the last decade or so. I’m sure I’m missing a few, and I’ve left out paid client projects – all of the projects here are things I started myself. Listing these out was a surprisingly cathartic and sometimes cringe-inducing process. The best bit? I uncovered a few new clues and answers along the way. First, 3 things I’ve learned (which I’m sharing here as a reminder for myself as much as anyone else) - Trust your gut; I’ve abandoned things too early where my hunch was later proven right - Make it one size smaller than you need; it’ll probably come out just right - Even a small injection of energy and insight from a collaborator can lift a project (and your spirits, your thinking, and your approach) like you’d never believe Which project are you going to contribute to next? --- ### Adventures… #54: Windows to the world URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-54-windows-to-the-world/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:29.000Z **Hello, and welcome along to another edition of Adventures…** **This monthly email digest seeks to give you fresh fuel to do the work you want to do in the world, and shines a light on opportunities for new creative and entrepreneurial endeavours. It’s put together by me, [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/).** **If you’re not already subscribed, just gently caress the button below.** [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) **Ok. Let’s get into it...** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/bf8da827-a547-4851-92e1-30bb0cda801a_1773x897.jpeg) Channel 4 had a problem. Their newest show was already on air, but the star presenter had gone AWOL. Calls unanswered. No one home. Deadlines looming. Innovative programming and a willingness to go where others wouldn’t had enabled to Channel 4 to stand out from the UK’s other broadcasters. This new show continued that trend: it was cosmopolitan, fast-paced, and featured never-seen-before content. But it had a tiny budget. A big-name replacement presenter was out of the question. The executives went back to the list of those they’d already rejected. Among them was a 26-year-old with almost no subject matter expertise, and absolutely zero broadcasting or journalism experience. However, he did have one thing going for him: speaking Italian. A couple of weeks later, in September 1992, junior producer James Richardson found himself in Rome. He was the new face of ‘*[Gazzetta Football Italia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaLQQINTjvA&ref=howardgray.net)*’. Richardson had his work cut out: Channel 4 had zero pedigree in football, there were no sets, barely any crew, and the show’s title was an ode to his short-lived predecessor. With most of the money sucked up by licensing the highlights footage from the previous weekend’s Italian football matches, Richardson had no option but to film the rest of the show outside a few cafes. He’d sit with a cappuccino or gelato, translate the Italian sports newspapers, and serve up some dry witticisms before setting up the next match clip. And aside from a couple of quick skits around the city, that was pretty much it. ![Gazzetta Football Italia - Misc Other Fitba Chat - The Pie Shop](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d2cf64e4-3346-4c7e-8a8c-378a5c9756bb_484x343.jpeg "Gazzetta Football Italia - Misc Other Fitba Chat - The Pie Shop") Against the odds, *Gazzetta* became a hit - and it was partly in thanks to that embarrassingly low budget. Viewers didn’t just get a first glimpse into the football of Italy - they also caught a glimpse of its culture. To hundreds of thousands of British teenagers and young adults, *Gazzetta* \- complete with its bitesize dives into Italian life and Richardson’s deft Anglo-Italian wordsmithing - was the height of sophistication. It opened up a portal to something new. ### Different Lenses A couple of years later, Channel 4 repeated the trick with another savvy sports magazine show for Saturday mornings: [NBA 24/7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U4YCoO33Xo&ref=howardgray.net). Layering in music, film, and fashion, viewers were transported to Madison Square Garden and the streets of San Antonio; they got the scoop on the latest streetwear brands and fresh cuts of Queensbridge hiphop. The show even helped break artists like [The Chemical Brothers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnBsvu72kY&ref=howardgray.net). Both *Gazzetta* and *24/7* were focused on sports - but they were also windows to the world. Over the next 10 years, much of TV shifted to highly polished productions, before the explosion of YouTubers and their authentic at-home vibe. Today, we’re about to go full circle. The last year has helped us become more global, yet also more local. Our windows to the world have multiplied, but the apertures have narrowed. We can see into rooms we couldn’t before, but it’s difficult to get a sense of real perspective. Meanwhile, big broadcasters prefer to take us far, far away into completely different worlds. What’s next? I hope a different lens once again - telling stories that matter that the mainstream miss. Global and Local valued equally. Two very different outlets headed in this same direction are [Peter Santenello](https://www.youtube.com/c/PeterSantenello/playlists?ref=howardgray.net) and [Rest of World](https://restofworld.org/?ref=howardgray.net). ![What Hasidic Women Have To Say (eye-opening experience!) 🇺🇸 - YouTube](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/e66f8a5d-6601-4085-9d95-7e7d34ce9d20_1280x720.jpeg "What Hasidic Women Have To Say (eye-opening experience!) 🇺🇸 - YouTube") Santenello’s one-man show with a GoPro takes in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Ukraine; plus neighborhood scenes in NYC, Miami, and Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Rest of World doesn’t have much in the way of resourcing issues when it dives into new technology emerging from Nigeria, Vietnam, or Brazil - it’s helmed by the daughter of Google billionaire Eric Schmidt. Yet both are seeking stories that matter in a world we’re constantly trying to make sense of. Although the internet has enabled us to connect more than we could have previously ever imagined, we need these different kinds of portals to help us see what’s out there. Whether it’s as profound as questioning our convictions on a culture, or as simple as being emboldened to try espresso for the first time - the windows to the world matter. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what which windows you’re looking through right now. Just hit reply. Howard --- # 01: Career Fuel **[Why all-remote is for everyone (maybe)](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/08/15/all-remote-is-for-everyone/?ref=howardgray.net)**: This post is a couple of years old, but feels timely to share as there’s a lot of conversation about what’s next for offices and teams. Gitlab (obviously) think all-remote is for everyone, but I’m having a hard time believing them. I like the argument for geography-agnostic opportunity, and their [handbook](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/tips/?ref=howardgray.net) is very well put together, but something about it feels a bit… well, clinical. Maybe I’m just a maladjusted scruff. I’d love to get your take on this (remote work, not me being a scruff). **A triple header from the desk of me**: Writing hasn’t come easily this year, but I sense the groove returning. Here are 3 short riffs from the past week that flowed out of me surprisingly smoothly: [the story behind runway](https://howardgray.net/2021/05/26/runway/?ref=howardgray.net); [making average into great](https://howardgray.net/2021/06/01/better-than-average/?ref=howardgray.net); and [staying flexible](https://howardgray.net/2021/05/27/flexibility-lock-in/?ref=howardgray.net) --- # 02: Entrepreneurial Endeavours ![Ari Emanuel](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8af710c2-252a-4263-9040-d7b2c4e4d8cb_1870x2560.jpeg "Ari Emanuel") **[Ari Emanuel takes on the world](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/ari-emanuel-takes-on-the-world?ref=howardgray.net):** A (very) long-read profile of the bombastic co-CEO of Endeavor, including a morsel on how his psychiatrist was the tipping point to starting a new company. My highly reductive one-line summary: the game is now in IP more than talent. (thanks to Tom W for putting this on my radar) **Underrated assets:** In line with this month’s football theme, perenially-modestBrentford got promoted to the English Premier League last week. The key to their success? Data and gambling expert Matthew Benham - also owner of another minnow turned major player: **[Danish club FC Midtjylland](https://breakingthelines.com/data-analysis/how-data-analysis-won-fc-midtjylland-a-title-and-more/?ref=howardgray.net)**. And N’Golo Kante, the **[engine powering Chelsea’s Champions League win](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2704137-finding-ngolo-kante-the-men-who-discovered-the-pfa-player-of-the-year?ref=howardgray.net),** was plucked from the French third division based on analysis of certain attributes that others didn’t value. *Moneyball* in action. **[The Gift Economy](https://ungated.media/article/gift-economy/?ref=howardgray.net)**: I’ve been hovering around this concept for a while. Here’s Rob Hardy’s bit on why he’s shifted all his work to be gift-based. Look out for some gifts in next month’s edition of *Adventures...* --- # 03: From last time... Last month’s dispatch took a look at depression and anxiety. It broke the *Adventures…* record for the most ever replies, and also the most ever unsubscribes. Ouch. However, last month’s bit also highlighted the joy of play and being childlike. Liz Gilbert talks about this in her lovely book ‘Big Magic’: > *“After the Australian writer, poet and critic Clive James encountered an enormous failure (a play he wrote for the London stage was criticized harshly, ruined his family financially and cost him some close friends), he fell into a dark state of depression for a long time.* > > *Finally, his young daughters interrupted his grieving process and asked their father to make their shabby old secondhand bicycles look nicer. He reluctantly took on this project, painted the bicycles and added little stars. He painted hundreds of colorful stars and when the bicycles were finished the girls were thrilled. Other kids in the neighborhood also wanted their bicycles painted that way and James spent several weeks painting tiny stars on every kid’s bicycle in the area.* > > *As he was painting the bicycles something inside him was healing and when the last bicycle was finished he felt so good he thought ‘I shall write about this one day’.* > > *In that moment he was free.”* It turns out the heart of this is a concept called [Combinatory Play. Some guy called Einstein called Combinatory Play “the essential feature in productive thought”](https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/08/14/how-einstein-thought-combinatorial-creativity/?ref=howardgray.net). That’ll do me. — **Corrections & Apologies** - Last month’s Jukebox had the wrong Grace Jones album link. Before a livid Grace shows up at my front door, [here’s the correct version - deep and dubby](https://open.spotify.com/album/35dUEQ9es36naMrZylA4gP?si=EAZxWzBvRHih6FlnwjlU4g&ref=howardgray.net) - There are no *Opportunities for Adventure* in this month’s edition. I did have a bunch of them, but they felt a bit trite. Next time… --- # 04: Culture ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/79c6be96-3de1-44bc-9c2f-34e545ed1c28_1291x843.png) **[Generation Z on their post-covid future](https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/jun/02/so-many-revolutions-to-lead-europe-generation-z-on-their-post-covid-future?ref=howardgray.net)**: This is well worth checking out. 50 young Europeans share their hopes and fears for a post-pandemic world. Spoiler alert: most of them aren’t too positive about it, and the mental health crisis is real. **[We need more public space for teen girls](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-28/we-need-more-public-space-for-teen-girls?ref=howardgray.net):** They’re too big, too loud, and too old for playgrounds; too young, too loud, too broke for restaurants, bars and stores. This Bloomberg bit goes behind the scenes of a new design movement. --- # 05: Jukebox *A selection of music from the Front (now), the Middle (the forgotten recent past), and the Back (way back in the time)* ![Marvin Gaye Estate Releases 'What's Going On' Visual Album for 50th Anniversary - Opera News](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/14f53ae1-de16-45e3-97c5-e6098c1f95bd_1280x720.jpeg "Marvin Gaye Estate Releases 'What's Going On' Visual Album for 50th Anniversary - Opera News") ### Front: [Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On” - 50th anniversary visual album](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDK7TiEiMOI&list=PLKb94wjd-C5sxt9Wg-XnK%5F8y-f6BGPfSt&ref=howardgray.net) Yeah, ok, it’s technically not new. But it’s wonderful. ### Middle: [Foals - Total Life Forever](https://open.spotify.com/album/670h50t8E3LwP2bGqxGi6E?si=x39WkVZoRf2vv4GBuWVOLw&ref=howardgray.net) This album came to mind as I was walking through a sunny Brooklyn the day after NYC’s Covid restrictions lifted. Total Life Forever, indeed. ### Back: [Roy Ayers vibes battle at Ronnie Scott’s, London](https://youtu.be/1dJUpB2m2WQ?ref=howardgray.net) Here’s one of my favorite *ever* bits on YouTube (yes, a huge claim): Roy Ayers with his percussionist Dwight Gassaway back in 1988\. This is packed with stagecraft, skill, tension, joy… and well, vibes. --- # **06: Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Transferring this newsletter off Substack to my own site; next month’s edition should come to you in wonderful technicolour from the Howard Gray mainframe - Interviewing new hires, and [testing out some new techniques along the way](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6803739664575434752/?ref=howardgray.net) - Wrangling with sharing my thoughts via YouTube. Resistance in play once more - Dropping out of an education program. At least I’m both ironic and consistent - Watching Barry Jenkins’ excellent new show ‘The Underground Railroad’ - Receiving a handmade bear in the mail. Long arms, pale body, slight paunch. Yup, it’s a spitting image. Thanks Mum - he’s wonderful. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/cbaf27d6-fc0b-4171-bab1-bb1c56b2f0f5_600x800.jpeg) ### A trip to Barcelona, and the hint I didn't take URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-trip-to-barcelona-and-the-hint-i-didnt-take/ Last updated: 2026-04-23T17:44:28.000Z In 2008 I was working at a digital agency in London. A digital agency creates stuff for brands – usually campaigns, sometimes websites and products too. But all of it digital. I found the work pretty interesting, but what I was really enchanted by was travel and festivals. There was one in particular that caught my eye, Sonar in Barcelona. They had quirky branding, alternative music, a new technology showcase, and a whole bunch of offshoot events around the city. Not to mention all the sun, sea, food, and cultural energy that Barcelona offers. I wanted to go. This was 2008\. I was 24\. I had no idea. And I had zero money. Not many industry connections. No 20 year relationship with the festival director. Still, I wondered how I could find a way to go. I knew the agency paid for people to go to conferences sometimes. Perhaps I could try that? No. I was really junior, they didn’t bankroll just anyone to go to stuff. Somehow though, I convinced them to let me attend. Fully covered, for a whole week, at one of Europe’s most crazy festivals. Here’s how – and also the hidden why. --- I didn’t go to my boss like you normally would. Instead, I went to someone completely different. Because the company were a digital agency, some of their team were pretty into emerging tech. I could see the angle wasn’t the conference, and it definitely wasn’t the hotel rooftop pool parties. The angle was the hypermedia and tech element. So I went to the person running the emerging tech stuff. But that wasn’t going to be enough. Aligning festival track and job role would not be sufficient for such a request. So, I suggested I’d make a video of what I learned and share it with the team when I got back. Miraculously, she said yes. I got my Sonar ticket and travel fully paid for, and bunked down at a friends place. I managed to do the whole weekend on about 300 euros of my own dosh. (there are a few tales from that Sonar week, but that’s for another time). And I made the video, using the camcorder I’d bought years before and had left in the dust. I went to the conference and cafes, beach parties and art galleries. Somehow the camera didn’t get smashed, lost, or stolen. When I got home I spent ages editing the footage I’d collected. I spliced in b-roll, little interviews I’d made, demos of some of the tech I’d found, and of course some music. I spent hours and hours on it. Time disappeared. A few weeks later, I came through on my promise. I played the video in a meeting where a lot of the trendy digital types were present. The response was… mmm. Cool. Yeah. Nice one. Thanks. But nothing more. Now, the video wasn’t great. And it wasn’t bad. But the response didn’t match the effort of filming each day, and the painstaking edit. I didn’t feel crushed, yet I still felt crumpled. Of course, I knew the response shouldn’t have mattered. But humans aren’t rational, and neither am I. It was years until I made another video. Years. --- Why am I telling you all this? A few reasons. First, people will often say no first time round. This is worth remembering. Second, give people a reason to say yes. Give them an incentive. Give them an artifact. Give them new information to help make a different decision. As the late Zig Ziglar said, changing someone’s mind is very hard – but it becomes plenty easier when you provide them with new information. But the third reason is the real point here. Video was a thing for me. I just forgot. I buried it. It was a hint I didn’t take. Even in a world that very soon after 2008 became video first, I *still* didn’t take the hint. And the hint had been hinting at me way before that: - The school project I remember most vividly? Making a video. - A side project at college I spent ages on? Making a video. - Oh, and my favorite place to spend my time when I was 9? Hanging out in the local video rental store. So, I’m back. [Making videos](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiu1bqOIiSJDrZfjNZgmabg?ref=howardgray.net). It still feels awkward and tense – especially being in the middle as for all of these projects that came before – the Sonar video included – I wasn’t in front of the camera. But I’m here. Finally I’ve taken the hint. What’s the hint you’re relieved you took? And what’s the hint you haven’t taken, but something inside knows you must? ### Adventures #53: The Momentum Machine URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-53-the-momentum-machine/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:29.000Z Holidays are a chance to decompress, have fun, relax. And rest. Except, holidays are where I get depressed. During 90% of holidays in the last 5 or so years, I’ve become deeply miserable at some stage. It doesn’t matter what or when. Beach hut or boutique hotel. Christmas or Thanksgiving. Quick jaunt or big adventure. What an ungrateful little toad, you may be thinking. You’re right. I’m lucky enough to take occasional leisure and time off, sometimes traveling to distant places. For sure, not everyone can do this. Privilege oozes from my amphibious pores. But, still, I get depressed on holiday. Why?! I’ve been trying to figure it out for a while. I wonder if a pair of toddlers may hold an answer. — Last week I went out of the city with a few fully vaccinated friends, plus two nearly two-year-olds. All was well in our little countryside house. Until day 4. The black cloud rumbled. Mid-morning pseudo-nap. Doomscrolling phone nothingness. Sentences became sagging sacks of cement. My eyes glazed into the middle distance. If you’ve ever felt depressed, you probably know it’s hard to describe your feelings. And you don’t remember much of what occurs in the dark time, either. This time though, I had some insights - courtesy of those two toddlers. First, the value of routine. And, second, the importance of The Schedule. (Not ‘a schedule’. *The* Schedule.) — The routine and the schedule may sound boring, but they’re vital: without them, mayhem ensues and momentum disappears. But they’re not just the key to childrearing success; they’re also key to adulting. For me, being on vacation too often highlights all the things *not yet done*. The world moves ahead while I stay still. This time, I knew better. I had a plan: write a few blog posts. Film a couple of videos. Clear the inbox. Read that book. The laptop; the notebook; even studio lights and 2 tripods were packed. Best intentions bundled in. But while I had a plan, I didn’t pack my routine. And I didn’t adhere to a schedule - let alone *the* schedule. The kids had theirs precisely designed, yet I hadn’t even made a sketch. Taking on that project list without these tools? I didn’t stand a chance. The black cloud was inevitable. #### **Chasing Momentum** In case you’ve been waiting for this month’s now-obligatory 80s movie quote (I know I have), here’s Tom Berenger aka Sgt Barnes from *Platoon*: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/4d31174c-97e7-43a3-a0ef-93e44947c75e_720x405.png) Don’t mess with the Berenger > *“When the machine breaks down,* we *break down.* > > *And I’m not going to allow that from any of you. Not one.”* These words are as applicable to a machine of one as a platoon of many - if not more so. Maybe like me, you’ve always resisted the machine: contorted against it; tried to find ways around, under, over, or through. But this isn’t the industrial machine of dated education or old school corporations. This machine creates momentum - and the routine and the schedule are at its core. Momentum is what I’m chasing. It’s 3 videos created in one day. Quick wit, not a nonresponse. Rolling into what’s next with vibes and vibrancy. The importance of momentum was made clear when a close collaborator recently pointed out to me: > *“you’re not so good as a creature at rest”.* A state of rest - the tendency to remain unchanged - is also known as inertia. And when inertia is present, the quest for momentum becomes even more elusive. What happens when the momentum machine is inert and stuck in neutral? When there’s no routine or schedule to fuel it - yet the engine of the mind just keeps on revving? Yup, those toxic emissions of depression begin. The dark clouds brew. --- The following morning, the routine and the schedule were still adrift. But so was the plan and the project list. My whirring mind switched to OFF. The momentum machine powered down. Instead, I helped make lunch. Kicked a ball about. Played with the kids. I didn’t really think; I just *did*. Just like them. I was a creature at rest. No routine, no schedule. No to-do list. No narrative. None of it. I may not be particularly great as a creature at rest, but that’s ok. Because I sure do need to be one sometimes. Perhaps you do, too. The key is to *know* when you’re resting. Don’t kid yourself. And let out the inner kid in yourself. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. I respond to every email (albeit a little more slowly when I’m resting) [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/) PS. I’ve never written about this topic before (and very nearly didn’t hit send). Thanks for making it this far. --- ## **01: Career Fuel** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/e8f669ce-cfdf-44c8-9067-af00b8180707_904x486.png) **[Career navigation made better](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**: Speaking of momentum, we recently released a big update to our career navigation portal [Fondo](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net). In a rapidly changing world of work, career navigation is way harder than it should be. Fondo offers you personalized insights about yourself, a suite of career design tools, plus connections to industry experts to guide you to where you want to go next. [Check it out >](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net) **[Languishing is the dominant emotion of 2021](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: Here’s yet another great bit from Wharton professor Adam Grant. My wife Jacinta says she sees a bit of him in me. Other than the yawning gaps in talent, intelligence, credibility, productivity, and hair, I completely agree. (Pair this with [Austin Kleon on why we’re not languishing, but dormant](https://austinkleon.com/2021/04/26/im-not-languishing-im-dormant/?ref=howardgray.net)… aka creatures at rest) **[Welcome to the YOLO economy](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/technology/welcome-to-the-yolo-economy.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: This is a fascinating trend, but also tricky. Many essential workers aren’t in a position to make these leaps, and this bit from the comments really jumped out at me (especially the phrase at the end): > *“…this pandemic has turned a spotlight on the gross inequities in our country, and the widening spectrum of living experiences amongst our citizens. My generational peers seemed to have missed the lessons that I've picked up through this experience. Instead they seem to be further distancing themselves from the broader society - leaning \*harder\* into their privilege to pursue a "good vibes only" lifestyle of toxic positivity”* --- ## **02: Learning <> Doing** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/1c52775b-3f46-4c8f-b428-9884737fe7db_1060x706.jpeg) As *Adventures…* will continue to focus in on career navigation and entrepreneurial endeavors, this “Learning <> Doing” section has now largely taken up residence over at [Wavetable](https://wavetable.ck.page/dispatch?ref=howardgray.net). [Sign up ](https://wavetable.ck.page/dispatch?ref=howardgray.net)to get fresh insights into learning and education each week, plus [free weekly co-workng sessions.](https://wavetable.net/co-work?ref=howardgray.net) As a last hurrah though, here’s something I published last week (after taking just the 6 months to complete it). **[Why the future of learning will look a lot like Peloton >](https://howardgray.net/2021/04/22/fitness-and-education-from-irl-to-url/?ref=howardgray.net)** ``` Opportunity for Adventure: There are no less than 8 included in the article :) ``` --- ## **03: Entrepreneurial Endeavours** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/0101e754-0097-4e0e-a5a8-d9867761c21b_697x376.png) I’ve been spending more time building than curating this month, but this piece on **[rethinking cultural expectations of entrepreneurship](https://dangerouslyawesome.com/10k-independents-project?ref=howardgray.net)** is well worth digging into (and closely links to the stuff I’ve been working on). ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Creating better ways to bridge the gap between successful independent/solopreneur and 'proper' company with employees. This gap is way larger than people think ``` --- ## **04: Jukebox** This month’s selection is one of my favourite combos of new, old, and somewhere inbetween...hope you enjoy. ![Unmasking Their Power: DiS Meets GOAT / In Depth // Drowned In Sound](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/9f173653-a058-4ebd-88d2-df4a7fe487b4_512x291.jpeg "Unmasking Their Power: DiS Meets GOAT / In Depth // Drowned In Sound") ### **Front: [GOAT](https://goat.bandcamp.com/album/requiem-single-lp-edition?ref=howardgray.net)** From last time: *“Howard, please can you share some psychedelic experimental rock fusion by a flock of mysterious masked individuals in the outer reaches of Northern Sweden?”* Ok, no one said this. But regardless, here’s the latest album from GOAT. Thanks to my Dad for tipping me off on this one. ### **Middle**: [Prince at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame](https://time.com/4314151/prince-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame/?ref=howardgray.net) There are guitar solos and then there’s Prince just being... well, Prince. ![Album Review: Grace Jones - Hurricane](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/4b90c83b-6358-4235-b3bc-abde69e92f5a_1031x580.jpeg "Album Review: Grace Jones - Hurricane") ### **Back:** [Grace Jones - Hurricane](https://open.spotify.com/album/0H1EGulxBHNXBOOjgrVMei?si=5x2nVWniQVmd%5FGpeeIOjVw&ref=howardgray.net) I saw Grace Jones play at Lovebox in London in (I think) 2008\. It was summer, I’d just moved to Hackney from being stuck deep in South London and everything felt fresh, exciting, and vital. Unsurprisingly, her set was a vampish tour de force. I had no idea about this album then, but Jacinta put it on the other day and it’s a real treat. --- ## **05: Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Getting the [Wavetable website live](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). Jazzy - [Nearly being crushed by a tree](https://www.instagram.com/p/CN-dyIwnhWe/?ref=howardgray.net) - Making a bunch of videos for next month’s Career Fuel - Reading this fascinating dive into the [Enneagram Type 5](https://medium.com/@imc0897/observing-growth-investigating-ideas-for-growing-as-an-enneagram-type-5-34126c723430?ref=howardgray.net) - Eating way too much cheese ### Fitness and Education: from IRL to URL URL: https://www.howardgray.net/fitness-and-education-from-irl-to-url/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:26:42.000Z ### *8 lessons for the new era of learning* Give your social media timelines a cursory scroll and it probably won’t be long until you’re cajoled to take on a Workout, Sprint, HIIT, or Bootcamp. But a growing number of these promoted posts aren’t pushing your local gym or a fancy new wellness brand: they’re from educators. Sign up for a weekend data science bootcamp from General Assembly or Flatiron School. Enrol in a short-form sprint operated by Section 4, the startup founded by NYU professor Scott Galloway. Take a workout with ad industry magazine Contagious or strategy collective Sweathead (yup – even their name has a fitness connection). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/Frame-1-10-1024x302.png) This positioning makes sense on a number of levels. We all know that neither learning or working out tend to come easy. Being physically and mentally fit are both attractive, aspirational traits. And as long as they’re not causing damage, when we find these activities tough they’re more likely to be effective and rewarding. But the relationship between the fitness and education sectors runs far deeper than cute analogies and sponsored Instagram posts. For those in both traditional and alternative forms of education there’s much to learn – and from one company in particular. ## **The leader of the connected fitness boom** In less than a decade, New York-based fitness company Peloton has gone from a quirky idea raising some cash on Kickstarter to a multi-billion dollar business blazing a trail on multiple fronts. The company started life in 2012, when former Barnes & Noble e-commerce executive John Foley wanted to figure out a way to bring fitness classes into his home. His solution was a technology-driven exercise bike. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/Peloton-Kickstarter-1024x545.png) Although the company’s range of offerings have evolved since those early days, the core elements behind Foley’s first product still remains in place today: - hardware (an internet-enabled exercise bike or treadmill) - software (including a ton of data and gamification), and - content (livestream and on-demand classes led by human instructors) Beginning as an offering exclusively for the affluent, in the 12 months before COVID struck Peloton had – to a degree, at least – begun to democratise their model with initiatives like payment plans. Then, as pandemic conditions pushed a big, fat dollop of consumer spending to at-home fitness solutions, the company’s growth exploded. The combination of hardware, software and content, along with deft execution and handy market conditions has dramatically accelerated both the company’s user base and its stock price. For the 3-month period ending Dec 31, 2020, Peloton’s revenue grew 128% to $1.06 billion – up from $466.3 million a year earlier. That’s a lot of bikes now taking pride of place in living rooms, bedrooms, and basements. In this connected fitness boom, there’s been a clear demarcation of winners and losers. Along with Peloton, the likes of [Mirror](https://napkinmath.substack.com/p/the-future-of-fitness-lululemon-buys) (acquired by Lululemon for a cool $500m) plus fast-scaling new entrants including Playbook, Tonal, Hydrow, and [Liteboxer](https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/14/liteboxer-the-peloton-for-boxing-enters-the-ring/?ref=howardgray.net) appear to be forging ahead. Meanwhile, recent IRL darlings like Barry’s and Soulcycle have been pushed to the sidelines. We can break down the formula behind the success of this new wave of fitness companies into 8 key components. In no particular order: 1. **Classes** 2. **Content** 3. **Talent** 4. **Community** 5. **Technology** 6. **Location** 7. **Brand** 8. **Vertical Integration** In this post we’re going to look at how these 8 elements driving the boom in connected fitness will also transform education. To get warmed up, we’ll kick off with a quick tour of where the education sector is at today. But before that, a few quick notes: - Arguably, education is something done *to you*, and learning is something you actively enrol *into* (I prefer the latter). However, for ease, I use the words ‘education’ and ‘learning’ interchangeably in this piece - This post focuses mainly on adult education, but plenty of the ideas inside the 8 factors can be applied to K-12 and higher ed too - For each of the 8 factors, I’ve included an ‘Opportunity for Adventure’ if you’re looking to build something in this realm. To get even more Opportunities for Adventure, you may want to join my newsletter, handily titled ‘[Adventures…](https://www.howardgray.net/newsletter)’ - Music listened to during the writing of this piece: [Bicep](https://open.spotify.com/album/1bx7sNUpVB9fQ7QhcVZsUV?si=6MkNdrKmQaCJJvC-Rd4xpg&ref=howardgray.net), [Depeche Mode](https://open.spotify.com/album/5g3Yi15plTSMaq6tYiuw8p?si=0ArWwmzbQLS6BZIr12xYjw&ref=howardgray.net), Sasha (‘[Involver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECNEXh6AziA&ref=howardgray.net)’ and ‘[LuzOscura](https://soundcloud.com/openlabradio/luzoscura-002-sasha?ref=howardgray.net)’), [Gigi Masin](https://open.spotify.com/artist/0dCVhSVXD9JhJh2bTySJZx?si=xDKEjYSKSMChymdh-tZoZA&ref=howardgray.net) Ok! Let’s get into it… --- ## **Education getting into shape** There’s a lot of excitement about the education space right now – understandably so. After being seen as a fringe area for big-name investors, EdTech – the world of education tech startups – is suddenly hot. VC investment in this realm has increased enormously, with [over $16bn](https://www.holoniq.com/notes/16.1b-of-global-edtech-venture-capital-in-2020?ref=howardgray.net) committed to startups in 2020. To put this into context, the global fitness industry is pegged as being worth around $100bn (albeit with some niches being excluded from this figure). Meanwhile, research firm HolonIQ expects the global education market to be worth a gargantuan $7tn by 2025.. The now-$75bn EdTech market isn’t just about specific solutions for schools, though. There are many hundreds of startups focused on everything from pre-school learning and higher education, through to professional development, corporate training, and post-retirement offerings. And adjacent to the direct education market there are a plethora of tools like Zoom, Mmhmm, Miro and Menti that – whether by accident or design – are enabling fresh types of learning experiences to emerge. Here, we’re just starting to see what [Scott Belsky calls ‘the interface layer](https://medium.com/positiveslope/the-interface-layer-when-design-commoditizes-tech-e7017872173a?ref=howardgray.net)’. These are companies providing services underpinning dozens of other company’s offerings (the most obvious example of an interface layer being Google Maps’ API powered hundreds of apps using navigation). In education, Zoom is the interface layer underpinning hot new startups like Class. On top of all this, a new wave of media influencers are becoming pied pipers for various flavors of online courses and programs: through aggregated platforms like Masterclass and Byju’s; to individual branded offerings such as ‘Business Class’ from Sophia Amoruso of Nasty Gal, and Scott Galloway’s alter ego Prof G. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/Frame-2-2.png) Indian startup success Byju’s (left), and Sophia Amoruso’s Business Class It’s got to a point where Zoom has become for video communication what Hoover – or perhaps more aptly, Dyson – has for vacuum cleaners. Something is afoot – and it’s a world away from dusty old lecture halls and five (sometimes six…) figure admission fees. However, there’s still an enormous amount of white space that hasn’t yet been explored. As [Packy McCormick](https://twitter.com/packyM?ref=howardgray.net) has noted, learning in the internet age feels like it’s at the stage of banner ads: a new medium offering more optionality and utility than what came before, but with obvious constraints and a format that rapidly becomes tired and cluttered. As we did with the likes of Ask Jeeves and AOL, we’ll look back in 5 or 10 years and what we know as today’s online learning landscape will feel laughably clunky, rigid, and dated. When it comes to looking at this future – an [adjacent possible](http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2010/09/28/the-adjacent-possible.html?ref=howardgray.net) on the edge of what we can see and grasp today – we can enter the slipstream of a parallel industry that’s also being upended by tech but is still absolutely human at its core: fitness. ## **The tale of the tape** Let’s dive into those 8 factors once more: 1. **Classes** 2. **Content** 3. **Talent** 4. **Community** 5. **Technology** 6. **Location** 7. **Brand** 8. **Vertical Integration** Before we break these down in detail, a handy start point to map them to both industries is through a good old table. The table below lists out the status quo versus what’s now emerging. *Pro Tip: If you can’t be bothered to read anything else in this post then this table is especially for you.* | | **Fitness** | | **Education** | | | ------------------------ | --------------------- | --------------------------- | -------------------------- | ----------------------------- | | | **Tired** | **Wired** | **Tired** | **Wired** | | **Classes** | Dreaded sweatbox | Entertainment, gamification | Linear template | Multiple paces and modes | | **Content** | Exercises on repeat | Facilitated serendipity | Digital textbooks | Interactive prototypes | | **Talent** | Gym employees | Multi SKU maestros | Tenured professors | Globetrotting facilitators | | **Community** | Locker room chit chat | Global support squad | Coffee break buddies | Diverse peer learning network | | **Technology** | Digital wristband | Full spectrum of screens | Serving up files | Accessible hardware | | **Location** | Long-haul commitment | Simple micro habits | Mandated | Enroled, in the flow | | **Brand** | Muscle-bound spandex | Accessible luxury | Stuffy, elite institutions | Brands as educators | | **Vertical Integration** | Protein shake | Full-stack fitness | Internship pipeline | Blended apprenticeships | *Yes, I’ve shamelessly used Wired Magazine’s classic ‘Tired/Wired’ approach for this. Cease & Desist letters can be sent to the usual address.* Ready to continue into the main event? Let’s do it… --- # **The Main Event: an 8-stage full body workout** ## 1\. **Classes with multiple modes** #### *Don’t* *directly ‘graft’ the IRL experience to URL; utilize elements like interactivity, pacing, and mixed media* Let’s start with the most obvious comparison: classes. When it comes to the wider activities that connected fitness companies offer, some have remained focused on a couple of disciplines, whereas others serve up classes for everything from kickboxing to meditation. A class may have very specific outcomes (*we’re going to ride for 10km*), or be more open (*practice a few of these moves*). Whatever the desired outcome, the best connected fitness classes share a few traits: they’re interactive, fast-paced, multi-sensory, and make smart use of different media formats. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/1_Nlfl1AfUQAlW2hsYSknv1w.jpeg) Image: Prashant S (via Medium) And the top classes also provide entertainment: the best teachers (more on them in a moment) are able to make the experience entertaining, engaging, and enjoyable. In some cases, they *are* the class. However, dig in a little deeper and the majority of online fitness classes still look pretty similar to the IRL versions. There are some adjustments to get the best results, but most of them match what you’d get in a good quality studio. Similarly, when it comes to education the majority of online classes also conform to what (ostensibly) worked in-person and then graft this experience into an online setting. However, this direct grafting rarely works out well. Education can benefit from following fitness, not in the ‘grafting’ of IRL experience to URL, but instead by utilizing elements like interactivity, pacing, and mixed media. The passive classroom environment just doesn’t work anymore – online or in-person. Here are 3 simple examples as to how education can benefit from a fitness-style approach. - The best all-round fitness classes often blend technique, sprints, and endurance. This shifting of gears between different modes kills boredom and also encourages participants to go just a little bit further - Much of fitness is about the concept of practice. A spinning class doesn’t teach you to ride a bike, it just encourages you to get the bike ride done. And while a yoga class might teach you a new pose, once you know it, the class is about the practice. There’s opportunity for education to offer more spaces to practice, rather than solely learn - A fitness class isn’t drawn out for hours at a time. There’s plenty of time to rest after a sprint or recover after a strength-building session. Likewise, it’s unreasonable to drag out a Zoom education class and risk fatigue. Opportunity for Adventure: Utilize more changes in state, energy and format; bring more entertainment into class; and find additional space for practice. ## 2\. **Content as connective tissue** #### *‘Content’ isn’t just a thing in of itself: it can help bridge gaps and pave the way for experiences that truly engage* Most content in the online education sector consists of talking heads videos and flat assets like PDF worksheets. These have worked reasonably well, but we’re about to see a big shift not only to a far richer range of media and formats, but also *where* content surfaces. Content doesn’t just show up in class. It can occupy the space in-between; helping further craft the experience and encourage and guide participants. Examples include a nudge about a stretch or warm-down exercise to try out; a quick AMA session with a coach; a ‘behind the scenes’ special; or an invitation to join a small group session around a particular topic. You may think these content examples relate specifically to connected fitness, but they can manifest just as smoothly in an educational experience. Jeffrey Lancaster, co-founder of future of work startup [Fondo](http://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net), has a cool way of thinking about this. He thinks of these in-between moments as being part of a broader concept: ‘facilitated serendipity’. For anyone creating a product or experience with content that goes beyond classes, it’s worth considering where you can foster this facilitated serendipity. What’s the magical little extra someone wasn’t expecting, but seems to show up just when they need it? It’s hard to deny the sector leading the way in creating facilitated serendipity (and interactive content more broadly) is gaming. Unsurprisingly, there’s now ‘gamification’ occurring in all kinds of experiences. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/Krazy-Kahoot-1024x576.png) Kahoot in action In education there are well established companies like Kahoot and Duolingo who bring a playful gamified quality to their products, while connected fitness startups tend to take a more serious approach to their streaks, leaderboards, and unlocks. Media analyst Eric Peckham had this to say about cycling startup Zwift’s focus on what he calls ‘fitness-gaming’: > *“Cyclists can put their bike on a trainer at home (which makes it stay in place) and ride with other players inside a virtual course where their characters’ looks, movements, and power corresponds to their own. Because users are represented as players within a social game, there is the benefit of network effects, opportunity for in-game commerce and an audience viewing the competition.* > > *In Zwift’s case, it’s developing a full-force virtual cycling league that involves real like pro cyclists and that he aims to get included in the Olympics as a cycling event.”* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/zwift-getting-started-new-header-1024x682.jpeg) Zwift’s UI. Boomin’ Going a few steps further, Peloton’s chief membership officer Brad Olson believes at-home fitness isn’t just about gamification, but the sector itself is comparable to how the gaming industry evolved: > *“We once played video games in malls, but then people discovered they could play at home and experience the same connection. Now everyone is asking for an Xbox or PS5 for Christmas. The same is happening for fitness.”* This opens up a lot of questions: just one being whether many traditional education institutions could go the way of video game arcades in malls. While it’s tempting for me to throw a spoiler in here, we’ll be getting further into the location element of what Olson suggests later on. First though, let’s take a look at talent. Opportunity for Adventure – Content: Create facilitated serendipity; offer micro magic moments in-between more formal class experiences ## 3\. **Teaching talent as a driving force** #### *The new generation of teaching talent can be nurtured in a whole host of new ways. Both fitness and education can look to Hollywood for inspiration* Ok, now we’re cooking. I’ve spent most of my career in and around talent development: as a booking agent for bands and DJs; as a coach to creative entrepreneurs; and building a [startup](http://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net) helping people explore new career identities and opportunities. There’s a bigger discussion here about what talent actually *is*, but putting that big existential question to one side for a minute, let’s dig into how fitness and learning organizations nurture their talent. Many of the new wave of fitness companies have looked to the playbook of other gig economy platforms, offering personal training sessions that can be booked directly through the app. However, what’s more interesting is how Peloton (yup, them again) have approached talent acquisition and development. Talent is one of the hidden strengths in Peloton’s business, underlined by the number of premier instructors they’ve attracted from fitness studios to teach exclusively within the Peloton ecosystem. Many of these instructors are poached from now-struggling cult brands Soulcycle and Barry’s Bootcamp. Ouch. When it comes to the cash, word is Peloton pays instructors around $500 per class – over 3 times what’s offered by Soulcycle and 9x Equinox – and also awards them equity in the business. In turn, instructors are free to build their own personal brands. Some – like Robin Arzon and Olivia Amato – are clocking up audiences well into 6 figures. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/Screen-Shot-2020-09-08-at-8.52.10-AM-1024x346.png) The two on the right echo my general approach to life This approach brings to mind the likes of talent agency [CAA and renowned VC firm a16z](https://a16z.com/2018/09/25/michael-ovitz-entertainment-culture-negotiation-talent?ref=howardgray.net): *“Everybody here, we refer to as ‘Partner.’… we got a lot of criticism of that early. But it worked well because we’re in the services industry and “Look, if you’re representing the firm, you are \[a\] partner.”* This talent component is huge and connects into a bunch of other macro trends around the wider creator economy and future of work. While a deep exploration of those is well beyond the remit of this piece, there are three elements of the talent component worth looking at in more detail. ### Element 1: **Platform at the core** Around the time of March 2020’s big IRL pivot, I was reading the autobiography of CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz. The book got me thinking more deeply about what a version of his company may look like for educators. As with fitness influencers, agencies picking up top education talent (i.e. professors) has been happening for a while: an agent represents them for speaking gigs, book deals, and other opportunities. While there’s still plenty of mileage in this area, what’s new is an underlying *platform* becoming the core business rather than an intermediary services company sitting in between. This is already happening with the likes of UpWork becoming the de facto platform for tens of thousands of freelancers – not to mention the various areas of the gig economy served by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and the rest. Users on these platforms are able to get hired as well as track their time, access boilerplate contracts, and so on. However, there’s a huge opportunity for a different kind of talent platform, where talent are made to feel like genuine partners, and are given a hand in shaping the creative and strategic future of the platform itself. There’s also all kinds of vertical integration opportunities, which we’ll get into as the final of our 8 elements. Peloton is already making moves in this direction, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them hiring talent agency executives to help drive these initiatives forward. Expect the same to happen in education – except with an even bigger space to play in. ### **Element 2: Instructors –> Coaches** And as mentioned above, top teachers will continue to build their own audiences, and they’ll need new types of platforms and partners to support that growth. However, this gets to some fascinating questions around the next generation of teachers. - Are the world’s best teachers *already* teachers? - Are the people currently considered the world’s best teachers *actually* the world’s best teachers? - Will the new wave of teachers even be traditional teachers at all? This is a fascinating concept, but also carries some significant risk. Masterclass’s business is largely built on this proposition. Their video-based courses feature celebrity-level experts teaching the fundamentals of their particular field. However, many people conflate success in a field with being able to teach. The world’s best teachers may well be successful in their field, but they’re almost certainly *not* going to be celebrities who then create a Masterclass series. Why? To paraphrase Seth Godin & Brain Koppelman’s exchange on this – if you’re a first-time filmmaker you probably don’t want Steven Spielberg as your coach or teacher. Being a practitioner and a teacher is not the same thing, and neither is being a celebrity and a teacher. After all, when was the last time Spielberg was working with a $10k budget and struggling to get agents to return his calls? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/Group-1-4-1024x683.png) Going one step further, Seth also notes that one of the world’s best swimming coaches is not a Michael Phelps level Olympian, but a guy with a pot belly and one arm. Tomorrow’s very best teachers won’t be existing celebrities. They probably won’t be traditional professors either. Instead, a group of people with a hybrid skill set will be increasingly in-demand: they’ll be [part educator, part entertainer, part coach.](https://howardgray.net/2021/03/07/thoughts-on-how-and-why-to-start-a-cohort-based-course-in-2021/?ref=howardgray.net) The coaching element here is particularly underestimated – and again we can look to fitness for inspiration. Almost every leading athlete works with a coach; and the connected fitness boom is enabling everyone to have access to their very own roster of coaches. Expect the new era of education to follow suit – particularly because pure instruction will decrease in value. As the ability to solely transfer knowledge and information becomes further commoditized by technology, those with the ability to help make transformation (whether as entertainers, coaches, or both) will be in huge demand. ### Element 3: **Beyond human** Let’s go a step further. What if the top teachers were not actually people at all? Here’s Mario Gabriele in his newsletter ‘*The Generalist*’: > *“If talent becomes the most expensive part of the equation and the greatest impediment to scalability, will companies look to fabricate alternatives? We have seen Tupac resurrected, and Lil’ Miquela animate before our eyes. The Brud concoction even conducted “*[*live” interviews*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-KhO0EqMg0&ref=howardgray.net) *at last year’s Coachella.* > *Why not revive Richard Feynman with his knack for plain-talking analogies and infectious energy? Bill Gates once described the Nobel Prize winner as the “best teacher I never had,” going so far as to create* [*Project Tuva*](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/tuva-richard-feynman/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fapps%2Ftools%2Ftuva%2F&ref=howardgray.net#data=2%7C%7C%7C0)*, a restoration of Feynman’s best lecture. It is not difficult to imagine a more vivid and personal renovation that allowed a reborn Feynman to interact with students, undergirded by an AI-system similar to that leveraged by* [*Luka*](https://replika.ai/?ref=howardgray.net)*.”* This may feel a little scary, but again there’s huge potential: - How about blended live sessions with Einstein and Neil de Grasse Tyson in tandem? - A Jane Fonda fitness class with her sporting full 80s hairdo and purple leotard? - The best human educators having avatar teaching assistants to serve more students? The possibilities are endless, but one thing’s for sure – identifying and nurturing the very best audience-facing talent will remain key in both fitness and education. Opportunity for Adventure: Alternative training options for the new wave of teachers; create blended program featuring virtual and human talent Oh, and while we’re speaking of machine learning… ## 4\. **Technology opens up access** #### *Amidst a huge range of software options, hardware is still a big blocker to access and opportunity. It’s probably where we need Big Tech the most.* In the connected fitness boom, technology is a clear part of the proposition – both hardware and software. Peloton was derided (yes, pun intended. I make no apology) for making their bikes two grand a pop. The product didn’t exactly feel accessible. And as accessibility is one of the values I aim to live by, I didn’t exactly feel enamored. But my biases got in the way. It was a classic disruptive move. Just as Uber started with limos and then expanded to capture a much larger market, Peloton, Mirror and the others have been able to do the same. Technology has been a huge element in enabling this growth, and when we think of the tech underpinning these companies our minds often go to their software. After all, it’s where the user interface is, and how the content is delivered. It’s where those dopamine hits are triggered. There’s a whole wealth of opportunity in software: whether it’s dynamic curriculums; or fitness-based dating apps. One area I’m particularly excited about is live jamming software for teachers: imagine harnessing the creativity that comes from using Adobe Illustrator or Ableton Live to create learning content? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/816UwgZSbAL._AC_SL1500_-1024x696.jpg) Someone needs to build one of these bad boys for teaching But arguably the most challenging – and most important – part of technology in both fitness and learning is the hardware. Hardware is hard. And hardware is where a Big Tech company like Apple comes in. They’re *really* good at it. It’s why a lot of people are speculating that Apple will acquire Peloton in the very near future. Scaling the hardware part of the business likely needs that turbocharge that only a select few can offer. Going back to the accessibility challenge, there’s been much written in the past year about issues around remote learning – with a constant theme being the lack of access for all. If you’re reading this, you probably have a good broadband connection and a decent enough mobile or desktop device. But for many, the Zoom revolution is leaving them behind, and those magical ideas of Einstein and Miquela surfing a digital tidal wave as they teach you about relativity will remain a mirage. It’s not just software accessibility that is a challenge: hardware is arguably the biggest bottleneck to access. Because hardware is hard – and by extension, expensive – we’ll almost certainly see Big Tech to sweep into town. In fact, we probably need them to. It’s perhaps the only way that fitness and learning can be fully democratised. Tying this back to the Content element (factor 2 of our 8), here’s Eric Peckham again on the power of weaving together content and hardware: > *“\[Content as a utility\] is content that is framed as providing concrete outcomes in areas where we are used to spending a lot of money (health, education). The hardware purchase creates a sunk cost bias that makes customers resistant to stop subscribing.”* So, while most eyes go to the software, it’s arguably hardware (with software and content layered on top) where the really significant moves can be made. Opportunity for Adventure: The catalyst for this entire piece was a visit I made to the NYC store of connected fitness startup Mirror. What if their wall-based home fitness studio was infused with avatar magic, and made far more broadly available through Big Tech’s undeniable distribution abilities? Imagine live learning with any talent, wherever you like, on an affordable and portable device. Google Glass v2, perhaps?! ## **5\. Community fosters desire** #### *Just like running and many other energetic pursuits, learning is better together. Especially when it gets hard and you’re forced to sweat.* Let’s be honest. For most of us, fitness sucks. I can just about drag my carcass for a 20 minute run around the park most mornings, but it’s not pleasant. Especially in a New York winter (or peak of summer, come to think of it) While there’s an almost infinite amount of terrain available for a runner to explore, getting the running shoes on and leaving the house isn’t always enticing. The *desire* to run is somewhat lacking. One thing that helps is having others headed in the same direction, with similar goals and challenges to overcome. Community is a huge driver in the likes of Nike Run Club becoming so popular. The wave of fitness companies that grew so quickly 5 or 10 years ago was largely powered by this depth of connections. You could go to Barry’s Bootcamp and hang out afterwards, maybe even make a new friend and then catch up for coffee (or some sort of strange concoction full of obscure healthy ingredients). The shared experience was crucial. Somewhat counter-intuitively, remote fitness solutions have made these binds so much stronger. They’re connected, but for the web 3.0\. It could be through leaderboards; niche interest groups; common goals; or shared experiences like running a big-city marathon together. The depth of connection heightens the desire. The heightened desire deepens connection. These dual aspects of desire and connection are both prominent in learning. There’s plenty of knowledge (terrain) to cover, the desire to learn (run) is scarce. > Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It's the desire to learn that's scarce. > > — Naval (@naval) [July 22, 2016](https://twitter.com/naval/status/756354886116048896?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=howardgray.net) The future of learning needs a connected community of learners, educators, coaches and creators. The current iterations of these communities online are showing up mainly as Slack and Discord communities, with a few other new platforms like Circle starting to emerge. Expect a lot of new innovations here over the next couple of years. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/5f31148adb976231d0f3f948_feature-organize-discussion-p-2000-1024x662.png) Online community startup Circle However, I want to emphasise the value of IRL: the in-person experience. Many of those trumpeting online education as the future seem to conveniently ignore this. While there is much technology can substitute and often improve upon, some elements of an in-person experience just cannot be replicated using digital tools. All of us have a deeply ingrained desire for human connection, and we’re still a long way off technology being able to provide us with all the stimuli and signals that come from being in the same room as another human. Distance learning does alas create distance, not to mention that the [majority of the most important skills for tomorrow’s world](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/top-10-work-skills-of-tomorrow-how-long-it-takes-to-learn-them/?ref=howardgray.net) aren’t driven by technology, but by better understanding ourselves and others. While inevitably an irritation for VC-backed initiatives aiming for titanic global scale, I strongly believe real human connection needs to remain in some shape or form. The likely outcome is many of tomorrow’s most powerful and tightly-bound communities will be blended – mixing online and offline. And like being on the dancefloor when an expert DJ is at the helm, the best blends will be so smooth we’ll barely notice (especially now we’ve been primed after a year of online connection). This blending is still in its relatively early stages – more belt-drive turntables than professional DJ booths – but just as [teachers are becoming the new DJs](https://howardgray.net/2018/07/04/why-teachers-are-the-new-djs/?ref=howardgray.net), the community building maestros are the new talent programmers and curators. The best of them will find ways to enable a diverse palette of ideas and people come to the fore; weave in-person and online interactions in smart and efficient ways; and keep audiences, members and patrons coming back for more – no matter the platform they’re using. Opportunity for Adventure: IRL community spaces that can bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds. They’ll be able to serve multiple audiences and learning institutions simultaneously (and no, it’s not a WeWork…) ## 6\. **Every brand is a learning brand** #### *Smart brands have an enormous opportunity to engage with their customers through learning. Building a large-scale education brand from the ground up is a different proposition, though.* Inline with the at-home revolution, I recently decided to buy some dumbbells and an exercise mat. After inevitably being shunted to Amazon (I tried not to!), I found myself bewildered by a plethora of unfamiliar brand names. The experience reminded me of this New York Times piece on ‘[Amazon brands](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html?ref=howardgray.net)’: third party sellers launching thousands of new product lines onto Amazon with minimal conventional marketing, and often evaporating as quickly as they appeared. They’re everywhere – and fitness is one of their most prominent categories. What many disgruntled Amazon sellers refer to as the ‘pseudo-brands’ are just that – they may have a logo, but they’re not really building a brand. Instead, the focus is on copying products and formats as rapidly and efficiently as possible. It can feel like the pseudo-brands are taking over, but it’s remembering why companies and individuals build a brand in the first place. Without getting into a full brand strategy session (you can use Sweathead or a Section 4 sprint for that!), companies and individuals build brands to clearly differentiate and/or position themselves, to build defensibility, and to be able charge a premium for their products and services. The ‘Amazon brands’ aren’t doing any of these things, but the very best new wave fitness brands certainly are. They’re aspirational. Vibrant. Lithe. And they’re luxurious. This question of brand is where fitness and education start to diverge. In fitness, lululemon, Mirror and Peloton have been able to establish premium, aspirational brands (Peleton’s brand was able to withstand some pretty [strong backlash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Hu3-mJI9c&ref=howardgray.net)); while the old guard have taken a pummelling. Meanwhile, in education, it’s almost the flip. Aside from perhaps Masterclass \[2\] we haven’t seen any new education brands rise with anything like the same cache. And the legacy institutions are cementing their positions. Scott Galloway cites top universities – the likes of Harvard, Oxford, Yale, and Sorbonne – as the *ultimate* luxury brands. While they look to be bloated and out of touch, it’s a good bet they’ll actually become stronger than ever. What fitness and education do have in common is the squeezed middle. Mid-tier gyms and middling universities will continue to come under enormous pressure. While there’s plenty for education to learn from fitness around the branding of experience and talent, perhaps the real brand breakthrough won’t come from a startup brand, but from players in other verticals diversifying into the space. This could manifest as in a few different ways, including: - Large employers becoming professional educators for their own entry-level and junior employees, as well as potential new hires or even curious hobbyists. Google’s new range of micro-degrees begins to hint at how this could look (more on this later) - Brands building their own audience-facing learning programs: imagine Nike sneaker design school, or Mac Cosmetics’ ‘behind the scenes’ bootcamps at global fashion shows - Experiential Activations taking on new forms through high-fidelity ‘day in the life’ or ‘situation room’ simulations (airlines like Delta could bring customers deeper into their world through an airport or museum installation, or spark interest in different professions within their business) - Transforming physical stores into a community-focused learning labs, with opportunities to explore products and processes in more detail (Carhartt are one company leading the way here) Looking at this through the lens of what’s happening more broadly around fandoms ([Zoe Scaman’s deck](https://zoescaman.substack.com/p/the-future-of-fandoms) on this is well worth checking out), you can see there’s a huge opportunity for smart brands to create new ways for their talent, customers, and fans to engage with them. Then of course there’s the other type of branded education – one built on sponsorship and advertising: *This workshop on mindfulness is brought to you by Headspace.* *The next edition of our program on forestry skills is proudly supported by Patagonia.* *Today’s class on systems thinking features remixable IP courtesy of SAP.* *Before this week’s session on American History, here’s a message from Penguin Random House* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/QVC-Spoof.jpeg) We just don’t want education to turn into QVC… unless it’s a spoof, of course Whichever way this goes, impactful learning is an incredible way for brands to garner valuable attention and trust. This idea of every brand being a learning brand is something we’re very bullish about at [Wavetable](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) (yes, come and talk to us about it – we’d love to hear from you!) Opportunity for Adventure: High-grade learning challenges powered by premium brands who are ready to open up their IP in unprecedented ways. These challenges will be available to participate in pseudonymously, but with very real rewards. ## **7\. Location mapped to needs** #### *Whether getting fit at the weekend or learning something new at work, we’ll want it to happen ‘in the flow’ of the other things we’re doing in our lives. And every so often, we’ll splash out big on a truly memorable experience.* Winding back to March 2020, thousands of crowd-focused consumer businesses shuttered almost overnight. It didn’t matter if they were gym or nightclubs, museums or universities – the impending pandemic meant these physical operations had to hibernate. Over a year later, consumer-facing companies are preparing for what happens next. In the fitness world, there’s a fear that coronavirus may permanently shift workout habits. It’s not just the growth in Peloton and all the rest – we’re seeing a number of [micro gyms](https://www.fastcompany.com/90587575/gyms-arent-coming-back-heres-how-youll-work-out-in-the-future?ref=howardgray.net) pop up as a response not just to COVID-19 but to cripplingly high real estate costs in urban centers. And it doesn’t feel like these are fads – the changes are going to last. Likewise in education there’s a growing sense that habits have changed for good. Once again, it mirrors fitness – this time in the way we’ve been adapting at home. First we were learning how to *work* from home: a surge in Zoom accounts and guides to collaboration and [running online workshops](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net). Next, we were learning how to *work out* from home: UK personal trainer Joe Wicks led the way with his hugely popular daily ‘[PE with Joe](https://www.thebodycoach.com/blog/pe-with-joe?ref=howardgray.net)’ workouts for families. Now – certainly for adults, if not many children too – we’re working out how to *learn* from home. How will learning from home happen? Going back to factor one which focused on classes, it definitely shouldn’t feel like an IRL class grafted online. It may look more like the Mirror-inspired solution I mentioned in factor four, or short-form global adventures like those being offered by startups like [Zip School](https://www.zipschool.com/?ref=howardgray.net) and [EncounterEDU](https://encounteredu.com/?ref=howardgray.net). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/04/JPG_kofi_bd76bb2b-1aad-4d6d-bf47-d1ccc1a91dc9meet-jen.jpeg) Live streams with global explorers via EncounterEDU But do these shifts mean we’ll all *solely* learn from home? As with work and fitness some people will gravitate this way, but the majority of us will lean towards something blended. As per Brad Olson comparing the evolution of fitness to how video arcades disappeared from malls, many traditional education institutions will go the way of the malls themselves; defunct. When it comes to location-based learning, I see two trends increasing in popularity: 1. **Premium experiences**: This trends taps into other factors like brand, talent and community. People seeking a premium learning experience will be eager to travel to flagship locations for one-of-a-kind offerings. They’ll get to tap into all the serendipity of physical interaction, as well as additional ways to develop their knowledge, skills, and perspectives. They may travel an hour away from home for these experiences, or take a trip to the other side of the world. 1. **Learning in the flow**: This concept, which [Josh Bersin](https://hbr.org/2019/02/making-learning-a-part-of-everyday-work?ref=howardgray.net) has written about extensively, proposes more work-based learning needs to happen as part of employees’ day-to-day. Much of this will happen in-person – shadowing an expert engineer, or chatting with another team about their sales techniques; but an increasing amount will be delivered online – using software tools that have well-designed learning tips built into the product, or [APIs that pull in data from multiple sources](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learning-big-companies-part-3-apis-marc-zao-sanders/?ref=howardgray.net). And we’ll see ‘learning in the flow’ show up not just in the workplace; the best experiences – whether for work, hobbies or side hustles – will seamlessly weave into the rest of our lives. Once again, facilitated serendipity matters. Opportunity for Adventure: Premium off-site experiences for companies’ employees (and learning in the flow of work while they’re there!). And – taking a leaf from the Minerva Project’s [playbook](https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/undergraduate-program/global-experience/?ref=howardgray.net), plus a dash of [Monocle’s conference concept](https://monocle.com/film/affairs/madrid-the-monocle-quality-of-life-conference/?ref=howardgray.net) – mini adventures in a rotating roster of global cities. ## **8\. Vertical integration** #### *There’s more to integration than snazzy merchandise. Education has potential for subscription-driven flywheels, elevating information, and innovative real estate moves.* One of the most prominent vertical integration plays in fitness over the past few years is Lululemon’s acquisition of Mirror. This has enabled the Canadian company to blend physical clothes with virtual fitness classes, and become a fully integrated solution for workout and wellness needs. You don’t have to be an wily M&A dealmaker to see some of the possibilities: - Mirror instructors wearing Lululemon gear; - Lululemon stores featuring Mirror demos and live sessions; - Recurring revenue bundles of Lululemon clothes and Mirror subscriptions This third opportunity is likely the juiciest – after all, gotta have that boxfresh workout gear on tap, right? And it would be remiss not to mention Peloton, who – as [Joe Vennare](https://twitter.com/JoeVennare/status/1363151984103215107?ref=howardgray.net) reports – sold over 600,000 units of branded apparel in Q4 of 2020\. Peloton CEO John Foley says apparel sales are “growing faster than the rest of the business”. Given the company’s broader growth over the past year, their merch business isn’t to be sniffed at. However, the bigger vertical integration play here is the prospect of a Big Tech player like Apple acquiring Peloton as part of their strategy of owning as big a slice of our digital lives as possible. While there’s an argument to be made for apparel being an integration element in education – check out the amount of university-branded hoodies in any college town – it’s hard to see merch being a real driver in what’s coming next. Here are a few areas where we’ll probably see elements of vertical integration occur: 1. **Alt Business Schools**: A lot of traditional business schools are well… broken. A bunch of alternatives have popped up over the last few years, and those that are most successful will do two things: build a flywheel, and vertically integrate. The poster child in this space right now is On Deck. Much has been written about their [flywheel effect](https://theflywheel.substack.com/p/on-deck-disrupt-mba) (which in itself helps the flywheel – how meta), and we’re already starting to see them vertical integrate. Expect alt business schools to swallow up all kinds of stuff in the modern work and learning ecosystem: LMS platforms; communication tools; community building teams; design agencies; and even investment funds. 2. **Work Pathways**: Larger employers will look to gain better access to diverse talent trained in work-specific skills. To do this, they’ll integrate a range of skill academies and onboarding programs. Google’s Micro Degrees are a good example of a program getting traction here. Additionally, I’m excited about the idea of ‘pre boarding’. These are ‘Day in the Life’ simulations and other short form experiential learning opportunities for people who aren’t yet employees, but are curious to try out the company – and visa versa. Also, watch out for lots more opportunities emerging in the world of longer-form apprenticeships. These have been getting traction in Europe for some time, and the US is just starting to more fully embrace them. 3. **Transforming and elevating information**: Information and learning are closely related, but they’re not the same. Organizations sitting on a wealth of information can look to vertically integrate upwards into providing education opportunities. Relating to the trend of branded education, the most successful ventures in this area will be designed as ‘Default to Open’ with assets and IP available to explore in interesting ways. An example of an organization in a great position here is the Wikimedia Foundation – the parent nonprofit behind Wikipedia. 4. **Talent on tap**: Peloton began with tech, and have expanded into content and broader lifestyle through their talent. Relating to factors 3 and 6 (talent and brand, respectively), education-adjacent companies may look to further integrate an array of educator talent to help them sell their products and services. Examples include the likes of Dell and Adobe, as well as Roblox or even the BBC (who recently launched a Masterclass-esque offering called Maestro). However, for these integrations to work successfully, incentives need to be aligned. This is why I believe Masterclass \[2\] won’t be able to vertically integrate. Their reliance on celebrity talent – and the talent not being focused on Masterclass as their core business – is too great. 5. **Real estate and the flow of work**: Another industry turned upside by the pandemic is commercial real estate. Ironically, the biggest name in this sector have gone from crashing just *before* the pandemic to emerging like a phoenix from the flames as the world begins to re-emerge. Yup, that’s right – WeWork has a huge opportunity to integrate education into their offerings. Touching on factor 6 and the concept of learning in the flow of work, WeWork are likely going to have many thousands of new businesses joining them – all seeking new connections and ideas. WeWork have previously vertically integrated in a range of areas – from education startups like Flatiron School to err, [wave machines](https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-adam-neumann-invested-in-wavegarden-wave-startup-2019-9?ref=howardgray.net). While the timing of many of these were… well, unfortunate – this time they’re in a prime position to take advantage of the growing demand for high-quality, well-designed education offerings. Opportunity for Adventure: Companies stepping in to augment, and in some cases replace, many elements of higher education and career advisors. The opportunity is first in integrating blended apprenticeships and fellowships; from mini ‘day in the life’ or ‘pre boarding’ experiences through to long-form apprenticeship programs. Some companies will look to also integrate other parts of the education stack: facilitators, coaches, content creators, and perhaps even some snazzy merch lines… --- # **What’s next?** It’s clear there’s a big market in fitness for premium, community-driven offerings. The new wave of connected fitness brands have proven this emphatically. Let’s go back to Peloton one more time and break down the key components of their offering: - Create high-end experiential content using a roster of teachers - Live stream from a variety of locations - Use the internet to distribute the content - Combine the upfront purchase of hardware with monthly subscriptions to access live-streamed or recorded videos - Use data to personalise the experience and measure how everyone is performing, versus themselves and each other - Nurture talent in a variety of ways The similarities between these components and the education sector of the future are striking. But there’s another way to cut this. As both sectors are human at their core, let’s go beyond this business-focused view and look at education and fitness through the lens of the ‘jobs to be done’ (JTBD) concept, as famously coined by the late Clay Christensen. Here are some of the most important jobs: - I feel capable - It keeps me sharp - I am able to attract a mate - I have an affiliation I’m proud of - I’m able to achieve more than I thought I could - I feel equipped to progress in my career - I feel part of a like-minded community - I’m more likely have a long, successful and vibrant life For which industry is this set of JTBD? Bar one job (build a career), they’re identical. It’s a good bet that whether it’s fitness or learning, companies that succeed will excel at fulfilling these jobs to be done. Perhaps the most fascinating opportunity (and challenge) in education is to build a significant premium brand that’s also accessible and impactful. While there have been many successful companies in the new era of education, very few have been able to position themselves in a similar manner to those leading the way in fitness. As we’ve seen through our journey into the 8 factors powering connecting fitness, there are many possible paths for the future of learning: - Could the next wave of teachers have a bigger reach than Instagram’s most popular personal trainers? - Is hardware the next frontier, or should we focus on delivering live experiences in more compelling ways? - Will gamified challenges with cryptographic credentials and rewards be the way we’ll all learn new things? - Or is it something else entirely? \[3\] No one can be certain, but in the new era of learning perhaps one thing’s for sure: the opportunities are boundless. If you want to discover how you could bring some of the factors outlined here into the learning (or fitness!) programs you want to see in the world, get in touch with us at [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). We’d love to hear from you. --- ## **Footnotes** \[1\] There are surprisingly close connections between nightclubs and learning – [this podcast uncovers them](https://workshops.work/podcast/081?ref=howardgray.net). \[2\] For me, Masterclass is more an entertainment brand than education. \[3\] Here’s one idea. Maybe learning doesn’t mirror just fitness. What about ‘wellness’ more broadly? Will Houghtelling dives [into this here](https://twitter.com/willhoughteling/status/1309906131301494786?ref=howardgray.net): *“The best weight loss company isn’t a video + quiz platform about dieting. It’s Noom. It’s Omada health. It’s a tech platform that helps people reflect on their current eating habits, shares basic tips & best practices, and then – through technology & social accountability…”* But that’s for another post… 😉 ### Adventures... #52: Through the Jungle URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-52-through-the-jungle/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:28.000Z *Hello there. Welcome along to another edition of* Adventures… *This monthly email digest is here to offer you new ways to see, learn, and do differently. Each edition collates ideas from the worlds of education, entrepreneurship, entertainment, and beyond. It’s put together by me, [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/).* *Not yet a subscriber? Hit the button, innit.* [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) --- The theme for each edition of this newsletter typically emerges at least a month or so in advance. Not this time. Last week I had… well, nothing. Was it my anxiety at impending fatherhood? Daylight savings time playing tricks? More likely was an overload of information. Too much stuff to read. Too much to synthesize. Freezing in the face of it all. On one hand, I’m more eager than ever to learn new things: to absorb everything happening in this brave new world, and grab hold of the tangle of trends sprouting up in front of my eyes. On the other, I really do fancy a mid-afternoon nap on the sofa. One day last week, I was primed to dive into a bunch of hefty deep-dives on NFTs and the fascinating second and third order effects they may have. Hmm. Seconds later, I was instead bathing in the comfort of watching action movie classic *Predator* for the 37th time. In case you’re not familiar, *Predator* stars Arnold Schwarzenegger leading an elite military unit on a jungle-based rescue mission, during which they encounter a lethal alien with invisibility superpowers and a natty line in laser pointers. Perhaps the most memorable of the obscenely macho cast is mustachioed commando Blain, played by renowned wrestler/politician Jesse Ventura. After being hit by an enemy bullet during a crucial battle, Blain dismisses concerns for his wellbeing with arguably the most on-brand line in cinematic history: > *“I ain’t got time to bleed”* And just like that, the theme for this month’s email strode out from the forest: all while I was lying on the sofa eating cashew nuts. ![Old Painless - A Tribute to Blain - YouTube](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/01ae50fc-9edb-4883-b246-9b5e7231097f_480x360.jpeg "Old Painless - A Tribute to Blain - YouTube") Me, after a few cashews and a writing breakthrough. ### The jungle came alive and took him Although I lack the *Predator* team’s skills in close-combat, impromptu bomb-making, and [bicep-based bonding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSgsomwlrhc&ref=howardgray.net), I can relate to their plight. I’m trying to make headway, but the jungle has come alive. Possessing incredible guile, power, and speed, it’s algorithmically-charged and able to shape-shift seamlessly. There’s something out there, alright… but it ain’t no man. This digital jungle is all-consuming. It’s tempting to follow Blain’s lead: just pull out the 6-shooter Gatling gun and mow down the entire noisy landscape of tweets, Slack notifications, newsletters (yeah, including this one), and webinars. Oh, and let’s not forget all those [Clubhouse clones](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22359332/linkedin-clubhouse-clone-social-audio-networking-room?ref=howardgray.net). Sure, some lovely evergreen content may be lost, but hey - collateral damage. I just want to get things done, and stay on the mission: > *I ain’t got time to read* Here’s the thing: like Arnie’s team trying to respond to something unknown, our real world is now changing too fast for us to learn and adapt. How can we keep moving - with all the intel and street smarts we need for the journey - without getting smothered or left behind? ### **Low Barrier, High Bar** The recent explosion in the creator economy is hugely exciting, but also fuels the unstoppable growth of this crazy digital jungle. One way of cutting through the thicket is to go to the curators. But earning attention and consideration isn’t just a challenge for the creators: it’s now one for the curators too. There’s just too much. And as the barriers lower, the quality bar gets higher. Perhaps an answer lies in the third ‘C’, courtesy of [this idea from Julian Shapiro](https://twitter.com/Julian/status/1375838775838924806?ref=howardgray.net) that got a little lost in the Twitter undergrowth: > “The web has a lot of creators but very few caretakers.” We’re undoubtedly going to need more digital caretakers, pixel park rangers, and content groundskeepers. With a careful eye on sustainability, they’ll help the rest of us understand and benefit from the ever-evolving ecosystem of digital forests, gardens and glades. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/bbedce13-1c1a-42f5-99ac-65e1c4db8721_820x463.jpeg) ### Small Squads Technology shifts like NFTs are the kind of jungles that are dense, vast, and seem to come alive from nowhere. They’re so byzantine that wrapping our heads around them is really challenging. While it’s tempting to suppress the threat with whatever modern weaponry we can lay our hands on, one thing we can take from those commandos in the jungle is the value of small squads with a range of skill sets. And leaning not just on the swashbuckling creators and perceptive curators, but those less-heralded guides and caretakers. They may just be the ones best placed to help us see through the jungle. As an old survival guide puts it: > *To move easily, you must develop "jungle eye"… do not concentrate on the pattern of bushes and trees to your immediate front… focus on the jungle further out and find natural breaks in the foliage. Look through the jungle, not at it.* > > *Stop and stoop down occasionally to look along the jungle floor. \[It\] may reveal the game trails you can follow...* Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now (really!). Just hit reply. Howard --- # **Before the rest...** ### **Your feedback** Thanks to those readers who gave me some of their precious time last month. With the caretaker approach in mind, I’d love to get your input on how I can improve future editions of this newsletter. Here’s a super-quick survey - just 3 questions. [take the survey](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdLe787hU45lprw5te09A%5Ffdcjl1E3VrOhZVnMXVk2hDQcBRw/viewform?ref=howardgray.net) ### **Opportunity for Adventure?** A couple of people mentioned they were confused by the little ‘Opportunity for Adventure’ bits under some of the links. Fair point. ``` (They look like this) ``` These little prompts are where I see opportunities to do something interesting around the topic in question. It could be a project to create, a collaboration to foster, an idea to share. I hope they trigger something - for you or someone you know. Feel to pass them on. --- # 01: Career Fuel **[Boston Dynamics ‘Stretch’ robot](https://youtu.be/yYUuWWnfRsk?ref=howardgray.net)**: You can file this under ‘Career Fuel’ or ‘Career Immolation’ depending on how you look at it. The new Stretch robots don’t *look* that impressive, but the impact here could be enormous (watch time: 2mins) **[Purchasing Power Parity](https://stellify.net/purchasing-power-parity/?ref=howardgray.net)**: Several independent creators are using variable pricing depending on your country’s purchasing power. Not to be confused with the ‘Big Mac Index’, this guide gives a good background on PPP best practices and how to implement it into a project. (read time: 4 mins) ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Finding ways for this to work for physical goods as well as digital. I'm curious which companies could be best-placed to take on the PPP model for their products... ``` **[If you want to make it as a writer, for God’s sake, be weird](https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/if-you-want-to-make-it-as-a-writer-293)**: I’ve fulfilled the latter part, at least (read time: 10 mins) --- # 02: Learning <> Doing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/21e8283c-336c-4f1f-8711-780bb998ac4c_2478x1004.jpeg) **[Music, Makers, and Machines](https://artsandculture.google.com/project/music-makers-and-machines?ref=howardgray.net)**: This is a lovely little project from Google and over 50 partners, diving deep into the history of electronic music (exploration time: as long as you like) ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Curators + Caretakers showcase the Creators across every discipline - from ocean conservation to opera. Use the collage/guidebook style to make it accessible and bitesize, with a range of mediums from Figma boards, to podcasts, or Kaggle challenges ``` **[8 shifts in education & learning](https://howardgray.net/2021/03/12/8-shifts-in-the-future-of-learning-education/?ref=howardgray.net)**: A quick bit from me on moving from hostage videos to Hollywood production, and why tenured professors could be a thing of the past (read time: 2 mins) *Note: If you want more on the future of learning, [join the Wavetable email list](https://wavetable.ck.page/dispatch?ref=howardgray.net) for regular resources, tools and how-to guides* --- # 03: Culture ![Brave new world? New girl group Boys World.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/9af37a73-d24d-4f1e-abdf-2917c6568059_890x726.jpeg "Brave new world? New girl group Boys World.") **[Why bands are disappearing](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/18/why-bands-are-disappearing-young-people-arent-excited-by-them?ref=howardgray.net)**: This is a great piece by Dorian Lynskey. Once you get past the Maroon 5 lead-in, there’s some very interesting food for thought around socialisation, access, and the constructs of certain industries - particularly for young people. The 1500+ comments are also worth a browse too (read time: 5 mins) **[VOID - One Year of Silence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmm65tg79CM&feature=emb%5Ftitle&ref=howardgray.net)**: The team at RA have outdone themselves here. An AV exploration of a year of quiet in live underground music. (watch time: 14mins) **[The Therapy-App Fantasy](https://www.thecut.com/article/mental-health-therapy-apps.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: Meditation and therapy have done very well from the pandemic. There’s obviously some tension here… especially when VCs get involved (read time: 10 mins) **[Start your own newspaper](https://www.newspaperclub.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**: Related to this month’s theme - how about turning digital newsletters into physical newspapers? ``` Opportunity for Adventure: A growth in demand for ‘zines - not just glossy branded ones from startup darlings like Away and Airbnb, but a whole range of niche pursuits and interests. ``` --- # 04: Jukebox ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/e244efa9-4d15-4306-b87c-bf88a2d8cda6_768x768.jpeg) ### **Front: [Sasha - LuzOscura radio](https://soundcloud.com/openlabradio/luzoscura-001-sasha?ref=howardgray.net)** Straight from Ibiza’s OpenLab radio (oh, Ibiza how I miss you), here’s a new radio show and album project from electronic don Sasha. As well as being packed with great music, there are a few smart things about this: it evokes memories of his classic sound while staying focused on the new; fits lockdown life but is sustainable well beyond it; and started life as a simple Spotify playlist (low-cost product validation). ## **Middle: Depeche Mode live in Berlin** Having world-acclaimed director Anton Corbijn doing your tour production isn’t a bad idea, but you’ve still got to be able to deliver when it matters. Here’s Depeche Mode live in Berlin doing exactly that. Incredible sound, visuals, and performance. ## **Back: [One in the Jungle](https://soundcloud.com/historyofhappyhardcore/bbc-radio-one-in-the-jungle-goldie-mc-gq-200795?ref=howardgray.net)** I can’t title a newsletter like this without some jungle in the mix. Here are Goldie and MC GQ with the very first edition of BBC Radio 1’s ‘One in the Jungle’ show (the first time jungle was broadcast on legal radio). Turn it up. --- # **05: Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Nearly finishing a 5000-word article on the future of learning. It’s only taken 6 months (urgh). The last 10% is always the hardest. - Watching two very different but equally impactful shows: Irish coming of age drama *Normal People*; and the future of global market economics in *China’s New Silk Road* - Having several conversations around the topics of pricing, focus, and being strategic. ‘tis the season. - Assessing baby furniture. I can report most of it is not built for people over 6 feet tall. --- ### The resident earworm: west on 27th URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-resident-earworm-west-on-27th/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:30:54.000Z Much of it was cleaning windows, picking up sandwiches, and writing mailing labels. But it was the most impactful job I ever had. I started working at that independent record store when I was 15 and arrived for a week of work experience. By the time I was finishing sixth form at 18, I’d been doing every Saturday and 1 or 2 weekdays too. Spending time at that place taught me an incredible amount. Among the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of little things I picked up along the way, here are two that come to mind nearly 20 years later: **the earworm, and the big soundsystem**. Heading out on a morning run this week around my neighborhood of Brooklyn, I knew I needed help to keep the legs moving and the inner voice quiet. I scrolled Soundcloud and surfaced an old Sasha Essential Mix. As with any DJ set, some tracks stroll past smoothly, others chug and trudge. Yet a select few are addictive, irresistible earworms. The melodies, hooks, and basslines burrow in deep. Once they’re in, even the strongest tidal wave of fresh music makes them tough to dislodge. Hopefully you know the type. This Tuesday morning’s earworm rumbled into view arrived as the mix reached an inevitable sweet spot \[1\]. If you’ve ever seen a morning jogger jacking their head like a caffeinated pigeon – ask them what’s on their headphones. When I got in home I dug out the tracklist to find out the cut in question. ### ‘West on 27th’, by Killahertz \[2\] It seemed familiar. When I saw the distinctive Hooj Choons label artwork listed on its Discogs page, I realized why. I owned it. My deal back at the record store was a (very) small amount of cash each week, plus a haul of records. Sometimes I’d test out my shortlist on the shop’s main sound system, but usually I’d have to make do with the well-worn headphones at the back. After all, I was the rookie, and taking control of the mainframe with its elevated DJ setup was a role to be respected. This made choosing more difficult. With ropey sound, everything – good or bad – clustered in towards average. Furthermore, if the main system was being pummeled with a new one from Dillinja or Defected, the chance of any kind of discernible definition disappeared. “West on 27th” made it into that week’s bag, but at the time I couldn’t tell you why. 20 years later, audio technology has improved somewhat. The kettle drums clatter; the low-tuned didgeridoo rumbles. The sound is bright and wide. And it’s now locked into the digital record box – groove-ready, on-demand. --- Which brings me back to those two learnings. It used to be that earworms only made themselves known once we’d heard them in full force on a big soundsystem. But many times the soundsystems were inaccessible, out of reach, or just too damn hard to find. This is true not just for music, but for admiring art; starting a business; maybe even finding that significant other. Today though, it’s different. The technology and connectivity we have today mean our span of consideration is depleted – the earworms can pass us by. But these evolutions also mean we no longer always need the expensive sound system, or to wait until those with more status have had their fill. There’s more fidelity. More access. More opportunity. Just gotta find the space to listen in. And let the earworm present itself. ### As good as it gets URL: https://www.howardgray.net/as-good-as-it-gets/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:15:58.000Z It’s easy to forget that even Hollywood legends had to start somewhere. There was once a time when Jack Nicholson was pounding the pavements of Los Angeles, trying to get hired. Before the yeses began to flow, he was on the receiving end of inevitable rejections. But there was also a part in the middle. The producers and studio execs would still tell Jack they didn’t need him, but instead of a flat no, they acknowledged something else. Rumour has it that it went a bit like this: ### “We don’t need you right now, but when we need you… well, we’re *really* gonna need you.” The market wasn’t ready. Not yet at least. But it would be. These execs knew Jack had something: it was hard to pin down; difficult to pigeon-hole; yet absolutely undeniable. So, Jack’s path forward wasn’t necessarily easy, but it sure was simple. He just had to stay in the game. Keep doing the thing. And stay being Jack. If you’re pounding the pavements right now, maybe it’s worth thinking about how you can be a Jack of your trade. Because when they need you… ### 8 shifts in the future of learning & education URL: https://www.howardgray.net/8-shifts-in-the-future-of-learning-education/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:26:57.000Z Over the past few weeks (ok, months) I’ve been working on a big article on how fitness and learning are connected. One section looks at the past, present, and future of each. Here’s a bitesize excerpt that looks at how learning & education may evolve in the coming years. ## 1\. 🎓 Classes Linear templates –> Multiple paces and modes ## 2\. 🎨 Content Digital textbooks –> Interactive, personalised prototypes ## 3\. 🌎 Talent Tenured professors –> Globetrotting facilitators ## 4\. 💡 Community Coffee break small talk –> Diverse peer learning networks ## 5\. 💻 Technology Serving up files –> Cutting-edge hardware made accessible to all ## 6\. 🏄🏽‍♂️ Location Mandated schlep –> Actively enrolled, learning in the flow of work & life ## 7\. 👟 Brand Elite institutions –> On-point, relatable brands as open educators ## 8\. 🥋 Vertical integration Internship factory pipeline –> Blended apprenticeships And 1 for luck, relating to Content and Vertical Integration: ⚠️ Hostage video vibe –> 🎥 Hollywood production studio --- These areas sum up much of what we’re exploring at [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net). If you’re interested in what’s going on in the future of learning, I’d love to chat. ### Under the Current Podcast: #13 - Sims Foster URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-13-sims-foster/ Last updated: 2021-07-19T12:57:55.000Z ### the future of the hospitality industry, and doing business for local good **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/episodes/13---Sims-Foster-the-future-of-the-hospitality-industry--and-doing-business-for-local-good-es1ol2?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- New York, New York. So nice they named it twice. But beyond the confines of the big city, there’s a whole state with over 10 million residents. And at over 55,000 square miles, it’s a state that’s bigger than Cuba, South Korea, and England. A couple of hours out of Manhattan, and only a third of the way north Upstate, lie the Catskill Mountains. The region’s incredible natural beauty has led to it being a setting for films and art for well over 100 years, and also the home to holiday resorts that propelled many young comedians to stardom during the area’s boom era in the mid 20th century. By 1960, Sullivan County at the west of the region had the most hotel rooms of any county in the US. But within a decade, nearly every hotel had disappeared, and the area felt a sense of abandonment. One of the locals seeking to bring back the positive narrative surrounding the Catskill Mountains is Sims Foster. With five generations of his family coming from Sullivan County, Sims and his wife Kirsten have spend the past 7 years building Foster Supply Hospitality – a group of rurally independent small hotels and restaurants with a focus on affecting positive change in the community. In this conversation we get into facing up to the inevitably of hundreds of tiny failures, finding thought partners, the importance of the practice room, how the hospitality industry could rethink the ways it trains talent, and why local matters. --- ### Show notes 05:00 Introducing Foster Supply Hospitality (and a rogue refrigerator) 08:00 Why the Catskills is such a storied region, and how it’s changed so dramatically in the past few decades 15:00 Starting in hospitality: from dishwashing to digging into data 25:00 Bringing a music sensibility to the hospitality business – and the importance of the practice room 33:00 Facing up to the prospect of constant tiny failures 36:00 The future of training in the hospitality industry 45:00 How Sims assesses new hotel and restaurant opportunities 50:00 Underrated factors that make or break a hospitality company 54:00 The colossal financial failure – and making a recovery 63:00 Seeking out thought partners… and working with your life partner 70:00 Recognizing crisis, and moving forward 77:00 The importance of doing business for local good --- ### Two types of con game URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-types-of-con-game/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:23:09.000Z The first type of con game is part of our lexicon. This confidence game involves a trickster building up the confidence of their mark before depriving them of something – usually through their wallet. And a knock-on effect of the con’s impact is that all the mark’s increased confidence disappears – and then some. Naturally, we want to avoid these kinds of cons. The con is zero sum; one-way: the winner hoards, while the loser’s deficits compound. The other type of confidence game also involves building up the confidence of another. Except, this time the goal is to build up confidence for the recipient to use themselves. They can take this confidence and channel it into the projects, paths, or relationships they want to pursue. The other party is no longer a trickster: they’re a host. The host of the game may get paid along the way – or maybe not. And if they do, it’s in an open, consenting exchange. This type of confidence game is one we can embrace. The recipient builds confidence from receiving support, ideas, and feedback. The host builds confidence from witnessing the progress of the people they’re working with. This type of confidence game is a virtuous circle. It’s one that compounds and continues to grow. Positive sum. Here’s the thing: confidence is a huge and often underestimated part of making progress. In today’s overwhelming world, so many of us are lacking the confidence to go out and take the next step: whether it’s to step up; step out; or step aside. Unfortunately, the first type of confidence game often prevails. The good news: the world urgently needs more hosts for the second type of game. Want to play? ### Thoughts on How and Why to start a Cohort Based Course in 2021 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/thoughts-on-how-and-why-to-start-a-cohort-based-course-in-2021/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:26:50.000Z A couple of weeks ago I attended a session on app-du-jour Clubhouse. It was entitled “How and Why to start a Cohort Based Course in 2021”, and featured a few of the more popular figures in this emerging space \[1\]. The next day I scribbled out a few thoughts on Twitter, which are slightly expanded here. Some of these riffs are certainly at odds with those who spoke during the session, as well as others in the cohort-based course space. However, despite my dislike of towing the party line, I admit I did sculpt the tweets just a little so as not to completely alienate them. No one likes getting blocked on Twitter, eh. Without further ado, here are 19 quick bits on the future of learning: --- #### 1\. The live experience matters Self-paced, passive options are becoming commoditized and have horrible dropout rates. They’re also poor at accommodating mixed learning styles. Making the live component feel magic is key. However, this doesn’t always come easy (esp. online). #### 2\. Rules of thirds The group seemed to agree on creators being 50% Instructor 50% Entertainer. I prefer the rule of thirds: 33% Instructor/Teacher 33% Entertainer 33% Facilitator (+ 1% of whatever else you fancy) The facilitation element is HUGE imo. #### 3\. Facilitator skills matter I’ve facilitated 200+ live workshops in the last 5 years, and the coach and facilitator skillsets are so valuable – both online and IRL. If you can’t read the room, troubleshoot smoothly, or invite exploration and peer connection you may as well just pre-record a lecture. #### 4\. Danger of dogma David Perell mentioned he’s been studying high-energy pastors for tips on speaking. It’s a great example of getting inspiration from different universes However, dogma is something I feel the future of learning needs to be really careful with, and religion is… well, kinda dogmatic. #### 5\. What’s in a name? Cohort Based Course (CBC) is a smart term that’s been coined to easily brand and own this ostensibly new category (I’ve always called them ‘workshops’, but whatever) \[1\]. This fresh space is exciting, but also intimidating if you’re new to this stuff. Some good news though… #### 6\. It’s more possible than you think The core principles are very similar to running any flavor of workshop that features humans (more good news: you are a human). If you’re able to run a solid short-form workshop (and trust me, with a little support, you can), you’re already in good shape for CBC creation #### 7\. Facilitators are underrated This gets back to the facilitator skillset and how important it is. I don’t feel facilitators are being recognized much in this space right now. Bonus: if you’re running a CBC and don’t want to apply my rules of thirds, you can hire a great facilitator to partner with. #### 8\. Workshop reps I’d recommend any CBC creator to try and get a few reps doing in-person workshops (when it’s safe to do so of course). You’ll learn a ton, and vice versa your online skills will make any in-person stuff you do better too. (ooh, flywheel…) #### 9\. Learning is like Fitness Self-Paced courses are notoriously easy to flake, whereas CBCs provide a valuable forcing function. However, a CBC can force a little too much. Like exercise, learning should feel hard, but you don’t want to injure or exclude people. Awareness of learner needs helps here #### 10\. Allow space for play I agree a big component of CBCs is the sense of accomplishment, but focusing too much here can mean losing sight of providing exploration and play. Encouraging this is key to creating a safe and positive learning environment. Different people thrive in different spaces. #### 11\. Lectures aren’t all bad The word ‘lecture’ used to strike fear into my heart. I agree that lectures matter, but not only for the reason suggested. They can be really effective at transferring and even transforming knowledge. Just gotta keep shifting modes to keep it vibing. #### 12\. Word salad Terminology is a challenge. The group used some terms that are very traditional, while simultaneously talking about disruption and new models. This is something I definitely wrangle with also. I do feel we need to get away from the word ‘instructor’ though. #### 13\. Mentor vs Coach Will Mannion talked about the value of coaches and alumni mentors. I def. agree and excited to learn more about best ways to bring in alumni. However, I sensed some conflation of ‘mentor’ and ‘coach’. Some v. important differences between them. Defining these roles matters a lot. #### 14\. Self-care matters I agree with Tiago Forte this is vastly underestimated, especially as many CBC owners are solo/small teams. I did loads of in-person workshops in 2019 and exhaustion was real. Same goes online. Lots of ways to manage this. A good start is to just be aware of it. #### 15\. Space For the first ‘proper’ live session in our last cohort, my partner Josh suggested we scrap all my content and just focus on connection. I was aghast – all my lovely content in the trash! He was right. Devoting a session to lightly facilitated group conversation can be huge #### 16\. Pause Our 3rd session was two days after George Floyd’s murder. There was tension in the room. We decided to pause the scheduled stuff and open up space for anyone to take a time out, or step away if they felt the need to. Several did. Don’t be afraid to pause. #### 17\. Curating groups is key I’m curious to learn more about how the hosts of that session do it, as this isn’t easy. As suggested, introvert/extrovert is a good start, but you can also dig into status, confidence level, experience, etc. Pay more attention to this than you think you need to #### 18\. Avoid the middle tier David talked about colleges pivoting, but they’ve got a big turning circle to deal with. Interesting angle around one college (didn’t catch the name) now offering just sports and student life, and not really any educational material. Mid-tier is going to get squeeeeeezed. #### 19\. So, what does the future look like? A few of my hunches: - More coaches - Facilitation skills more valuable - Better platforms - Hypermedia content - Branded badges - More value on magic… If you have ideas on how this is going to shape up, I’d love to hear them. --- \[1\] ‘Cohort-based course’ is an interesting term – it’s been coined by a couple of founders who are building a startup to serve online course creators, but for me, many online courses are already cohort-based by their nature. As others have pointed out, there’s not much difference between a class or workshop and a cohort-based course – it’s just a handy marketing term. I have mixed feelings on this: much of it feels like Silicon Valley types wanting to again find new ways to brand something as broken and in need of a (sic) completely new approach. ### Adventures... #51: Mise-en-place URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-51-mise-en-place/ Last updated: 2025-04-20T19:16:06.000Z *Hello. Welcome along to another edition of Adventures...* *This monthly email digest is here to give you a few new ways to see, learn, and do differently. Each edition collates ideas from the worlds of education, entrepreneurship, entertainment, and beyond. It’s put together by me,* [*Howard*](https://www.howardgray.net/)*.* *Let’s get into it…* --- ### B is for Brunch A few months before the turn of the millennium, an edition of *The New Yorker* magazine included an article by a local chef. Of course, this wasn’t any old article - or any old chef. However, it’s highly unlikely the magazine’s editors knew what was going to happen next. Even less so the author. ‘[Don’t Eat Before Reading This](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this?ref=howardgray.net)’ shared gory details of butter, blood, bared knives, and the most dreaded b of all: brunch. ![Don't Eat Before Reading This | Art spiegelman, The new yorker, Naive illustration](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7a336355-1899-464b-a0aa-2eb038cb6d3a_323x436.jpeg "Don't Eat Before Reading This | Art spiegelman, The new yorker, Naive illustration") A decade later and its author had become a cult hero: touring the world with no reservations; exploring the parts unknown. He was renowned for his rock ‘n’ roll attitude and acerbic wit; a desire to dive deep into culinary cultures; and a willingness to try anything from pig’s trotters to heroin. The day after he passed away, his home city of New York had a strange feeling in the air. But beyond his globetrotting, freewheeling vibe, Anthony Bourdain was still anchored to the same core tenet as chefs the world over. Three simple words: mise-en-place. ### Merely do it Roughly translated as ‘putting in place’, mise-en-place is most commonly thought of as prepping ingredients before a kitchen service starts. But there’s more to the mise than just chopping celery and priming purees. As a noun, mise-en-place is the arrangement of a cook’s tools and workstation. It’s also a verb: the *process* of preparing. And for many, the mise is a state of mind. In fact, Bourdain himself proclaimed*:* > *Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks….do not f\*\*k with the ‘meez.* (I’m not sure that last bit appears in many holy scriptures) The mise-en-place encourages economy of movement; precise actions; and the hallowed flow state. It allows you to *just cook*. No story, no narrative. No flailing or flustering. Merely do it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/44f6b766-bed5-49f0-beb2-0edeaa1fa353_1000x980.jpeg) An example meez from Dan Charnas’ ‘Work Clean’ The core of mise-en-place is in always returning to the most basic of steps. Ingredients ready and measured; each tool laid out for the most effective and efficient use. But the mise isn’t just for the kitchen. ### Work Clean Even after winning a dozen majors, legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus would go back to what was effectively his own mise-en-place. The first things he did with his trainer were to prepare the clubs; size up the range; check the foot positions. Then they’d just practice the swing. Nothing more. Closer to home, many of my disputes could have been resolved by mise-en-place. There are the obvious spousal skirmishes in the kitchen, but also the disputes with myself. My mise-en-place aids newsletter writing, video production, and never-ending visa applications (don’t ask…). After trying all kinds of productivity systems and tools, two recent book purchases have confirmed mise-en-place as my way forward. The first is obvious: ‘[Work Clean](https://www.workclean.com/?ref=howardgray.net)’ by Dan Charnas explores how the chef’s mise-en-place can enter our working lives, whichever industry we’re operating in. The second book is Yotam Ottolenghi’s [*Simple*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39797678-ottolenghi-simple?ref=howardgray.net)*.* Its dozens of colour-coded recipes, all clean, quick and healthy, make seemingly boring ingredients and methods feel magical. Mealtime skirmishes avoided. ![Easy Ottolenghi: vegetable recipes | Food | The Guardian](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d837f16a-b881-474c-9212-1085039fcd78_700x420.jpeg "Easy Ottolenghi: vegetable recipes | Food | The Guardian") Other than practicing our mise-en-place, and getting good at Simple, it’s worth us remembering that one thing can change our trajectory forever. It could be a song, a dish, a conversation, or - like Anthony Bourdain’s first outing in *The New Yorker -* an article. Of course, we don’t know which thing it’s going to be. So the best bet is to practice getting our station clean, ingredients prepped, and the pans hot. Then merely do it. Just cook. As always, *Adventures…* is a two-way street. I’d love to know what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. Howard --- ### Go ahead, make my day I want this monthly email to be one of your favourites. You get enough email as it is, and frankly, this thing takes me a while to put together, so I may as well make it good. To aid this mission, I’m looking to chat with a few intrepid subscribers like you. If you can spare 20 mins for me to ask you some questions about the kind of *Adventures…* you want [then please hit this link](https://www.calendly.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net). I’d really appreciate it. Ok, back to our scheduled programming… --- # 01: Career Fuel [**Build a business, not an audience**](https://jakobgreenfeld.com/build%5Fan%5Faudience?ref=howardgray.net): The problem with reductive remixing, and following the advice of building an audience at all costs. [**Distinguishing between Hobbies, Jobs, Careers, and Vocations**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g7ARarFNnw&feature=emb%5Ftitle&ref=howardgray.net): Elizabeth Gilbert has a great vibe. The stuff in here is seemingly common sense, but like all common sense, it’s not common. So nice, I watched it twice. [**The Soul of the Creator Economy**](https://boundless.substack.com/p/the-soul-of-the-creator-economy-130): A great bit by Paul Millerd on why the Creator Economy needs more *Creator*, not just *Economy*. Paul has a knack for crafting stuff that’s exactly what I want to say, but better. He’s so good I’ll even forgive him for being a management consultant. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/c887edb0-18a4-44dd-bd50-a6e4ff228fd0_1500x200.png) Fresh episodes on the ‘[Under the Current](https://www.underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net)’ podcast this month span: - how to set up [an artist residency in Chile](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-11-olaf-boswijk) - building community in [startups and freestyle rap](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-10-dmitry-koltunov) - why you should [never charge hourly for your work](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-12-jonathan-stark); and - a multiple Emmy-award-winning [writer and producer](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-9-steve-bodow) --- # 02: Learning <> Doing [**Reflections on the future of learning**](https://twitter.com/HowardGray/status/1362499907085623303?ref=howardgray.net): Someone recently described Clubhouse as “*LinkedIn with a coke habit*”. Ouch. Here’s a quick bit from me reflecting on a Clubhouse session I attended on the future of learning - and in particular, cohort-based-courses. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: creating small 'magic circle' learning groups to share ideas, techniques, and secrets ``` ![AA033](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a049ed9f-1c81-43f5-bbc6-d45745de360c_2168x991.jpeg "AA033") [**Visual Thinking School**](http://www.xplaner.com/visual-thinking-school/?ref=howardgray.net): In this excellent primer on how to draw to clarify your thinking, one sentence immediately jumped out at me: *If your ideas can’t be drawn, they can’t be done.* I’ve been meaning to bring out the notebook and the whiteboard again. All part of the mise-en-place. [**Creativity isn’t Talent - it’s a Skill**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTqzzuEe5eg&feature=youtu.be&ref=howardgray.net): Here’s art director Anthony Jones showing how tools and practice can unlock creativity. It’s a nifty bit of product marketing for Adobe, and Jones has a really nice teaching style. --- # 03: Unclassified (aka Innovation/Tech/Metaverse and other trendtastic stuff) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/2b5924a2-ecdb-49fe-86ad-aa306c168eaf_1796x1386.jpeg) [**Unreal’s Metahuman Creator**](https://www.virtualhumans.org/article/unreal-engines-metahuman-creator-analyzed-and-explained?ref=howardgray.net): Regular readers will know I love the metagame. It’s hard to understate what a big deal this news from Unreal is, especially when you throw a [Tom Cruise deep fake](https://www.theverge.com/22303756/tiktok-tom-cruise-impersonator-deepfake?ref=howardgray.net) in there for good (bad) measure ``` Opportunity for Adventure: the list of opportunities here is gigantic, exciting, and terrifying in equal measure. What do you make of it? ``` [**Andy Apps**](https://www.andy.works/?ref=howardgray.net): A fresh approach to digitial utilities. New spins on old things… new wine on old oak… making more of the mundane. [Sound familiar?](https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-49-new-wine-old-oak/) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/01181428-e460-4bf9-a4fb-8ea2781c9e69_1158x732.png) [**How to make a rave anthem**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI&ref=howardgray.net): Here’s how Liam Howlett made a notorious Prodigy track.. except this demo is made in modern digital studio kit, whereas Liam was using mid 90s hardware gear. It’s the clearest proof possible of the creative and technical skill involved in sampling. Sidenote: I’m very much looking forward to The Prodigy documentary now slated for production. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: creating better ways to help people understand and articulate different skills ``` --- # 04: Jukebox #### Front: [Calibre - Resident Advisor mix](https://soundcloud.com/resident-advisor/ra765-calibre?ref=howardgray.net) I find this chap fascinating. He has an incredibly simple style but creates amazing results from so few elements. The Yotam Ottolenghi of electronic music, perhaps. This new mix effortlessly spans ambient, dubstep, deep house, and drum & bass. Fun fact: I booked Calibre for one of his earliest DJ gigs back in June 2003\. I was 20, and embarrassingly gauche. Naturally, I thought I was the opposite. #### Middle: [Daft Punk - Homework](https://open.spotify.com/album/5uRdvUR7xCnHmUW8n64n9y?si=Dk6xuBcSSvKsOFFbZSvRjw&ref=howardgray.net) It’s hard not to include some Daft Punk this month. A few months after I started working at [Primary](https://primarytalent.com/?ref=howardgray.net) they released ‘Get Lucky’. Overnight, 90% of the calls to an office representing 600+ artists were Daft Punk booking enquiries (spoiler: the number of gigs they accepted in that period: zero). [Here’s a BBC Radio 1 mix](https://m.mixcloud.com/SystemRecords/dance-systems-daft-punk-tribute-mix-for-bbc-radio-1/?ref=howardgray.net) spanning some highlights from their catalogue, but for me [the first album is still the best](https://open.spotify.com/album/5uRdvUR7xCnHmUW8n64n9y?si=Dk6xuBcSSvKsOFFbZSvRjw&ref=howardgray.net) (*Revolution 909* was my go-to) ![Stevie Wonder sitting at a piano entertaining students at the Dance Theater of Harlem in New York](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8ea7ece3-53e0-47a4-be25-7816f1feec6c_780x525.jpeg "Stevie Wonder sitting at a piano entertaining students at the Dance Theater of Harlem in New York") #### Back: [Stevie Wonder’s hot streak](https://slate.com/cover%5Fstory/2016/12/the-greatest-creative-run-in-the-history-of-pop-music.html?ref=howardgray.net) My wife Jacinta loves Stevie (come to think of it, who doesn’t?). Calling his mid-70s streak ‘hot’ is an understatement. As this piece suggests: > *“Classic period” is the polite phrase for the five-year span that Stevie spent ferociously dunking on the entire history of popular music*. I can only guess this kind of streak comes about from the perfect storm of talent, skill, hard work, and environment. --- # 05: Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to since last time… ![Undercover | Netflix Official Site](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/2b998c56-2dd7-4da2-ac4b-bb56dc0b888a_300x168.jpeg "Undercover | Netflix Official Site") - Watching ‘[Undercover](https://www.netflix.com/title/80225312?ref=howardgray.net)’: A Belgian/Dutch crime drama involving a campsite, several million Ecstasy tablets, a faux Wild West horse ranch, and dodgy leather jackets. Yes, you read that correctly - Being reminded of facial hair consistency issues when recording videos over the course of a few days - Joining a writing community: the results obviously aren’t showing up just yet - Reading the [Andrew Weatherall tribute book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56128531-andrew-weatherall---a-jockey-slut-tribute?ref=howardgray.net): Fail we may, sail we must. Thanks to Stephen J for sending me a copy across the sea --- ### Last Rites: What did you think of this edition? [**Damn fine**](https://forms.gle/jeTSGpuZExMVo9gh8?ref=howardgray.net) **|** [**Solid**](https://forms.gle/jeTSGpuZExMVo9gh8?ref=howardgray.net) **|** [**Meh**](https://forms.gle/jeTSGpuZExMVo9gh8?ref=howardgray.net) **|** [**Fail**](https://forms.gle/jeTSGpuZExMVo9gh8?ref=howardgray.net) ### Under the Current Podcast: #12 - Jonathan Stark URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-12-jonathan-stark/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:58:52.000Z ### funding the mission, and why marketing can drive us mad **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- When you’re taking the road less traveled in an independent career there’s all kinds of tension along the way: building an audience, figuring out how to market yourself, choosing what to work on, and knowing how and what to charge for what you do. The default setting for this last point is typically to set an hourly rate. Makes sense, right? Jonathan Stark thinks otherwise. He’s on a mission to rid the world of hourly billing and helps freelancers, consultants and creatives of all flavours find better ways to do the work they want to do in the world. Jonathan’s own journey has gone from live musician to digital agencies, independent software developer to teacher. While his books, talks, and daily newsletter are now hugely successful – there have inevitably been some bumps along the way. In this conversation we get into why artists and designers can be very opposite, the real value of music, unexpected occurrences of the employee mentality, and why marketing can make us mad. --- ### Show notes 04:00 Getting it wrong on-stage 11:00 Why creatives get pulled in two directions 17:00 Funding the mission 22:00 The value of music 35:00 What it means to have an employee mentality – even when you don’t think you do… 43:00 A big lesson from Disneyland 50:00 Wrangling with marketing 58:00 Getting comfortable with speaking and writing in public 67:00 The value of podcasting and newsletters 74:00 Daily publishing --- ### Under the Current Podcast: #11 - Olaf Boswijk URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-11-olaf-boswijk/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:31:12.000Z ### building spaces for arts and culture, finding new perspectives on our natural world, and the importance of staying naive **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- Amsterdam is widely renowned as a global hub. It’s a centre of art, creativity, forward-thinking approaches to sustainability, and a centre of incredible nightlife. Olaf Boswijk has been at the very center of Amsterdam’s nightlife scene for well over a decade: as the music programmer and resident DJ at the Club 11 venue, before setting up the legendary Trouw, and the equally vital De School. It’s fair to say Olaf’s had a big part to play in creating a worldwide buzz around electronic music in the city. When Olaf decided to take a little break, he headed out of the city for a little while with his wife Mirja in their yellow camper van. But this wasn’t any old trip – they headed west to Canada, went south into the US, and then all the way through Latin America to Patagonia. It was in southern Chile that they fell in love – with an incredible part of nature they’ve come to call Valley of the Possible. Valley of the Possible is a place where Olaf, Mirla and their team invite and challenge artists, scientists and other creative thinkers and makers to envision alternative perspectives on our relationship with the natural world. In this conversation Olaf shares the back story of launching this latest project, the questions he asks about his own creative work, his attitude to risk, and why less ambition may be a positive sign. --- ### Show notes 05:00 Hitting the road from Amsterdam to Patagonia 10:00 The tension between the DJ and club owner 18:00 The power of live vs pre-recording 24:00 Falling in love in Chile 30:00 Making career pivots 33:00 Bringing Valley of the Possible to life 42:00 Olaf’s attitude to risk and ambition 55:00 Asking the difficult questions around climate and nature 59:00 Nightlife going from global to local 63:00 The impact of fatherhood --- ### Under the Current Podcast: #10 - Dmitry Koltunov URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-10-dmitry-koltunov/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:31:23.000Z ### building communities in startups and hiphop, and the freedom of getting things wrong **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- A lot’s happened since 9 year old Dmitry Koltunov and his family packed a few suitcases, left the Soviet Union, and headed west into the unknown Today, he’s known by many as the co-founder of a hugely successful tech company serving the hospitality industry. To many hundreds more, he’s the indefatigable linchpin of a popular startup fellowship program. And to others, he’s the creator of a new Broadway-bound musical. Before all these ventures, Dmitry had to learn a new language and culture, and found himself in the gladiatorial environments of corporate America. It was only after two very different visits to New York’s Lower East Side that his current path began to emerge. In this wide-ranging conversation we get into the surprises that come when following the American dream, why confidence can create fragility, the commonalities between hiphop and startups, and lessons learned from freestyling with one Lin Manuel Miranda. --- ### Show notes 6:00 Lower East Side free styling with Lin Manuel Miranda 17:00 Detecting the difference between startups and hobbies 25:00 The gladiator game of business – and going the other way 30:00 Following the American dream, and observing culture 43:00 Hiphop and startup communities 48:00 Being fragile from the confidence 58:00 Structures and segments of creative work 66:00 Handling success 73:00 Writing Broadway musicals ### Finding your edge URL: https://www.howardgray.net/losing-your-edge/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:09:59.000Z Everyone says you’ve got to find your edge. Seek out your competitive advantage. Maybe that’s not what’s lacking. You’ve already got your edge. It’s innate. Unique. Sharp and incisive. But it’s been dulled. The edge gets rubbed away by fear. The comfort of conforming. Regression to the mean. Of course it has. The edge is scary. Sharp. It reflects the light. It exposes us. Our edge can cut through the noise, but it can also cut us deep. The edge is our personality. Our unique color combination. We can place it on something dull and flat and suddenly it’s sharp and angular. It’s all too easy to let the edge be smoothed away. To follow what the others say. To take the steps of those who came just before. But they don’t know about your edge. Their advice is well meaning, but it may blunt you. They say find your edge. No need. Just remember it. ### Under the Current Podcast: #9 - Steve Bodow URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-9-steve-bodow/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:31:50.000Z ### writing and producing, working in sprints, and overcoming procrastination **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- Jerry Seinfeld says writing is perhaps the hardest thing in the world. But sometimes it feels easy. The pen just flows. What’s Jerry on about? And then all of a sudden it gets hard. The page stays blank. When you’re writing under time constraints, it can get harder. And working under them pretty much every day – probably harder still. How about writing for a TV show where millions of people are tuning in 4 times every week to be both entertained and informed? Yep, that’s not always gonna come easy. As a writer and then executive producer of The Daily Show, Steve Bodow’s done just that. He was an integral part of a team that won 16 – yes, 16 – Emmy Awards before departing the show in 2019 with well over a thousand episodes under this belt. Since then he’s worked on TV shows like Patriot Act with Hassan Minhaj, as well as high profile political campaigns, and a range of his own new projects. In this conversation on writing, producing, and so much more we get into the joy of travel, juggling multiple projects, the allure of writing, finding a meditative state in improv, and what makes for a good host… yes I was taking notes. --- ### Show notes 04:00 The start of Steve’s podcast ‘In Quarantine’ 08:00 Moving from behind the scenes to front and center 12:00 The flow of improv 17:00 The allure of writing 22:00 Shifting from writer to management 28:00 Recognizing the pace of selling 38:00 Working in sprints 43:00 Seeing the game slow down over time 48:00 Working to deadlines ### Adventures #50: What just happened URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-50-what-just-happened/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:27.000Z Deep into Winter, any little comfort will do. Roast chicken. Thick wool socks (thanks Mum!). Cult classics. This weekend’s watchlist was stacked with the likes of *The Untouchables*; *Heat*; and *Fight Club*. The connection between these sleeper hits? A chap by the name of Art Linson. Art is a movie producer. And like a lot of producers, he ends up getting his hands into all kinds of stuff: from raising money and securing talent; to troubleshooting development issues and [taming Alec Baldwin’s ego](https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/art-linson/work/what-just-happened?ref=howardgray.net). A few months before moving to NYC, I did a course in film production (just in case I ran into Alec in the West Village). Midway through, I discovered *[A Pound of Flesh](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1113741?ref=howardgray.net)* \- the first of two books Art Linson wrote about his Hollywood experiences. The second set of Art’s acerbic observations was *What Just Happened?*. These tales of projects stalling, spluttering, and sometimes succeeding soon became a movie of its own, complete with an all-star cast. Onscreen the title’s question mark was absent, as was Alec Baldwin as a prima donna movie star (Bruce Willis played him instead). ![What Just Happened (2008) - IMDb](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/66269347-7514-41b6-9a26-4f85f93ec82a_1000x1481.jpeg "What Just Happened (2008) - IMDb") But beyond the irresistible inside scoops and tinseltown drama, at their core Art’s books are really explorations of the blur that is producing creative projects. The producer looks at *what just happened.* They ask *what just happened?* And they aim to see what’s about to happen. So… what’s about to happen? --- ### Flavours A few things have changed since Art’s heyday. First, many of the gatekeepers he had to duel with are getting side-stepped or even eroded away. 2021 may be the year of [the great dispersion](https://www.profgalloway.com/the-great-dispersion?ref=howardgray.net). And despite the headwind of a headliners’ market, when it comes to developing and launching a project there are myriad options available beyond the big-name studio, VC, or record label. Second, there are now many more flavours of producer, each possessing a particular stack of skills. And there are far more projects that can be produced - across all kinds of industries and mediums, and all with opportunities, paths, and pitfalls to navigate. In sum, the producer matters now more than ever. --- ### **In Residence** In light of all this, we’re going to see the emergence of a few fresh flavours of producer. They’ll be hard to pin down, tough to pigeonhole, and hugely valuable. One way to think about this is through the concept of residency. You’re probably familiar with an Artist-in-residence. There’s also the Entrepreneur-in-residence, and the[ Educator-in-residence](https://howardgray.net/2019/08/01/the-educator-in-residence/?ref=howardgray.net). What about the *Producer-in-residence*? They’re networked; strategic; able to make ideas happen. They help their partners create, navigate, finesse, and grow. Some of these Producers will feel more like a coach; some will be curators; and others will have the vibe of a seasoned business development exec. They’ll be equally adept at reflecting ideas as beaming them out; at mixing mediums as they are monitoring the money. The Producer-in-residence looks at w*hat just happened:* last week, last month, last year (the last four years). They lookat *what’s about to happen:* in decades, months, days… hours. Right now our past, present, and future can all feel like a blur. It’s probably going to be that way for a while. To find the way forward, a lot of us will benefit from having a Producer-in-residence. Maybe you’re searching for one. You could already have them in your midst but not know it yet. Or perhaps the Producer-in-residence is your own next starring role. --- Speaking of blurs, as the US moves from 45 to 46, *Adventures…* moves from 49 to 50. I started writing this monthly bit in June 2015 (for the mathematicians, yes I did miss a few months early on). The first edition I sent was, frankly, embarrassing. So were most of the following ten. And a few others since. But even Art Linson had a few misses. Besides, whether or not there’s a hit... just gotta keep on producing. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/) PS. *Adventures…* was only born because my wife Jacinta was the Producer-in-residence who pushed me to go and do it. As *Adventures…* starts its next chapter, so do we. In line with this month’s theme of (re)producing and *what just happened*… here’s what’s about to happen. A new citizen of the world. Due date: August 4th 2021. --- # 01: Career Fuel ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b9d46fb4-42dd-4734-9477-f90d9062b960_1024x677.jpeg) [How to find Portfolio / Audience Fit](https://howardgray.net/2021/01/31/how-to-find-portfolio-audience-fit/?ref=howardgray.net): a step-by-step guide to aligning your project portfolio and audiences [The gap between reputation and personal brand](https://commoncog.com/blog/gap-between-reputation-personal-brand/?ref=howardgray.net): My pal Cedric writes some great stuff on career moats and decision making. Here’s his latest [The reductive seduction of other peoples’ problems](https://brightthemag.com/the-reductive-seduction-of-other-people-s-problems-3c07b307732d?ref=howardgray.net): Why people are drawn to social entrepreneurship missions elsewhere when there are plenty of things to look at closer to home… [How I do Morning Pages](https://howardgray.net/2021/01/15/how-i-do-morning-pages/?ref=howardgray.net): A few people have been asking about this recently. Here’s how I’ve developed a daily practice of writing ## Podcast ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/ea4dc2cc-f3cf-4fd2-a582-a9d4a4a8dde1_851x200.jpeg) It’s been a big one on the ‘[Under the Current](https://www.underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net)’ podcast this month: - [Zoe Scaman](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-5-zoe-scaman) is one of the leading voices in the new creator economy (and former head of strategy for Ridley Scott, no less). She goes deep on the anger of others, dealing with self-doubt, and building brands - [Andrew Hutton](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-6-andrew-hutton) gets into reimagining the way companies are founded, and how our identities shift when we tag ourselves with that ‘f’ word - [Georgina Wilson Powell](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-7-georgina-wilson-powell) talks about being lost after failure, building ethical media businesses, and life as a female founder in 2021 - [Rob Fitzpatrick](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-8-rob-fitzpatrick) digs into books as product design, reframing marketing, and business partner marriages New episodes are published each week. And I’m getting close to securing a couple of personal heroes to appear… --- # **02: Learning <> Doing** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/81f440f9-7d67-444a-950a-3cc1b01fc6da_925x620.png) [Nike & Virgil Abloh - Public Domain](https://public---domain.com/?ref=howardgray.net): This got the attention of the marketing and brand world as a way to showcase a new collaboration, but for me, it’s a big step towards open-sourcing assets as a learning tool. If you’re over 35 the website will make your eyes hurt, so [here’s the background](https://www.sneakerfreaker.com/news/virgil-abloh-teases-new-off-white-x-nike-colabs-via-interactive-public-domain-internet-archive?ref=howardgray.net) [The Science Museum - never seen before](https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/never-been-seen/?ref=howardgray.net): Each time you refresh the page you’ll see an object from the museum’s collection with zero views, making you the very first person to see it ``` Opportunity for Adventure: using this (and other archives like it) as a jump-off for games and classes around science, storytelling, improv, and more ``` [Unai VR](https://www.unai.one/?ref=howardgray.net): I’ve always been lukewarm on VR stuff. Something about this feels more interesting, streamlined, and human [How to run a workshop on Zoom](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net): This bit I wrote last year is now number 1 on Google for ‘Zoom workshops’. Fancy. --- # **03: Entrepreneurial Endeavours** ![Image for post](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d3db7436-4984-4c54-8946-217d9043780b_1921x1081.png "Image for post") [8 themes for the near future of tech](https://scottbelsky.medium.com/8-themes-for-the-near-future-of-tech-410dbb0b1afb?ref=howardgray.net): Adobe/Behance honcho Scott Belsky always brings it. As you may expect, themes 2, 3, and 4 are where I’m placing my (digital) chips. [Lessons from selling a media company](https://jackrivlin.medium.com/lessons-from-a-gruelling-two-years-selling-my-venture-backed-media-company-b9c491d905aa?ref=howardgray.net): Well, this one sure gave me PTSD from Summer 2012. [Small Before Big](https://husney.com/small-before-big-3967/?ref=howardgray.net): If you’re building any kind of company (especially early on), it’s worth checking out this piece by Jordan Husney ``` Opportunity for Adventure: more open dialogue about being small, and the decision making around crossing the chasm to going big. ``` --- ## From last time… - Last month’s theme was [New Wine, Old Oak](https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-49-new-wine-old-oak/): a couple of this month’s bits also touch on this. [Rob Fitzpatrick’s podcast episode](https://howardgray.net/2021/02/02/under-the-current-podcast-8-rob-fitzpatrick/?ref=howardgray.net) gets into how his book sales have ticked over remarkably well, and a clear theme through all his projects has contributed to his success. The same goes for [many people discovering The Artist’s Way](https://howardgray.net/2021/01/15/how-i-do-morning-pages/?ref=howardgray.net) 25 years on - One piece of [feedback](https://forms.gle/rKsj5BVVAKf4S9Ph8?ref=howardgray.net): *“great… but maybe a little too long”.* I agree. This edition has slimmed down accordingly, and next month I’ll be sharing a central resource holding all the links and other bits from every edition, past and future --- # 04: Jukebox **Front**: [Ted Gioia’s Top 100 albums of 2020](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/64OEWaPOALEtNXMIsbWG8F?si=3j9wL0V1S4GENtRlymNJhg&ref=howardgray.net). Until last week I’d never heard of Ted Gioia. Turns out he’s one of the world’s foremost music critics. Oops. Thanks to [Conor](https://www.conormccarthy.me/?ref=howardgray.net) for this one. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/2db4ff52-55cb-4300-a386-ec7080a8ef70_960x480.jpeg) **Middle**: [Kruder & Dorfmeister Sessions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zrO7UwS1Ps&ref=howardgray.net). This mix album pretty much created a genre. Usually, mid 90s vintage of this ilk would be filed at the back, but this month we’re going way back in time… **Back**: … over a century, in fact. [Here’s an audio mix for every year of recorded sound, 1859 to the present](https://centuriesofsound.com/?ref=howardgray.net) --- # 05: Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Developing new online learning programs with a couple of wonderful companies, and creating a bit of school curriculum too - Working on a big update of [Fondo](http://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net) \- your career GPS. My co-founder Jeffrey has been weaving his magic once again: look out for badges, braintrusts, and a whole new gamified experience coming very soon… - Burning through season three of ‘[Gomorrah](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/arts/television/gomorrah-naples.html?ref=howardgray.net)’. - Coming to terms with impending fatherhood. I can’t even keep the kitchen clean as it is. Time for some mise-en-place --- ### Last Rites: What did you think of this edition? [Boomin’](https://forms.gle/rKsj5BVVAKf4S9Ph8?ref=howardgray.net) | [Solid](https://forms.gle/rKsj5BVVAKf4S9Ph8?ref=howardgray.net) | [Passable](https://forms.gle/rKsj5BVVAKf4S9Ph8?ref=howardgray.net) | [Fail](https://forms.gle/rKsj5BVVAKf4S9Ph8?ref=howardgray.net) ### Under the Current Podcast: #8 - Rob Fitzpatrick URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-8-rob-fitzpatrick/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:32:01.000Z ### books as product design, reframing marketing, and business partner marriages **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- When it comes to starting any new project – whether an app, a product, a course, a book – there are so many potential traps to fall into. One of the biggest is not understanding what people actually want. After falling into this trap more times than he’d like, Rob Fitzpatrick decided to write a book to help others avoid it. Fast forward a few years and Rob’s career is entering its third phase: from seeking scale in his days as a founder going through tech accelerator Y Combinator, which gave him the inspiration for that first book – The Mom Test; to going after the hammock lifestyle that comes with the freedom of working remotely; to focusing more on consistency and reliability. This third chapter arrives alongside his third book, and brings together much of what he’s learned and built so far. Write Useful Books is a book, but it’s also a community, software product, and potentially a backer for independent nonfiction authors. In this conversation we get into several topics Rob hasn’t talked about much in public before – from how he deals with tougher days; to changing his mindset about marketing; and the unique approach he’s taken with his business partner. --- ### Show notes 04:00: The gap between books two and three 10:30: Applying product design principles to books 16:00: The theme running through Rob’s books 24:00: Staying loyal to an audience, but also to yourself 28:00: Respecting marketing 35:00: Y Combinator Rob vs. Hammock Rob 40:00: Solo versus team and a novel way of being in partnership 47:00: Interlocking layers to support independent non-fiction writers 56:00: From 700 copies to 100,000 61:00: Comfort tasks 67:00: Overcoming the rough days, and disappearing 75:00: The importance of thinking as entrepreneurship as a career, not a company or project ### Now Obvious URL: https://www.howardgray.net/now-obvious/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:08:43.000Z There’s a joy that comes with hindsight. So much so, a popular phrase encapsulates it. Hindsight lets us recognise all sorts of concepts, beliefs, opportunities, and connections that are *Now Obvious*. When we use hindsight and think of what’s Now Obvious, we probably go back years or even decades: how naive we were as teenagers; or remembering the mistakes we made in the early stages of our careers. But we probably miss what’s closer. It’s hard to notice what just happened because the step changes seem too small, and the day-to-day of our lives whizzes past in a blur. It’s a bit like when someone comments on a child they haven’t seen for a while: > *“I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”* The parents look confused or even bashful. They’re so close they can’t see the changes. It’s the opposite of recency bias: filtering *out* the recent because we can’t see it clearly enough. What’s Now Obvious isn’t just the learnings from 10 years or 10 months ago. There’s also the stuff from last week, or last night. Or what just happened. These are the things we’ll likely skim past or miss completely, only to pick them back up months or years later – if at all. They’re the small hunches; the nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right; the third time we run into a blocker in quick succession; and the sense of a flow state emerging… even if only for a few seconds. Hindsight helps us [Go Back to Go Forward](https://howardgray.substack.com/p/4760029%5Fdispatch-dec-2019). And we don’t need to go that far back to go surprisingly far forward. It’s worth keeping tabs on what’s Now Obvious. So much so, I’m tagging it in my archives. #NowObvious ### How to find portfolio/audience fit URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-find-portfolio-audience-fit/ Last updated: 2021-07-03T16:31:51.000Z You’ve probably heard of Product/Market Fit. It’s widely seen as the holy grail for just about every early-stage startup – and for good reason. But what happens when your product doesn’t really feel like a product; when you have a *portfolio* rather than a product? And what about when you’re focused not on a specific market with highly specific and aligned pain points, but an audience – where everything feels more fluid and diverse? When you don’t identify with a singular product or a specific niche market, it’s pretty hard to find product/market fit. If you’ve got a portfolio of projects and an audience that’s hard to categorise, the playbook on fit… well, doesn’t fit. --- ## Between the gaps As with my recent attempts to fit into 34″ waist jeans, I’ve wrangled with this for some time. The advice *‘you have to focus down on a really specific niche’* never appealed. It always felt limiting, constraining, and weirdly conventional; a bit like skinny jeans, come to think of it. Perhaps you know what I mean. But working on multiple projects, I’ve also sensed tension surfacing. Operating largely solo with limited resources, time, and energy, it’s challenging to hit a moving target. To remedy this, I tried out some of the popular Product/Market fit guidance for my portfolio. It always seemed kinda rigid and clinical, and I found myself with awkward offcuts; making weird hacks. Classic brand strategy approaches felt too unwieldy and laborious. They were Saville Row tailors and posturing athleisure startups, when all I wanted was a few pairs of Levi’s. Was I doing it wrong? Was there something missing? Or should I just conform? These frustrations were highlighted by three conversations I had in the space of a few days. First, I was told getting stuck between B2B and B2C is not a good place to be. It creates pressure. Pick one. Then ask the the questions: > “Who is the niche audience I could serve for 5 years?” > “How could I be famous to them?” Pondering this for a while, it felt like B2B made most sense. I shared this advice with someone I trust. This was the second conversation. They pushed back: whether or not they work in a company, companies aren’t the customers; *people* are. Whether B2B or B2C, it all came back to people. Focus there first. Third, I spoke to a successful author and entrepreneur who suggested to simply: > “Pick customers you like, then keep releasing products in the same space. Use your career capital, and compound the resources you build.” Synthesizing all of this together, I knew there was some strain and pain that I needed to relieve. There was career capital I could use. There were customers I could choose. And yet it was still really easy to feel squished in the middle; caught between the gaps; somewhat squeezed in the [crown jewels](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=crown%20jewels&ref=howardgray.net). Unable to find the combination of leg length, waist size, cut, and color. --- ## Sketching the space between A few days later I was writing my [Morning Pages](https://howardgray.net/2021/01/15/how-i-do-morning-pages/?ref=howardgray.net) when two thoughts hit me in quick succession: *What do you do if you feel caught between the gaps?* Find the overlaps. *What do you do if writing isn’t helping solve the problem?* ~~Eat chocolate.~~ Draw. I scratched out a simple Venn diagram. A few quick iterations later and I had something that seemed to hold together. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/02/IMG_3354.jpg) I told you it was scratchy. As if by magic, some kind of flow state kicked in, and in a couple of hours I had the first draft of what is now this step-by-step guide to what I’m ostentatiously calling “**Portfolio/Audience Fit**“. I share this in the hope it’ll be as helpful to you as it has been to me. Before we get into it, though… --- #### Practical N**otes, Caveats, and a few words for the Haters** 1. You can read this guide in about 10 minutes. It’s worth allowing an hour or two to do the exercise 2. I did this in Figma. You can do it however you like (but my Figma template will speed it up) 3. I’ve aimed to keep these steps as succinct as possible. If you have any questions or clarifications, feel free to [drop me a note](https://howardgray.net/contact/?ref=howardgray.net) 4. Although I did think about changing this to dummy content, I decided to use my own real audiences and projects here. Eek 5. There are probably some nifty consulting frameworks that do something similar to this, but in a more robust way. Feel to share them and make me look like a skinny jean wearing simpleton 6. I expect plenty of people to scoff that *market = audience*, you should only focus on one product at a time, and this whole thing is a waste of time. Maybe you’re right. But it worked for me. So yup. 7. This method isn’t ironclad and hasn’t been tested at scale, but I’ve found it very helpful. Your mileage may vary 8. Most of this post was written while listening to [Involver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECNEXh6AziA&ref=howardgray.net) by Sasha ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/02/Screen-Shot-2021-02-01-at-14.57.24-1024x533.png) the full Figma template Ok, that’s the formalities over. Let’s get going. --- ## A guide to Portfolio / Audience Fit ### Step 1\. Choose your areas These are your more generalised segments. Figuring out what these are is out of the scope of this guide (it’s already 3000+ words), but I suggest three is a good number for this. To illustrate what I mean by ‘segment’, I chose ‘Innovation’, ‘Entrepreneur/Independent’, and ‘Media/Entertainment’. *Note: If you’re curious, I chose ‘Innovation’ because it surfaced a lot during user research for [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net); ‘Media & Entertainment’ because I spent nearly 10 years working in and around it; and ‘Entrepreneur/Independent’ because I am one, and my writing has always leaned towards ideas for this group* (oh, this like post – how lovely!) Yours could be ‘Ex Wall Street IT Managers; ‘Software Developers’; or ‘Graphic Designers based in Mexico”. These groups may feel really broad, but counter-intuitively this approach can work really well. And if not, you can always change or retool them later. In either case, the goal is to pick out 3 areas that cover a decent portion of your existing/desired audience. ### Step 2\. Overlap them We want to get these into a Venn diagram, because the overlaps are what really matters in our quest to make life less painful for ourselves. Other diagrams are available of course, but the Venn is a classic, and three is the magic number. Here’s how mine shapes up: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/Base-1-1024x661.jpg) That was easy. Onto step 3! ### Step 2\. Add people This is where the fun starts. It’s time to add people to the diagram. While you *could* add everyone you’ve ever met, it’s probably better to stick to either: - A small subset within these three groups, and/or - The people that come to mind most clearly However, selecting only your two best friends and your cat probably isn’t casting the net wide enough. To strike the right balance, here are a few prompts to get you going: - Avid readers of your newsletter - Clients who you love working with - LinkedIn connections who engage with your stuff most - [Pro Tip: your dormant ties](https://howardgray.substack.com/p/adventures-46-resurfacing-our-dormant) You can list people out separately to the diagram but I find it easier and more useful to drop them straight into the Venn. Here’s mine: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/Group-43-1024x661.jpg) As you do this, you’ll probably find yourself shunting some of them around. This is likely a good thing: as you think a bit more deeply about each person you’ll remember or notice certain nuances and elements to them that weren’t immediately obvious. For example, I had *CJ* pegged as a freelancer (left hand circle) but remembered they did a lot of innovation projects, so I shifted up them into the crossover area between the two. Taking a look at my example above, you may be wondering a couple of things: - Why is the Entrepreneur/Independent circle so empty? - Why are a few people so close the edges? The left-hand circle came up empty because no one on my shortlist fitted there. Simple as that. Whether or not there’s some confirmation bias going on, this was pretty telling. There were a few people I thought about adding here, but something told me that what I’m doing isn’t really for them. I instead decided to focus on the 20 or so that came to mind most sharply. As for the closeness to the edges, there were two reasons. First off, a few people were quite far away from the other two areas. Note: you could add a fourth or even fifth area to your diagram, but I find it’s better to keep it simple. Second, there were other adjacent areas that pulled these people away from the centre. We’ll get to those in step 7 (yeah I know, I jumped ahead a bit). Before that, let’s flesh this out a little more. ### Step 4\. Find the themes At this point, you’ll probably see a few clusters starting to appear. It’s worth surfacing some themes in these clusters. There are obvious demographics like age, location, industry, and so on. There are psychographics: people’s behaviors, attitudes and aspirations. And there are more personal factors such as *“do I like this person?!”* Sketch out a few. I scribbled mine on a separate document, or you can annotate the diagram. You should see some commonalities show up, especially when you look at these notes along with the places where the circles overlap. For me, this is when I was reminded of that third bit of advice I received: *pick customers you like, then keep releasing things in the same space.* This may be also a good time to try out some other ideas, like the ‘More > Than’ exercise: are they more Coachella than Glastonbury; more NYC pizza slice than Parisian bistro; more Gary Vee than Brene Brown? It’s a simple exercise typically used for brands, but I’ve found it helpful when applied to audiences too. It’s worth spending some time playing with a few ideas here to help tease out some unexpected themes. Once you’re happy with what you’ve got, let’s add some more colour to the main areas on the diagram. ### Step 5\. Add some homesteads I’m sure there are proper terms for this in the strategy and UX communities, but for this exercise I’m calling call them *homesteads* (a term I’ve lifted and remixed from a post by [Alex Danco](https://alexdanco.com/2020/08/21/homesteading-the-twittersphere/?ref=howardgray.net)). In this context, I think of a homestead as media or communities that a group gravitate towards. To pin down a few of these, ask yourself questions like: - *Where do they hang out online?* - *Where do they go to get advice and feedback?* - *How do they stay energized and connected?* - *What do they look forward to hitting their inbox?* (I particularly like this one) Again, a solid user researcher or strategist will have plenty of approaches. for this, but hey – this post is freeeeeee. You can add lots of stuff here, but I find it helpful just to pick out one or two per area of your Venn. Remember, the overwhelm is real, so let’s keep it simple. Again, we can (and should) tweak and adjust later. I definitely recommend going with what comes to mind first as there’s going to be a reason why your brainbox went there… I think of the homesteads like magnets: places to move towards when seeking more audience members; or to push away from when the fit *seems* good but is actually pulling you away from where you should be. Here’s mine with a few homesteads added: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/Slice-1-1024x677.jpg) ### Step 6\. Map out your projects Ok, this is where we really get going! It’s time to add our projects. Before we slap them on top of our nice Venn diagram, it’s worth thinking about what our projects *actually are*. In time-honoured Howard tradition, I’m stealing a method for this from elsewhere and then adding a couple of bits to it. This time, the victim of my fully-admitted theft is Seth Godin. Seth talks a lot about having a portfolio of projects. As you’ve probably deduced by now, I’m also a big believer in thinking this way. *Note: Even if the portfolio approach doesn’t apply to you right now, I still recommend testing this step out* While projects can be wonderful, they can also take up too much headspace; not get off the ground; or pull us in the wrong direction. Courtesy of Seth, here’s a [2×2](https://seths.blog/2021/01/a-simple-quadrant-for-choices/?ref=howardgray.net) to get clearer on the projects in the portfolio: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/2x2-for-Project-Portfolio-Choices-2-1024x677.jpg) Pretty simple eh? Of course, looking at these labels we can see we’re speculating a bit here, but life wouldn’t be much fun if we knew it all in advance. Before filling this out, let’s go over to Seth to explain the model a bit more: *Here are some of the traps that are worth avoiding:* *1\. All your eggs are in a low-chance basket. You’re taking a wild gamble, and it’s your dream. And you want a shortcut. The problem, of course, is that this isn’t a resilient long-term plan. Someone has to win the lottery tomorrow, but alas, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be you.* *2\. You’re hoping to come out ahead by doing something that depends on scarcity, but you’re doing it in the top right quadrant. The problem is, so is everyone else. All of a sudden, your odds just went down. It’s easy to start an Insta account, but once everyone does it, the chances of becoming a top .01% traffic generating influencer are close to zero.* *3\. You focus on only high-probability, low-value successes, even if the outcomes are not really worth your time. Getting a $3 an hour gig on a freelance site is easy, but it might not be worth it.* This is worth pondering for a minute. It’s very simple, but there’s a lot to it. When you’re ready to add your projects, here’s a handy way of doing so. I added a simple colour code to Seth’s matrix: Now, Next, and Later. We can tag each project with this to get a better feel of when/if we should be giving a project space in our brains: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/2x2-for-Project-Portfolio-Choices-3-1024x677.jpg) Then, add the projects and colour code them accordingly. Again, it’s worth thinking about each one, and don’t be afraid to shift stuff around. You’ll probably see way too many in the *Now* and *Next* categories to start with, and you may even end up switching some projects between quadrants. This may feel painful, but it’s goooood. Trust me. In the interests of transparency, here’s my batch of projects (correct at the time of writing): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/2x2-for-Project-Portfolio-Choices-5-1024x677.jpg) Now we’ve got our projects, let’s get back to our main diagram. ### Step 7\. Beam out the projects First, take the ‘Now’ projects and overlay them onto the Venn diagram. I used a flashlight-style shape to *beam* them out across the audience (how ostentatious). The beam is helpful because you can start to see where the project’s seed audience is, and how broad it can – or should – go. And if it’s not a direct beam (or even a beam at all) that’s cool; play around with your layout to see what fits. *Note: ‘Seed Audience’ is a nifty term I stole (you’re seeing a theme here, right?) from my pal [Rob Fitzpatrick](https://robfitz.com/?ref=howard%5Fgray)* Here’s the first pass at beaming out three of my projects: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/Slice-1-1-1024x677.jpg) I like this step as it starts to show how strong the beam needs to be in order to reach certain people, and if we have the resources to do so. If you extend this step out a few more times, you’ll have multiple (marketing) beams to help you see what you may need. When you’re done, you should see some clear themes forming (hint: they’ll probably be at the edges…) #### What if it isn’t working? When I added an additional project, I noticed the beam was a little harder to set in place: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/Slice-1-3-1024x801.jpg) [Under the Current](https://howardgray.net/podcasts/?ref=howardgray.net) (bottom-left) is my podcast exploring creative careers. I’m not surprised it felt tough to map. The guest list is pretty broad: DJs; strategists; magazine publishers, and beyond. The audience appeal is hard to nail down to one group – it’s definitely a theme (per Step 4) than a couple of groups. This left me with a few options: 1. Remap this project onto a new diagram that focuses on a few sub-sets / psychographics; 2. Redesign the project in some way; 3. Convert the project into a ***‘Universal Project’***: one that serves pretty much the entire audience (my blog and [newsletter](https://howardgray.net/newsletter/?ref=howardgray.net) fall into this category); 4. Accept the beam is not going to be very concentrated It was interesting to see this because the podcast is still in its infancy, and I already had a hunch that it needed something tweaking… I just wasn’t sure what. In case you’re curious, off the back of this I’m going with option 2 – a slight tweak on the value prop and approach to tighten it up. Still with me? Ok! We’re nearly done. On to step 8… ### Step 8\. Include the adjacent Remember when adding people to the diagram (Step 3) I mentioned *adjacent areas*? It’s time to add them. I like the word ‘adjacent’. It’s one of the very few terms I remember from maths classes. More so, I like it because of the concept ‘[adjacent possible](https://medium.com/@SeloSlav/what-is-the-adjacent-possible-17680e4d1198?ref=howardgray.net)‘, as coined by Steven Johnson. It’s hopeful, diverse, and a little bit magical. Anyway, ‘adjacent’ is really just a fancy way of saying ‘next to’. The adjacent areas are the ones next to those three you chose right at the start. They’re areas you have an interest in, connection to, or affinity for. But they weren’t in those first three. Mine include higher education, coaching, graphic designers, major record labels, and VC-backed tech startups. Perhaps yours do too. Whatever they are, with a bit of luck the adjacent areas will quite literally be next to the main three in your Venn diagram. If not, that’s cool – give them a shuffle or a slight renaming and you should be able to get them pretty closely aligned. It’s also worth sizing them up or down based on your interest and depth of connection to them. When you’re ready, pop them around the outside of your diagram: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2021/01/Slice-1-4-1024x900.jpg) You may be thinking this means shuffling the rest of your diagram up. Yup, it may do. But that’s ok 🙂 As you may have noticed, mine doesn’t hang together perfectly, but it’s pretty close. The goal of this step is three-fold: 1. **See the areas or audiences you may be missing** 2. **Extend the beams out as needed** 3. **Get clear on where you’re NOT putting your focus** **Tip**: You may want to try this step with groups you are uncertain about, or have a strong hunch you need to avoid. It can be very clarifying. As Charlie Munger once said: *“All I Want to Know is where I’m Going to Die So I’ll Never Go There”*. There’s nothing worse than wasting valuable time and energy on groups we don’t really want to serve. Ok: last couple of things… ### Step 9\. Where are the gaps? There are inevitably going to be some gaps. It’s tempting to fill them. For me, the ‘Entrepreneur/Independent’ circle was pretty bare – clearly I wasn’t thinking so much about people in this group who weren’t also involved in innovation or media projects. Maybe I want to fill that gap, but right now I probably don’t. Instead, it’s better to look at the gaps in the beams and ask a few questions:. - *Do the strongest beams hit enough people? Do they hit the right people?* - *Who do I need more of?* - *Is there sufficient crossover between the beams?* - *Can the beam be directed at a slightly different angle? And what happens?* - *Do the adjacent areas offer something I haven’t seen before?* - *What if a couple of other projects were substituted in?* Take some time here. Sleep on it, reflect on it, go and buy some new jeans and reflect some more. Once you’ve got a few answers, we can move onto our final step. ### Step 10\. What next? Now you’ve followed the process, you can choose to set it and forget it, or keep coming back for tweaks and iterations. I strongly recommend the latter. Things change – especially when you’re building a project portfolio! Choose a few actions to take from here. Again, 3 is a good number (it’s magic, so they say). Besides, any more than this and things can feel a bit overwhelming. Here are a few ideas to get you going: 1. Find more people to pack into the hotspots (the intersection of the 3 circles, or a point where many projects overlap). For me, that’s innovation people in and around the media & entertainment industry who have also done entrepreneurial / freelance work 2. Revisit a project (per the podcast example I shared in step 7) 3. Reverse engineer a project: sketch out the most impactful beam (intense and pretty narrow) and think about what that project could be --- ## Kaboom! Thats it! 10 steps to mapping your portfolio to audiences. Fluid, iterative and organic. To make it easier, I’ve included the full Figma template ready to go. Just pop your email address in below. I’d love to hear how this process was for you, as well as any adjustments or improvements. Just leave a comment, or send me a note. ### “This call may be recorded for quality & training purposes” URL: https://www.howardgray.net/this-call-may-be-recorded-for-quality-training-purposes/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:08:27.000Z For a long time, this kind of automation was incredibly expensive and complex to set up. Then, for most companies, it got affordable. Now, in a Zoom world, it’s incredibly easy for anyone with an account. But very few of us choose to hit record: whether we’re at a multinational company; part of a small business; or working independently. We should. Because what we call ‘quality’ has been redefined. With the challenges of a global pandemic, it’s had to. But for a lot of us, it’s hard to pin down what that new definition really is. And none of us got advance training on how to work and live in this new paradigm, so knowing what training we need is tough to figure out. To make it a little better for ourselves and the others, it’s probably worth hitting record (with permission, of course). ### Under the Current Podcast: #7 - Georgina Wilson-Powell URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-7-georgina-wilson-powell/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:32:11.000Z ### building an ethical media business, creating support structures as a solo founder, and recovering from failure **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- In 2003, a new magazine launched. It felt a little different to what else was on the shelves at the time. Covering music, literature, street art and fashion, it featured a new generation of talent, and had a focus on quality: not just the content, but on bespoke cover art and high-end paper stock. The magazine was called Blowback and one its co-founders was a 21 year old called Georgina Wilson-Powell. After the London-based company folded in 2007, Georgina spent time at one of the world’s largest publishing companies, traveling around the globe as a journalist. It was these gas guzzling trips that in fact led her back to entrepreneurship – this time as founder of sustainable living magazine Pebble. This time, Georgina is going it alone, building an ethical media business as a solo female founder. In this deep dive conversation we get into why not being an expert can be freeing; the challenge of intertwined identities as an entrepreneur, using grief as fuel; and how build support structures when you’re going it alone. Oh and you’ll hear Georgina’s dog Maggie in the background a couple of times… we just couldn’t bring ourselves to edit her out… --- ### Show notes 04:00: The craft of editing 07:30: The sudden end of Georgina’s first company 14:30: Why magazines have such a strong allure 17:30: Lost experiences post-failure, and the intertwined identity 26:00: Coming back for round 2 of entrepreneurship 32:00: Why not being an expert can be a positive 35:30: Dealing with grief 40:00: The differences being a solo founders vs. having multiple founders 43:00: Communicating with life partners in different work situations 49:00: Finding support structures 54:00: Being a female founder of an ethical media business 57:30: Why write a book 65:30: Being everything to everyone, and the challenges of staying visible 69:00: Bad advice 80:00: The importance of knowing your own mind, and overcoming fear ### Under the Current Podcast: #6 - Andrew Hutton URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-6-andrew-hutton/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:56:03.000Z ### what emerges in early stage companies, discovering founder identities, and launching and relaunching **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- Starting a new company? Let’s be honest – it’s hard. In the midst of a global pandemic? Yep, definitely hard. Compared to a decade ago there are now far more places to get support in those early days, but Andrew Hutton and the team at Day One feel there are still some gaps that urgently need to be filled. With the belief that entrepreneurship is going to be the most important skill of the 21st century, Day One are seeking to rethink the way early stage companies get built, going beyond the narrative of venture capital as the be-all and end-all, and to support all kinds of founders who are focused on outcomes, not just achievements. In this conversation we get into challenging the conventions around building early stage companies, the identity shift when becoming a founder, how to focus on outputs first, and understanding which game you’re really playing. --- ### Show notes 06:30: The conventions around ‘early-stage’ startups 14:00: Conforming to typical milestones and points, and what’s shifting 20:30: What emerges during the early stages, and the questions of identity around being a founder 32:30: Chasing dreams with rigor, and the shift from inputs to outputs 40:00: What Andrew rewired in himself as he became a company founder 47:00: The meta game of running a business that helps other businesses 52:00: Building a community and education business that isn’t built around a guru 55:00: Launching, relaunching, and what happens when the energy starts to dissipate 61:00: Pockets of influence and figuring out the game you’re playing 64:00: Underestimating time ### A departure point for innovation URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-departure-point-for-innovation/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:08:09.000Z Comes from a very simple question: what are you sick of? Podcast editing. Cookbooks getting splashed with olive oil. $50 haircuts. Tech bros. Whiteboards. Covid symptoms. Online course creators with no knowledge of pedagogy. Noisy WhatsApp groups. Self-styled gurus. Bad handwriting. Running around the park. Cleaning the kitchen. Rain. Looking at the phone before 8am. Desk lamps that are too bright. Some of those are mine (but not all of them). What are yours? Whatever you’re sick of may point the direction to what’s next. (hat-tip to Jerry Seinfeld for the prompt) ### How I do Morning Pages URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-i-do-morning-pages/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:30:26.000Z The theme of my most recent newsletter was [New Wine, Old Oak](https://howardgray.substack.com/p/adventures-49-new-wine-old-oak); encouraging readers to be comfortable with both the old and the familiar as there are plenty of lessons and insights to gain. Like a decent bottle of vintage red, a good example of a relatively old title continuing to appreciate in value is *The Artist’s Way* – a book written by the screenwriter Julia Cameron over 25 years ago. Five or so years ago I heard whisperings of it as a great guide to unlocking anyone’s creative potential, but I didn’t take real note until Brian Koppelman – the host of [my second favourite podcast](https://howardgray.net/podcasts/?ref=howardgray.net), ‘The Moment’ – mentioned it in a number of episodes. He cited the book and one its main messages as a crucial part of his day and also his wider practice as a creative professional. I was intrigued. Then, as with many good recommendations, I did… absolutely nothing. Many months later, I was midway through my [coaching certification](https://howardgray.net/2019/01/23/5-common-myths-about-coaching/?ref=howardgray.net) course at the New York Open Center. Browsing the center’s book shelves one lunchtime, ‘The Artist’s Way’ seemed to leap out at me. Perhaps it was indeed The Moment. By this point I’d already been practicing Morning Pages, one of the book’s two main pillars – and the one Koppelman had recommended so enthusiastically. Reading the book just set it in place more firmly. Three years on, and I’ve been hearing more and more people talking about starting Morning Pages. Because kicking off anything new inevitably has some hurdles, I wanted to share my process as well as a few of the things I’ve learned along the way. --- ## The practice For the uninitiated, Morning Pages are the simple practice of writing three pages of freehand each and every morning. There’s no direction, no filter, no end goal. Just write. Or as the author Neil Gaiman says – there is one rule: you can write, or you can choose to do absolutely nothing. You just can’t do anything else. *(Gaiman wasn’t talking about Morning Pages specifically, but it’s a good rule of thumb for just about any writing)* There are a few reasons most people take on the practice of Morning Pages: 1. Clearing out the cruft and junk from your brain 2. Giving you confidence and clarity to feel it’s possible; the pen is moving! 3. An additional / alternative meditative practice 4. Some magic may show up (if you’re lucky) A lot of people wonder if this is journaling. Somewhat. But if you look up the definition of a journal you’ll see: > **A journal is a scholarly publication containing articles written by researchers, professors and other experts.** Your personal journal may not feel quite like this, but it’s definitely going to be thoughtful (if not scholarly). Morning Pages are different – because there’s no filter, no curation, no blockers – not even any craft. There’s little directed, conscious thought. For even the most tentative writer, this is empowering. But writing every day… just *writing*?! It can still feel tough. Here’s how I’ve taken on the practice so far. --- ### 1\. Format Cameron recommends doing the 3 pages of Morning Pages on paper, longhand. This is the classic way to go, and when it comes to writing kit there are myriad notebook and pen combos you can geek out on. However, many people – including me – inevitably use their computer (or a phone, if you have particularly potent digits). As a guide, 3 pages comes out at about 750 words. I use my computer as: a) my handwriting is a disgrace; and b) I like having all the entries in one place in case I want to do anything with them (more on that in a moment). In terms of software, I started with Evernote before abandoning it due to having license issues (I didn’t want to cough up for a Premium account to use it on both my desktop and laptop). I switched to Notion for a bit, but then went to Scrivener as I found Notion less intuitive for long-form writing. My Scrivener account syncs to my Dropbox account, so as long as I remember to close the file first, I can access and create the Morning Pages on either device. I’m tempted to make another switch (maybe back to Notion, maybe elsewhere) but for now having Scrivener on my desktop lets me pretend I’m a mercurial screenwriter about to come with [Tony Gilroy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony%5FGilroy?ref=howardgray.net) levels of magic. ### 2\. Doing the do Morning Pages should be done in the morning – as you have probably surmised. I aim to do mine as early as I can. However, this is where doing them digitally can be an issue. I’m more likely to write in a notebook early in the morning with breakfast or a coffee than make the intention step of sitting in front of my computer. *Note to self: I may test out some handwritten days and see if it switches my mood and output.* In either case, I’ll look to do my Pages before 9am. Sometimes at weekends I’ll flake, but not often – and I’ll definitely do them every single weekday, unless for some reason I forget or have a crippling hangover. As is often the case with age, the latter is becoming more rare and the former more common. Once writing, I’ll aim to follow Neil Gaiman’s rule of *writing or nothing*. Koppelman says to never let the pen leave the paper. This one’s a bit tougher, and I do sometimes find myself having a thought and trying to immediately jot it down somewhere else. This inevitably leads to distractions (again, a downside of the digital method). As I mentioned above, 750 words is about the ‘right’ amount to aim for. I probably get to this point 50% of the time. The other 50% I’ll get tired, bored, or distracted (what a trio!), and top out somewhere around the 400 word mark. However – and this is the beautiful irony of course – the really good stuff only seems to come out at 500+ words. It pays to dig in. With a bit of doing nothing, and maybe the odd little distraction, it’s worth setting aside 15-20 minutes to get the 750 down – and maybe longer if you’re just starting out. Once I’m done, I’ll save my Scrivener file, close it, take a breath, note down any big breakthroughs or to-do’s that the Pages threw up, and settle in to my day. ### 3\. Checking In In the book, it’s suggested to review the pages regularly – particularly if you’re following the course-style format the book takes. Others tend to review their pages occasionally – once a year perhaps; either lightly skimming them as part of a personal review; or more systematically, analysing for most common words or themes. Meanwhile, Brian Koppelman never looks at the pages at all. Once written, that’s it. They’re gone, bound away in a book somewhere, never to be seen again. I keep mine stored, but bar the odd skim for a particular date I’m thinking back to, they never get touched. Hundreds of thousands of words – never revealed again… killing your darlings, indeed. How you review is up to you. ### 4\. Customising There’s no need to add anything to the practice – after all, it’s just a stream of consciousness at its core. However, I’ve added a couple of extras – mainly to save me the hassle of a bunch of different introspective bits each day. First is the Day Rating. I stole this from Jim Collins – author of ‘Good to Great’. Very simply, rate each day on a scale of -2 to +2: with -2 being terrible, and +2 being wonderful. Collins does this in a spreadsheet at the end of each day to maintain freshness and accuracy. Because I’m lazy, I add this number at the start of each Morning Pages entry, rating the previous day. The vast majority of entries come in at 0 or +1, but it can be interesting to observe when there are a row of highs or lows. The streaks can reveal hidden themes. The second thing I’ve added is ‘3 from yesterday’. Typically these are 3 of the most positive things from the day before, but could also be as mundane as calling someone on the phone, or making a decent lunch. Again, I lifted this from elsewhere (hey, [everything’s a remix](https://howardgray.net/2016/06/22/the-rise-of-the-remixer/?ref=howardgray.net)): Tony Robbins talks about the concept of ‘3 to Thrive’ which is very similar. --- So, my Morning Pages practice takes place every morning, usually first thing (before 8:30am wherever possible), for at least 350 words, and with those two little additions. I found it to be one of the few practices I do keep up just about every single day, and when I get on a good streak of doing it early and letting the keyboard fly along, the odd magic moment of levitation and lightness starts to appear. And even if there’s not that sense of sorcery, I always feel just that little more clearer and that little more capable as I head into the day. Give it a try, and see how the pen flows. ### Under the Current Podcast: #5 - Zoe Scaman URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-5-zoe-scaman/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:35:18.000Z ### non-linear careers, sharing work in public, and dealing with self doubt **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- Back in 2008, Kevin Kelly wrote a now legendary article on the long tail, and the concept of 1000 true fans. It’s a concept that’s gained ground in the 12 years since it was first posted, and in 2020, those trends around fandoms and the wide creator economy are – like a lot else in the world – accelerating. Today here are many new voices and platforms. 1000 true fans becomes 100\. There are Macro trends in micro communities and micro payments. The way we create and consume content of all kinds is changing at an extraordinary rate. In the middle of all this, both as a guide for brands and creators, and as a creator building a brand of their own, is Zoe Scaman. Zoe’s spent time at some of the world’s leading brands and agencies – from Naked Communications and Droga5; to Adidas and Ridley Scott’s Creative Group. Today she runs the strategy studio Bodacious, helping develop and define compelling brands of all flavors. Unafraid to share what she’s learnt, and shout out the successes in public, she’s built a significant following over the past 12 months in particular. But it’s not all been an upward curve. We talk about the ill-fitting nature of the word ‘fit’ when organizations are looking for talent; rejecting linear progression and social conventions; the deep fear held by many people in the advertising industry; and the value – and challenges – of putting yourself out there in the world. ### Show notes 04:00: Why ‘fit’ is dangerous for many businesses 08:30: The vindication of having ‘Range’, and rejecting the linear path 16:30: Who was missing for Zoe when she was at school 20:00: What it means to ‘bang down the door’ 22:30: Persistence vs. Confidence 28:00: The Phoenix and The Magpie 32:30: What 22 year old Zoe would make of Zoe today 34:00: The shift from employee to owner 40:00: The bit before Bodacious, and dealing with the self doubt 45:00: What happens when a full-time gig comes along… and making a vote of confidence in yourself 50:30: Putting yourself out in the world, and managing energy 57:00: The anger and fear held by others 64:00: Homesteading, and staying curious 69:00: Culivating fandoms – for others, and for yourself ### Adventures #49: New Wine, Old Oak URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-49-new-wine-old-oak/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:27.000Z It had been weeks since Xavier left the confines of his home. Restless, he decided to disregard the strict set of rules the government had placed upon him. He packed his bag, put on his favourite travel outfit, and headed out on a journey. It would be a journey like no other. The year was 1790\. Xavier de Maistre was 27 years old, and a member of the army of the Sardinian Kingdom, which covered large parts of modern-day Northern Italy and Southern France. An impetuous young soldier, he’d been placed under house arrest in Turin for fighting an illegal duel. His escape was not a literal one. Instead, he took a trip around his bedroom. Over the days that followed, Xavier gazed at the room’s furniture and engravings as if they were scenes from a strange new land. He wandered its thirty-six paces like a seasoned traveler bouncing around a bustling city: > *"I rarely follow a straight line: I go from the table towards a picture hanging in a corner; from there, I set out obliquely towards the door; but even though, when I begin, it really is my intention to go there, if I happen to meet my armchair en route, I don’t think twice about it, and settle down in it without further ado."* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/82a743ea-8e8b-464a-9c79-baf538530d24_350x173.jpeg) And it was in this same room, during the 42 days of his confinement, that he wrote a manuscript called “*Voyage autour de ma chambre”:* [A journey around my bedroom](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/travel/small-world?ref=howardgray.net)*.* Xavier vaunted his voyage because it cost him nothing. It was for this reason he later recommended it to the poor, the infirm, the incapacitated… and the lazy. But the manuscript gathered dust. Xavier didn’t even think to publish it until his older brother printed it - without his consent - in 1794. Yet some 200 years later, the resulting book is still referenced by modern authors and critics for its ability to play with a reader's imagination; to take them somewhere they didn’t realise was available to them. --- ### Imbalance Xavier needed a few innovators and early adopters to help his work become noticed. They were those who embraced the new; desired change; chased the novel. The same holds true today, of course. And this is the time of year that our culture encourages us to look forward, think about what’s next; think about what’s new. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/f2b04d41-2ad1-4d84-939d-b8e07447eaa5_2000x1125.png) Crossing the Chasm - the technology adoption curve But in the cacophony of fresh ideas and information, it’s easy to get that feeling of being behind the curve - of having the dreaded FOMO. For 2021, it’s compounded with a sense of our own house arrest, and growing [imbalances](https://twitter.com/HowardGray/status/1346079933093851138?ref=howardgray.net). FOMO will be prevalent. To get ahead, it feels like it’s all-important to constantly be at the cutting edge of what’s new. A lot of us like to think of ourselves as early adopters - me included. But what about taking another path? --- In Derek Thompson’s book *[Hitmakers](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30901608-hit-makers?ref=howardgray.net)* \- an exploration into why things become popular in an age of distraction - he hits upon the concept of *new wine and old oak*. Most consumers are both *neophilic* – curious to discover new things –and deeply *neophobic* – afraid of anything that’s too new. Whether it’s Star Wars or the Mona Lisa, the best hitmakers are gifted at creating moments of meaning by marrying new *and* old. So, a hit is effectively new wine aged in old oak. It’s a familiar surprise: a look to the future with more than a nod to what came before. We all need early adopters and innovators to propel, promote, and platform - but the new just doesn’t work without a sense of the old. There’s value in searching for and spending time with ideas, works, and lessons from the past. And maybe being an early adopter is just a little overrated. Besides, the life of the neophile is tiring: always having to jump from one to the next; with your value inextricably tied to the currency of novelty. And now’s not a great time to be tired. Our world today looks very little like the one Xavier de Maistre inhabited in the 18th century. Most of us haven’t been picked up for illegal dueling (unless that’s another new trend I’m late to), and we now have riches that he could only dream of: magic technologies that allow us to learn anything, and connect with almost anyone in the world. But there are a couple of things we have in common with that impetuous soldier holed up in Turin: we feel confined; yet there are discoveries to make in what’s hidden up close. Take a journey around your room. And in a world that can’t stop supping on new wine, don’t be afraid to seek out the wisdom and wonder of the old oak. Thanks for reading, and as always, I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Howard PS. I’m trying out a few things in this month’s edition: a summary from last time; more music; and an [instant feedback meter](https://forms.gle/BVWt7AeVjcyrEtjS6?ref=howardgray.net). Let me know what you reckon. --- # Career Fuel ## 1\. Stand out in a Zoom world ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/691650da-44b8-4232-925a-ee74285681e7_628x338.png) Most work and career-related interactions happening online - whether courses, conferences, strategy sessions, or just a simple team meeting - still leave a lot to be desired. Creating and running these with style and finesse is now a bona fide superpower. But there are very few places to get good at it. And no one wants to crash and burn in public. To bridge the gap, we’re back with another edition of our [workshop workshop](https://insession.crd.co/?ref=howardgray.net) (yep, very meta). After two hugely successful editions last year, we’ve upped the ante with refreshed branding, program design, and resources. Check it out. [Get early access](https://insession.crd.co/?ref=howardgray.net) ## 2\. A place for your next project ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/70b5f368-2361-4c4c-b12c-0542494104ae_628x338.png) We’re going to see an increasing shift towards work and careers revolving around *projects*. (Seth Godin has known this for a while - here’s his bit on [35 years of projects](https://seths.blog/2014/07/thirty-years-of-projects?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49)) The project-based approach can be a game-changer; but developing, launching, and marketing something new can also be really tough (I know this first-hand). So, we’ve created a community-driven workshop for you to build your next project. If you’re working in or around the world of media, arts, and entertainment - whether it’s creating a podcast, marketing a client’s new virtual gig, or setting up your own consulting business - there’s something here for you. You’ll get access to curriculum, coaching, and community, plus a treasure trove of resources and tools. [Learn more](https://circulation.crd.co/?ref=howardgray.net) ## 3\. Going beneath the surface in a new podcast ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/586d013a-a96d-4457-a772-2621114c215d_842x201.jpeg) The first four episodes of the new podcast are live, with new ones hitting the digital streets each week. ‘*[Under the Current](https://www.underthecurrentpodcast.com/?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49)*’ tells the stories behind the life and work of creative people coming at the world in interesting ways. In keeping with this month’s theme, this week’s guest [Taneshia Nash-Laird](https://underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net#episode-4-taneshia-nash-laird) talks about Newark’s community revitalisation initiatives. The inspiration? The movements started as the US began to recover from The Great Depression. Old oak. > *Let me know: Who would you love to hear talk in-depth about their work and career? I’ll try and cajole them into an appearance* [Listen >](https://www.underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net) Also… - [Jerry Seinfeld on the Tim Ferriss show](https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49?ref=howardgray.net): I tend to avoid bigging up the big names, but this Jerry Seinfeld podcast has some gems. - Inside the mind of one of the best - and most humble - of the big-name tech founders - [Tobi Lutke of Shopify](https://www.theobservereffect.org/tobi.html?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49) --- ## \*NEW\* From last time… - The theme of [last month’s edition](https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-48-compare-and-contrast) was comparison. It seemed to hit home as I got more replies than usual, including: *“…a reminder of so many elements that I share often with others but don’t always hear myself”.* Likewise*.* - As serendipity would have it, a couple of days after publishing I stumbled upon this nugget from Stanford professor Michael Ray:*“comparison is the primary sin of modern life”.* Ouch. - Holla: if this edition sparks an idea/question/irritation, let me know and I’ll include it here next time around --- # Entrepreneurship ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/82707319-0b70-4757-b550-befd0e870511_2048x1365.jpeg) **[Japan’s centuries-old ‘shinise’ businesses take the long view](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/business/japan-old-companies.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: There’s plenty of food for thought here: from making pivots; to instilling ‘kakun’ family values; and being happily parsimonious with expenses. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Add just the right amount of new wine into old business oaks starting to creak. But don’t 'disrupt'; partner and augment. ``` **[Expansion of the micro gym](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-22/micro-gym-upstart-pushes-into-u-s-fueled-by-covid-led-demand?ref=howardgray.net)**: This looks a good bet - repurposing some of the huge swathes of empty real estate into micro-sized exercise spaces. I reckon the same will happen in education. Which reminds me - I *really* must finish that blog post on education mirroring fitness… **[Lessons on the Journalist-as-Entrepreneur life](https://rafat.org/post/637414421284765696/on-breaking-away-18-years-of-lessons-on?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49)**: A nice batch of bitesize tips from someone who was there the first time around. For what it’s worth, I’ve made peace with this newsletter not fitting in with the new wave of writer/creators. Speaking of which… **[The Missing Creator Middle Class](https://li.substack.com/p/building-the-middle-class-of-the?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49)**: I’m a little torn here. Part of my whole reason for being is to help the underdogs, unremarkable, and underrated find a way forward (not to mention the positive social effects of having a middle class). However, is following your ‘*passion’* (as is often the case here) actually a misguided path? --- # Media & Entertainment [The Internet is for Porn](https://themargins.substack.com/p/the-internet-is-for-porn?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49): Same as it ever was. The other side of this coin is that the porn industry has been at the cutting edge of technology for over two decades. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: There are clearly some very smart engineers and marketers lurking in the crevices (behave!) of the business… ``` [Streaming Music Growth is Stalling](https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/9500546/streaming-music-growth-stalled-factors-attention-economy/?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49): My incredibly reductive summary: TikTok absorbs young peoples’ time; podcasts absorb older peoples’ time; music (in its current guise) gets stuck in the middle. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/eb599dc8-a6ee-4c44-97f1-3371d2a567e1_462x423.png) [The Universe of Miles Davis](https://pudding.cool/2017/03/miles/?utm%5Fsource=HowardGrayNewsletter&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=Adventures49): ‘*music is the space between the notes’* \- or words to that effect. Here’s a lovely data viz of Davis’ work, courtesy of those kool kats at The Pudding. --- # Jukebox ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/816e7b8b-ee6f-40af-8e47-da3d4e2e5306_472x312.jpeg) Another update for *Adventures…* in 2021: more music. As I’m stepping into becoming a historian rather than a neophile (aka I’m getting old), I’m shooting for three bits of music to share each month. They come from the Front (the new wine), the Middle, and the Back (the old oak). **Front**: **[Four Tet - Parallel](https://fourtet.bandcamp.com/album/parallel?ref=howardgray.net)**: the latest studio album from Four Tet was released on Christmas Day. Linked to Bandcamp to keep indie artists moving. **Middle**: **[MF DOOM](https://open.spotify.com/album/6AviMNhTggWeJJ0sFCsc5g?si=6-6okWEXRVyBlp1ymH3-eA&ref=howardgray.net)**: The trailblazing rapper & producer passed away recently. This link taps his final full-length album. If you’re unfamiliar with MF DOOM’s work, ‘Mm..Food’ is a great start point. **Back**: **[Sasha & Hernan Cattaneo in Buenos Aires](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wfVr4XAgeA&t=4765s&ref=howardgray.net)**: January in Argentina (usually) means huge summer parties. This 2003 session of vintage progressive house comes complete with Boca Juniors levels of crowd noise. The second hour of Sasha’s set is especially good. Vamos! --- # Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Watching [Rosa Island](https://www.netflix.com/title/81116948?ref=howardgray.net): a wonderful story of an Italian iconoclast setting the world to rights by building his own world. Jacinta gave me a few wry smiles as we watched this. *Gray Island: coming to a peninsula near you soon…* - Cooking: at a surprisingly consistent standard. I’m buying a new vegetable peeler to celebrate - Refueling: I’ve felt very burned out the last two weeks. Last year was heavy. A better quality recuperation period may be needed - Replaying: While I have a huge backlog of new stuff to read and listen to, I’ve found myself returning to some classics: Marc Andreessen and Chris McQuarrie on *The Moment;* Steve Martin’s autobiography *Born Standing Up.* Old oak… --- ### **\*NEW\*: One last thing: how did you feel about this edition of** **Adventures…** **?** [Amazing](https://forms.gle/DtRZcrZ2VQj6yCNp6?ref=howardgray.net) • [Solid](https://forms.gle/DtRZcrZ2VQj6yCNp6?ref=howardgray.net) • [Meh](https://forms.gle/DtRZcrZ2VQj6yCNp6?ref=howardgray.net) • [Trash](https://forms.gle/DtRZcrZ2VQj6yCNp6?ref=howardgray.net) ### Under the Current Podcast: #4 - Taneshia Nash-Laird URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-4-taneshia-nash-laird/ Last updated: 2023-11-25T02:02:02.000Z ### how cultural institutions help shape cities, creating platforms for others, and rediscovering deferred dreams **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- For the Englishman in New York, JFK airport is the well-known touchdown point, sitting at the intersection of Brooklyn and Queens. But I often found myself west of Manhattan – at airport code EWR. Newark, New Jersey. A little lagged from the flight, I’d soon be on the train or in a cab, seeing little of the place I’d just landed in. But there’s much more to Newark than a non-obvious airport code. The largest city in New Jersey has been a center of the shipping industry for centuries, and is home to a diverse population of over 300,000. Perhaps one of its most notable residents is Taneshia Nash Laird, a social change agent and community developer with a pretty incredible resume. She’s served as the Executive Director of the Arts Council of Princeton, notably as the first person of color in that role. She’s been the Director of Economic Development for the city of Trenton New Jersey; and co-founded Legendary Eats in LA’s Staples Center alongside NBA legend James Worthy. With her late husband Roland, Taneshia she also co-founded MIST Harlem, a popular entertainment center in New York City. She was also a special government employee during the Obama Administration, and her nonprofit board service has included the the Advocates for New Jersey History, Artpride, and the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. Today, Taneshia is the President and CEO of Newark Symphony Hall, a historic performing arts center, currently undergoing a $40 million renovation, including a huge neighborhood revitalization project called Symphony Works. Widowed in 2013 and a pink lady warrior since an early stage breast cancer diagnosis in 2019, above all these achievements Taneshia is most proud of being a mother to two young daughters. In this conversation we talk about lessons from The Great Depression that can help move today’s world forward; how to stay resilient when selling; the misconceptions around arts organizations; her hopes for the next generation; and how to come back towards a dream that’s been deferred. --- ### Show notes 02:30: The city of Newark, its history, and its cultural institutions 07:00: What it’s like to take over running a 90+ year old arts organization 13:00: Taking ideas from recovery after The Great Depression and mapping them to 2020 21:00: Misconceptions of the operation of a nonprofit arts organization 24:00: Life’s a Pitch – how to sell, and stay positive and resilient 31:00: Seeing, touching, and deferring dreams 37:00: 4 parts of a daily practice, and coming back to the work each day 47:00: The meaning of purpose, impact, and legacy 55:00: Lessons from 2020 61:00: Taneshia’s peak moments to date 69:00: The importance of bringing others into the room ### 7 podcast hosting lessons URL: https://www.howardgray.net/7-podcast-hosting-lessons/ Last updated: 2021-07-05T15:00:30.000Z The last few weeks have been filled with writing scripts, relearning software, and rigging up soundproofing materials. [It’s podcast time again](http://www.underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net). The first episode of the ‘[Tickets](http://www.ticketspodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net)‘ podcast feels like a long time ago now. Since then I’ve produced 40 or podcast episodes, but with a 12-month gap since last picking up the mic and booting up the edit suite, there was a bit of rust to shake. Here are a few lessons I learned (and relearned) from recording the first episodes of [Under the Current](http://www.underthecurrentpodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net), which published this week. --- #### 1\. Put 80% of your prep into the first 20% of the episode The Pareto principle is everywhere. Now, the first 20% of your episode may only be a few minutes long, but finding that right jumping-off point can make all the difference. And the first 20% also includes getting the recording setup in place and welcoming the guest in before the tape rolls. Those small things matter. #### 2\. Turn up the energy Speaking of 20%, look to turn your natural energy up by this amount. You don’t want to become a caricature, but it’s easy to start a touch flat (or to at least be perceived as such). This tip is definitely worth taking on board if you’re naturally quieter or more introverted. #### 3\. Pause for a cause Conventional wisdom says that pauses should always be minimised after guests respond. However, like with much conventional wisdom, in some cases it’s worth dropping. Instead, embrace the pause. The very best answers deserve some space. #### 4\. Converse, don’t recite It’s really easy to get pulled into just punting question after question, sticking to the script. It’ll work ok for a while, but soon you’ll feel the staccato style start to stick. Instead, don’t be afraid to converse: find new grooves and paths to explore; play tennis instead of being a serve machine; think improv jazz rather than classical recital. #### 5\. Always be ready to reshuffle the deck And just like jazz, you need to shift and riff. The deck of questions, whatever size or shape it is, is always going to need a shuffle or three. And just like cards, you want to think a move or two ahead. Yes, mixed metaphors, but who’s counting? #### 6\. Diving deep scuba-style needs a lot more practice than snorkeling Even if you’re not seeking to delve into deep parts of the human psyche, it’s worth noticing when and where you’re going deeper. Deeper follow-ups and more involved probing questions can get missed, less fail to land well, especially when you don’t have much practice in doing so. Just like going out on the water, the deeper dives takes more practice. #### 7\. Don’t forget that, in the end, you’re both just humans A couple of my first episodes were with guests I found a little intimidating. It’s easy to find yourself putting guests on a pedestal, backing away on certain questions, being nervous to converse, or hesitant to move the conversation along if it starts to wander or sag. There are a bunch of tactics you can try to remedy these challenges, but I’ve found the most valuable thing to remember is that everyone is just another human being. Same needs, wants, concerns, desires. Wherever we are in the game of life, some things stay the same. ### It's time to go Under the Current URL: https://www.howardgray.net/its-time-to-go-under-the-current/ Last updated: 2026-04-23T19:09:25.000Z introducing a podcast series surfacing the real stories of creatives and entrepreneurs _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Under the Current Podcast: #3 - Dave Clarke URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-3-dave-clarke/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:20:35.000Z ### engineering as procrastination, what it means to be punk, and the future of the electronic music scene **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- From his first release on XL Recordings in 1990, through to being called ‘The Baron of Techno’ by legendary BBC Radio 1 presenter John Peel; to his most recent project with classical musician Mathilde Marsal, and continuing to eschew trends in an industry that has a new flavor of the month almost every week – you can’t pin down Dave Clarke as just another dance music producer and DJ. Shaped by punk, rap and acid house in a youth where he ran away from home, sleeping in car parks and on beaches, today he plays techno with the flair and ferocity of a hip-hop turntablist, hosts his own stage at the enormous Tomorrowland festival, and is close to publishing the 800th episode of his White Noise radio show that has dozens of FM partners around the world. He’s opinionated, erudite and – by his own account – has an anarchist streak a mile wide. All of which shine through in this wide-ranging conversation. We get into what punk represents, building long-lasting relationships, what the future looks like for new artists in the electronic music scene, and why he’s maybe a little misunderstood. Two warnings about this one: first, my new audio gear hadn’t arrived when we recorded the episode so my recording is a bit echoey (yes, ironic when interviewing someone who is constantly at the forefront of audio technology). More importantly, Dave is loud and clear. --- ### Show notes 04:00: The current mood in Amsterdam, and the Dutch approach to tackling Covid-19 08:30: Dave’s shift in focus in 2020, and taking the time to recover 15:00: Engineering as procrastination 17:30: Working with classical musicians 23:45: Professional environments 27:00: Long-lasting relationships, and staying consistent over a long period of time 30:15: What does punk does – and doesn’t – mean 34:30: What happens next for electronic music 38:30: The path forward for the younger generation of artists 41:00: The draw of radio 45:45: Following technology, and improving the work 50:00: Managing the balance of introvert and extrovert 54:00: Untangling hard work, skill, talent, and luck 57:00: Hope for the future – politically-driven music, and shifts in social media ### Under the Current Podcast: #2 - Luciana Rozenberg URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-2-luciana-rozenberg/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:29:38.000Z ### going from prototype to products, form and function, and why big cities matter **Listen now:** [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) --- Split between the western Andes Mountains and eastern Gran Chaco lowlands of Argentina is the province of Tucaman. Just over 1200km north of Buenos Aires, it’s the second-smallest provinces in Argentina, and its main city of San Miguel is widely considered to be the nation’s birthplace. Among its 1.5 million residents are the Rozenburg family. With the parents running an architecture studio working on all kinds of projects, it was inevitable their children would be exposed to ideas in design, art, construction, and the importance of form and function. However, one of the kids, Luciana, who went on site visits and absorbed the conversations happening around the dining table, took a slightly different career path – into the world of fashion. Now she’s the founder of New York-based brand Naissant, whose handbag line brings form and function together through a modular approach to women’s accessories. In this conversation we get into bridging the gap between products and prototypes, the impact of landing in a big city, hanging out with old school patternmakers, and the power of the artistic muse --- ### Show notes 03:45: The first few weeks post-launch 06:00: Conversations around the family table 10:00: Growing up in a architects’ family in Argentina 18:15: Feeling different, and the impact of big cities 21:45: Understanding London’s fashion hub 38:30: Being underestimated by the institutions, and underestimating NYC 43:00: Dealing with uncertainty of being a founder 47:30: Balancing creativity and business 52:00: Aspects of architecture in fashion 57:15: How do you know when something is working, even in prototype phase? 64:00: The importance of the muse 69:00: The impact of women on the work ### Under the Current Podcast: #1 - Joey Cofone URL: https://www.howardgray.net/under-the-current-podcast-1-joey-cofone/ Last updated: 2021-07-17T14:36:04.000Z ### the mirage of failure, recognising the spectrum of what’s difficult, and alternative approaches to rebranding Listen now: [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/underthecurrent/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fOzIHeEhQIfprIX3NAbR6/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-current/id1543982223/?ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy80MmMzOWRlOC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw==&ref=howardgray.net) | [Pocket Casts](https://pca.st/hbz2ahrw/?ref=howardgray.net) Think of a Thinker. Who comes to mind? Maybe Seneca, Aristotle, Newton, de Beauvoir? Ayn Rand, Bill Gates? Indeed, all great thinkers. But of course, everyone’s a thinker. It’s one of the guiding principles behind Baronfig, a company that seeks to champion thinkers around the world. From a speculative idea on Kickstarter, 7 years later their range of carefully designed notebooks, pens, and accessories to help cultivate better thinking are now sold around the globe. As well as most definitely being a thinker, Baronfig’s co-founder Joey Cofone is also a notable designer, and conveniently for a podcast host, a talker. In this wide-ranging episode we get into why failure doesn’t exist, recognising the spectrum of what difficult, what people really use Baronfig products for, rebranding Prince through one of the simplest ways imaginable , the magic of video games, and so much more. We also go into Joey’s extraordinary back story and what he’s learned from going through some very real adversity in his life. --- ### Show notes 02:15: Learnings from two Luigis 10:00: Developing a love of books 13:00: Rebranding Prince – in an unexpected way 21:00: What design means, and the fracture between two types of design 28:30: Bringing literature into design school 36:00: The catalyst for Baronfig 39:30: Dealing with the unknown between Kickstarter and a ‘real’ business 42:30: What failure really means 48:30: The spectrum of difficult, and dealing with tragedy 52:00: Are things fated? Exploring fate vs. free will 56:30: Framing lack of fate in an empowering way 57:30: Going remote in 2020 65:00: What a notebook does for its owner 70:00: Why video games are the ultimate form of creative expression 73:00: How school needs to change post-pandemic ### Frames and Lenses URL: https://www.howardgray.net/frames-and-lenses/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:03:13.000Z *“Don’t care what anyone else thinks about you.”* Maybe. But looking through the lens of others can sharpen up our own view. *What do they see that I don’t?* *How do they explain what I do if someone asks?* *What would they omit that I’d like them to include, or add that I wouldn’t expect them to?* Of course, too much of this and we end up chasing shadows, or contorting ourselves into a dislocated version of who we may seek to be. But using the different lenses to get clarity? Not a bad idea at all. Here’s one thing to help with focus: *“How do they describe me to others?”* Go on, ask them. Get the mirror turned back around The gap between what they say now, and what we want them to – that’s a space for us take a closer look at, and get some frames to match. ([Pair this with ‘Life’s a Pitch’](https://howardgray.net/2019/11/26/lifes-a-pitch-but-for-who/?ref=howardgray.net)) ### Adventures #48: Compare & Contrast URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-48-compare-and-contrast/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:26.000Z In 2003, Emory University scientists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal tried a new experiment. They trained a group of capuchin monkeys to use stones as a form of currency, exchanging one for a nice fresh slice of cucumber. The monkeys were happy with this arrangement, until the researchers started giving some of them a sweet, juicy grape instead. Delicious. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/54f1336c-7f4f-4ef5-87bf-56c4a642dc6e_512x384.jpeg) The monkeys who perceived themselves as being on the end of a bad deal became visibly upset, refusing to pay for the cucumber or sometimes throwing the slice back in the experimenter’s face. Those monkeys went… well, apeshit. What was going on? Monkeys - and humans - don’t evaluate things as single events. Instead, it’s all about comparison. This, of course, goes way beyond grapes and cucumbers. It applies to Apples and Blackberries; salaries, cars, and schools; followers, fans, and feelings. Comparisons can be useful. They help us to measure and track. Comparing through competition and rivalries can bring out the best in us. But comparisons can also trigger refusal to cooperate. And they can make us feel miserable. Comparisons can be a trap. ### **Co-Existing** Last Saturday I woke up feeling low. I’d slipped into a comparison trap, with a cocktail of biases as a kicker. You may be familiar with this particularly vicious viscous cocktail: it does a great job of filtering out any information running contradictory to a belief or thought. My monkey mind told me that *they* all had a bunch of fresh grapes, while I couldn’t even source a *single* slice of cucumber. After sobering up from this zero-sum, binary game, I remembered it is indeed possible for feelings to co-exist. What matters most is learning when to use each one. Compete / Cooperate. Compare / Contrast. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/87cae07a-5c19-499b-a6e2-fc46410b0b40_2470x1315.jpeg) As always, there’s tension here. But tension can be positive. Comparing can offer a way to push ourselves harder; to inspire us at what’s possible. Contrasting reminds us that while our DNA is incredibly similar to those of others, there are still an untold number of facets and life experiences that make us different. Contrast brings to light the unique angles that only we can bring to the world. It’s really easy to get these tangled up. And the tangling up can make us go apeshit: whether openly in public; or just in the confines of our own mind, our own narrative. Speaking of narrative, while we’re similar to monkeys in our predilection to compare, the thing that sets humans apart - as Yuval Noah Harari notes in ‘*Sapiens*’ - is our ability to communicate and process through stories. ### **Bronze** A story of compare and contrast comes at the Olympic Games. Silver medalists tend to be miserable because they’re comparing themselves to the gold medalists. Bronze medalists are looking at the contrast between being on the podium and those who came in fourth and beyond. Even though the silver medalists beat the bronze medalists, the bronze medalists tend to be happier. And even gold medalists still fall into that comparison trap. Like all of us, they still have that little voice in their heads. [And there are always games beyond the game.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGIsIk0XSHA&ref=howardgray.net) *(Reader of ‘Sapiens’ will notice there are some other stories in this little story: medals are a story; the Olympics are a story; the *entire game* is really just a story)* Whether we’re training to be an Olympian or to polish off [an Olympic breakfast](https://littlechef.fandom.com/wiki/The%5FOlympic%5FBreakfast?ref=howardgray.net), unfavorable comparison and the desire to compete can be helpful to push ourselves harder. Meanwhile, more favorable comparisons tend to make us feel happier and grounded. Better still, we can use the tools of comparison and contrast as ways to move things forward for others as well as ourselves. We can set up a friendly rivalry to make the work better; focus on the contrasts to ensure there are more viewpoints around the table; or find some common ground by recognising those core human needs and desires we all share. And as we edge towards the end of the year, it’s not a bad time to use these tools of comparing and contrasting to help move us forwards into what’s next. There are just two things to note: 1. Avoid those stories that lead us into comparison traps, and 2. Remember - especially in 2020 - the cucumber will probably do for now Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. Howard --- ## Career Fuel ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/c396ddfc-38af-4100-b017-1ab3609d02c5_1159x768.jpeg) **[The River of Change](https://rishad.substack.com/p/a-river-of-change)**: a very well-crafted and succinct summary of changes and opportunities as we enter 2021. **[Why are we underestimating Zoom?](https://om.co/2020/11/25/zoom-its-long-term-impact/?ref=howardgray.net)**: It’s hard to imagine what 2020 would have been like if it happened in 2000 or 2010 (i.e. Zoomless). ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Using Zoom in new ways - a few suggestions are in this remix on 18 elements of the Zoom revolution ``` Also: My pal Conor has started a smart podcast concept focusing on the stories behind business builders getting their first 10 customers. **[Here’s me on episode 7 talking about building a talent agency.](https://howardgray.net/2020/11/24/do-you-remember-your-first-10/?ref=howardgray.net)** --- ## Learning <> Doing **[Embedded Education](https://fakepixels.substack.com/p/fkpxls-special-volume-embedded-education)**: It used to be that every company is a digital company. Now, every company may just be an education company. Although the tech industry myopia here is a bit frustrating, there’s plenty of food for thought. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Customer support hubs feel more like edutainment; brands become educators and career guides; more educators in residence ``` ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d9dc40ca-a44a-4805-b050-825b30f18498_4000x3000.jpeg) **[Rewriting the playbook](https://medium.com/wavetable/rewriting-the-playbook-creating-a-portal-for-a-netflix-documentary-series-28a5506dd8fe?ref=howardgray.net)**: A riff on creating new learning experiences around sports documentaries. Which leads us to… --- ## Media & Entertainment **[Spotify playlists for sale](https://swapd.co/search?q=spotify&ref=howardgray.net)**: Software is indeed eating the world, and constraints help creativity. My first of many questions are how you value a playlist, and who’s buying…? *Disclaimer: I have no idea how legit this site is, even though/because they state “There is virtually no way you can get cheated during a transaction”* **[Record Deal Simulator](https://dealsim.createos.app/?ref=howardgray.net)**: One of those *“how has no one done this before?!”* ideas ``` Opportunity for Adventure: open source tools and maps for opaque or abstract areas of industries; particularly those relating to where the money flows ``` **[The rise of the unlikely Twitch streamer](https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wbnp/the-rise-of-the-highly-unlikely-twitch-streamer?ref=howardgray.net)**: Game platforms aren’t just game platforms. Everything’s becoming a game. The metaverse is coming. --- ## Culture ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/6887bbd2-4b17-4a68-93f7-626e0e432d00_1020x634.jpeg) **[Discoteca](http://francoisprost.com/portfolio-item/discoteca-spanish-clubs/?ref=howardgray.net)**: a lovely bit of work by photographer Francois Prost, touring deserted Spanish nightlife spots during the slow, hot Summer of 2020. **[How venture capitalists are deforming capitalism](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/30/how-venture-capitalists-are-deforming-capitalism?ref=howardgray.net)**: More rumblings against the VC dogma that’s echoed out of Silicon Valley for the past 5 years or so. **[On the sesh with Premier League football managers](https://twitter.com/reverse%5Fsweeper/status/1325491317066117125?ref=howardgray.net)**: While having an interest in football helps with grasping this, the copywriting is wonderful regardless. As is the prospect of spending 10 hours with Ralph at Berghain. --- ## Jukebox A triple whammy this month. It’s the last edition of the year, after all. This treble is made up of something old, something new, and something kinda in between. 1. **[LTJ Bukem & MC Conrad, Progression Sessions 2001](https://soundcloud.com/theclassicmixcdseries/progression-sessions-6?ref=howardgray.net)**: On the surface, this doesn’t stand out too much, but the blend of lyrics and track selection is subtly superior. Hard to put your finger on, but once you hear you can’t unhear. 1. **[The War on Drugs, Coachella 2015](https://open.spotify.com/album/6wkH6InYGqr5hXxzLkt5Rz?utm%5Fsource=embed%5Fv2&go=1&play=1&nd=1)**. My last international foray before I departed the music business. Somehow the company backed a trip to California. No stakes, no pressure. Friday evening sunset, The War on Drugs on stage. On my own, front row centre. Sun setting over the desert. Shimmering heat on the horizon. Here’s a new live album to bring it back just a little. 1. **[The Adventures… playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6TbVmu2iUvpkPcQSYEDH67?utm%5Fsource=embed%5Fv2&go=1&play=1&nd=1)**: Yes, one from me - I’ll be updating this every couple of weeks. Go ahead and follow - I promise I won’t[ try and sell it](https://swapd.co/search?q=spotify&ref=howardgray.net). --- ## Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this month. - **Launching a new podcast**: The first four episodes are landing next week. [You can read more here >](https://howardgray.net/under-the-current/?ref=howardgray.net) - **Scripted Entertainment**: A renewed hobby of mine is script watchalongs of my favorite movies (don’t judge me). [Top of the list is Michael Clayton](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57c189cfe6f2e148e8cff99b/t/5ac34de11ae6cf15a4c1aa3b/1522748898553/michael+clayton.pdf?ref=howardgray.net); the scene descriptions alone beat the entirety of most scripts. I also love what its creator Tony Gilroy says about his process of working on a project: he’ll walk around New York City until he believes he has ‘the secret’ - the unique angle to the story that only he possesses. I’ve done a lot of walking around NYC. **Cycling around Prospect Park:** As the election result was announced. I’ll never forget that day’s effervescent energy. ### Free or full price URL: https://www.howardgray.net/free-or-full-price/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:03:20.000Z In 2010, a heavy metal kid suddenly took the dance music world by storm. When Sonny Moore aka Skrillex broke onto the scene, he played over 300 shows in the first year. In the second year, he did maybe 10% of that. What changed? Well, a lot. Profile, direction, team, creative energy, obligations, and a whole load more. At a certain point, it flips around from saying yes with abandon to repeatedly saying no. No to the club gig. No to the corporate cash. No to the private show that no one will know about. Even no to the festival. And the ones that become ‘yes’ have more stakes, more riding on them. More elements, more people involved, more to consider. Yes becomes more difficult. But there’s another type of yes. For friends, for people we trust, those with causes we believe in. Someone we’ve worked with who needs a little extra from us, and we give it because we know it’ll make things better. Yes. For Skrillex, it could be jumping on stage for a single track collab. Giving a shout out in a tweet. Showing up randomly to play a DJ set in a sweatbox club on a Wednesday. The 300 gigs a year went away, and almost everything was no. Except when it was yes. And with this kind of yes there’s no point in talking money or negotiating a deal. It’s free. No reciprocation requested. Nothing expected in return. When this tipping point comes and the world becomes more complex, things can in fact become clearer. And this tipping point can come earlier than you think. You don’t need to be headlining festivals or starring in movies to feel it. It could even be happening right now. Free or full price. The full price may never come – not from the person for whom we did it for free. And that’s fine. There’s no need to worry about awkward conversations with friends, or finding a way to lowball ourselves and highball them. The tension goes, and we’re not watching the clock against a rate we compromised on. The great news about free is that it’s freeing. And the full price is there, and it’s clear. Free or full price. Your choice. ### Do you remember your first 10? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/do-you-remember-your-first-10/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T02:19:31.000Z Every business starts somewhere. There are very few that got off the ground with hundreds or thousands of customers rather than ten, one, or none. The first ten are a huge deal for a bunch of reasons. They validate the business and the founders’ reason for starting up. They inform strategy. They are the ones who will tell the others (or not). They may even be the only customers a company will ever need. Conor McCarthy’s new podcast focuses on this oft-overlooked but crucial area: how business builders got their first ten. I was delighted to be invited to appear. In this episode we get into: - My entrepreneurial journey - How I used bulletin boards to find customers - The power of mirroring graphic design trends to segment clients - Why separate mission and vision - The importance of continuously iterate value propositions and a whole load more… ### The Rust URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-rust/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:03:32.000Z On Sunday I recorded the first episode for a new podcast series I’m producing. The guest was someone I admire, but also find a little intimidating. I didn’t sleep well the night before. When it came to the recording, I knew I was nervous. I hadn’t hosted a podcast in nearly a year. I felt the rust. I wasn’t match-fit. And so there were times I held back when I could have spoken. Or spoke when I could have paused. And maybe I shuffled the questions just one too many times. But we did it. It’s done: a piece of work that’ll get shipped very soon. And, it might just work. The rust is real. So is the pedestal, the overawe, and the fear of the thing being a disaster. What’s also real is you get to feel better the next day. Not because the work is great – that’s not the point. It’s because you did the thing, and there’s probably now just a tiny bit more confidence inside you to try again. The podcast? It’s about the tension in trying to do creative work, of course. The first 3 episodes will be live very soon. Check the [podcast page](https://howardgray.net/podcasts/?ref=howardgray.net) to grab them. ### 30 degree days URL: https://www.howardgray.net/30-degree-days/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:05:14.000Z Stringer Bell doesn’t like 40 degree days. Except when it’s 30\. Let alone 20. For many of us, the last few weeks have been clocking in at 40, 45, maybe 50 (metaphorically speaking, if not literally). This morning, it was nearer 30\. The cold cut into my fingers, the wind whipped right across. Mooching in the park and hanging out in line aren’t going to be sure things for much longer. And it’ll be dark before 5pm. 40 degree days are sluggish, boring, slow. Except when it’s 30. The challenge isn’t to find ways to make the most of the 40 degree days. It’s to find ways to adapt when it’s 30. ### Prospect URL: https://www.howardgray.net/prospect/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:24:17.000Z So it was. I woke up on Saturday feeling lethargic and slow; that half-pace off the weekday cadence. I couldn’t resist checking for results. No change. There wouldn’t be anything for another day or two. Time to switch off. My body stuck lazily to the sofa, 45 degree angle. Lost in a scroll. Inevitably, the exercise regime feels a little more of a chore on weekend mornings. If the run doesn’t happen by 8:30am it usually doesn’t happen at all. It was 8:45. After mooching to the market to buy a loaf of bread, by 10 I was still padding around the house, procrastinating and pontificating about what might be. We had plans for a picnic as the weather was incredible for November in NYC; warm, sunny, not a cloud in the sky, with all the Fall colors in full form. The run always feels like a task, a cause of sore muscles that must be taken on thanklessly. The bike, on the other hand, is different. After being released from its shipping container 3 years before, my bright yellow, red, and blue bicycle had only racked up dust instead of miles. During the last few weeks here in Brooklyn had it moved back to prominence, but bar one slog over the bridge it remained a decorative symbol rather than a going concern. By the time I’d pumped up the tires and maneuvered it out of the narrow, heavy front door, it was 10:45\. We were meeting our friends at 12\. Regardless is time, something said to me today was the day for the bike to hit the street. Wobbling onto the street, it took a few moments to get the groove back. Unlike my usual Citibike hire, this two-wheeler was skinny, light, and fast, and the tight frame length put me directly over the handlebars – a little disconcerting when you’re nearly 2 meters tall. One heavy push on the pedal zipped the thing forward 2 meters times 10. I remembered the words of our upstairs neighbor; the bike route to my destination was easy, “Portland, Lafayette, Vanderbilt.” I hit Vanderbilt Avenue, down the slow slope, skimmed across the intimidating Atlantic intersection with a couple of seconds left on the clock, and started the slow wind up the Vanderbilt hill to Prospect Park. The trail winds on weekends as the avenue is closed to cars, so the bicycles need to gently slalom the pedestrians out for coffee, bagels, and Saturday morning provisions. A difficult task for the rusty rider. At the crest of Vanderbilt is Grand Army Plaza and its bustling farmers market. By this point the sun was warm, and I felt a layer of sweat on my back along with that familiar burn arriving in my lower legs. It really had been a while. I pulled over just inside the park gates to strip off my jumper before hitting the main track. Prospect Park has a wonderful looping road that tracks its outer edges. Popular with pedestrians and well-trodden by runners, its most notable visitors are the cyclists. There are the wobbly first-timers; the gentle coasters; and dozens of Mamils (Middle Aged Men in Lycra), rocking their bright cycling tops and wraparound shades as they whizz through the traffic like it’s a French road race in June. I sit somewhere in the middle of all this: able to move quickly with my lightweight single speeder, but more than content without any fancy cleats or dominant road behavior. And so it was. I found a nice middle groove on the anti-clockwise route, on what have could been the most glorious weather of the year. A few minutes in, some runners completed a race. As they reached the end marker, their friends whooped with joy. I didn’t realize there were park races still happening. Then a few seconds later, some others finished theirs a few hundred feet over. Two running races – who would have thought it. And then the penny, the nickel, the dime, dropped. “He Won!” I was right about the race, it just wasn’t the kind that you do for fun on a Saturday in the park. I kept up my pedaling cadence, touring through the various parts of the park, winding in and out of the airspace of the main road at the perimeter. Horns started to blare. Pots and pans rattled. Excited voices raised themselves. Round to the south, into Windsor Terrace, Lefferts, and back up the big Eastside hill, there was something in the air. I didn’t stop moving. The smiling faces, raised arms, exuberant phone calls. FaceTime at overtime. And there were deep, guttural, cathartic howls. Not really joy or happiness, but relief. Release. Of something truly shifting. I just kept pedaling. Taking it all in. Determined to make it all the way around, but to absorb everything I could along the way. For a few moments the path looked like it would never end – a rolling green vista on one side, trees on the other. Saxophones playing; people singing; a couple dancing under a big oak tree. And then, with a big push of the crank, I was back to the start. Back to Grand Army Plaza. Hundreds of people. Thousands perhaps. A surge of noise. Bicycles hoisted. Flags raised. Cars jamming out rhythms on their horns. The sun pinged off the white plastic roofs of the market stands, so brightly I could only squint at what was happening around me. Here I was. Standing right in it. A moment in time. The start of Prospect. ### Adventures #47: What's cookin'? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-47-whats-cookin/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:25.000Z You’ve probably been cooking more than usual during the last few months. I know I have. In April there were a flurry of new recipes and combinations to try, plus gadgets aplenty. Our compact Manhattan apartment became a culinary lab of stocks, confits and other concoctions. Then, the fatigue kicked in, and food became functional; a laboured punctuation point every few hours. This Summer, New York embraced outdoor restaurant dining; a delightful new dimension that carried into a bright and breezy Autumn. Now, Winter’s rolling into town, and more change is in the air. Food always feels prominent at this time of year. But beyond the annual festive occasions with clear culinary connections, food feels especially important this time around. And there’s tension... ### Brooklyn or Bezos As the cold comes, restaurants’ outdoor setups are bulking up with heaters, walls, and decorative accoutrements. There’s even indoor space on offer. Ostensibly it’s a mini winter wonderland, but as reality bites will customers instead choose to hunker down and box in? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/3e07f9d4-87ee-4170-a545-adb6d3cab87c_1024x576.jpeg) Greenlight Books, Brooklyn. Meanwhile, the Amazon boxes (many containing kitchen gadgets, no doubt) pile up on the stoops, and *‘Shop Brooklyn, Not Bezos’* posters are plastered prominently around the neighborhood. There’s tension. Big/Small. Hot/Cold. Convenience/Commitment. Boxed In/Boxed Out. Small businesses everywhere are feeling the tension, but perhaps the hospitality industry is experiencing it more than any other. And the tension seems strongest around food. Don’t get me wrong - almost every part of the hospitality industry is hurting, but there’s something about food’s visceral and vital nature. Perhaps the tension is made stronger still by restaurants remaining visible while many of the industry’s other players are forced to hibernate. But tension isn’t all bad. Tension fosters innovation. ### Mi Casa, Su Casa Three blocks up the street is our favourite local restaurant spot; Colonia Verde. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/78b40bc3-a896-4443-8ff5-33a2df3786a1_800x533.jpeg) Like some other forward-thinking food purveyors, they’ve diversified over the past few months. At the heart of their plan is community. Coming off the back of existing programs like their Sunday Asado gatherings, they’ve created [CASA](https://casabycoloniaverde.com/?ref=howardgray.net) \- offering ingredients, meal kits and oven-ready delights tailored to the local patrons of their place. All the best bits, in the comfort of your kitchen. It still tense, though. They even said so in an email they sent to customers this week. They’re still figuring it out; building the plane as they fly it. The business model is far from straightforward. Where there’s tension, there’s innovation. And where there’s innovation, there’s tension. --- There’s no easy solution to all this. No way to level the playing field in a way that everyone can play - and win. What I can offer though is this: food matters. And its value goes far beyond providing sustenance. There’s the ritual of the [mise-en-place](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/08/11/338850091/for-a-more-ordered-life-organize-like-a-chef?ref=howardgray.net); an experiment with a new ingredient; the act of conjuring something from seemingly nothing; or simply supporting a local business. And whether it’s a treat at that great local restaurant, a quick homemade dinner, or volunteering time and energy to those who need it most, one thing matters most of all: connection. It’s an opportunity to come together. Converse. Break bread. To ask *‘what’s cookin’?’.* Food is a way for a community - however small, stretched, or scattered they feel right now - to come together. And no matter the sector, the businesses that will succeed in what’s coming next will find ways to do the same. Thank you for giving me a slice of your valuable attention, and as always I’d love to know what’s cookin’ with you. Just hit reply. Howard --- # Career Fuel ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/fb844ed7-4399-4223-9939-798883e39a47_600x600.png) Promo only, not for resale ### [18 elements of the Zoom Revolution (remix)](https://howardgray.net/2020/10/13/18-elements-of-the-zoom-revolution-remix/?ref=howardgray.net) Seth Godin’s podcast from a couple of weeks ago had a bunch of interesting ideas on how Zoom will change the way we work. [Here’s a remix I put together](https://howardgray.net/2020/10/13/18-elements-of-the-zoom-revolution-remix/?ref=howardgray.net); unauthorised, white-label only. ### [Workshops as Mixtapes, Teachers as DJs \[podcast\]](https://workshops.work/podcast/081/?ref=howardgray.net) The arts of DJing and workshop creation are very much connected. What could workshop facilitators learn from making mixtapes? How can you apply the makings of a good warmup set into teaching? Are teachers the next superstar DJs? Here’s me on the Workshops.Work podcast, talking all things workshop creation and DJing. I know, I often stretch metaphors, but this one really works. [Check it out >](https://workshops.work/podcast/081/?ref=howardgray.net) Also: [A long-form piece on Spotify CEO Daniel Ek](https://www.theobservereffect.org/daniel.html?ref=howardgray.net), covering his leadership style, time management, and decision making --- # Learning <> Doing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/4939b08b-7d0c-4da3-93cb-906f13cb71ee_1000x562.jpeg) ### [What is Masterclass actually selling?](https://medium.com/the-atlantic/what-is-masterclass-actually-selling-634940cbadfd?ref=howardgray.net) A ticket to ‘the answer’. Except the answer doesn’t exist. There is no answer; no secret to success. No multiple choice tickbox. Instead, it’s *“[a platform for dispensing assorted self-help and personal-development bonbons for the young capitalist striver](https://medium.com/the-atlantic/what-is-masterclass-actually-selling-634940cbadfd?ref=howardgray.net)”.* The bonbons sure taste good, but they’re only a small part of a (balanced) diet. The main food group missing here is the pedagogy. And when I say 'pedagogy, I don’t just mean content and curriculum design, but also facilitation - knowing how to see people and create space for them to develop their work and ideas. It’s not realistic to expect Masterclass guests to be great teachers, but if you’re promising something more than a sugary rush then you have to find other ways of delivering the pedagogy. I also have some strong feelings about ‘edutainment’, but that’s for next time ;) ``` Opportunity for Adventure: I'm working on it right now - take a look ;) ``` Also: [Edtech’s Answer to Remote Learning Burnout](https://a16z.com/2020/10/16/next-gen-edtech/?ref=howardgray.net): I’m a bit wary of the heavy libertarian stance here (it is a VC firm blog post after all), but some good food for thought on trends in remote learning. --- # Media & Entertainment ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/ff3db93f-e2fd-412a-958e-a0185d16ce96_657x365.png) [Audio’s opportunity and who will capture it](https://www.matthewball.vc/all/audiotech?ref=howardgray.net): When it comes to writing about media, music, gaming and entertainment, Matthew Ball is hard to beat. Here’s another deep dive - this time into the future of audio and music. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Utilising platforms like Unreal in the creation of new spaces to produce and experience music and audio (not just concerts) ``` [The (not failing) New York Times](https://minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/newyorktimes?ref=howardgray.net): a comprehensive slide deck outlining how the NYT rode the waves of the digital media revolution. Lots of interesting stuff here, just beware the survivorship bias… history is always written by the victors. --- # Culture ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/33277bf7-71ac-4fc1-85f8-087beaf90e5d_295x171.jpeg) [Astor Hair](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/nyregion/nyc-astor-place-hairstylists.html?ref=howardgray.net) closes. Another thread of a city’s fabric is snipped away. In cruel irony, I heard this news as I was getting my first NYC haircut at a different salon (which was double the price and half as good). I loved Astor Hair so much [I made a podcast about it](https://howardgray.net/2019/10/01/the-tension-microscope-telescope-2/?ref=howardgray.net). [Museum of Youth Culture](https://museumofyouthculture.com/collections/?ref=howardgray.net): This is an incredible resource: a huge library of photography documenting UK youth culture throughout the last century. I sense plenty of opportunity for adventure around this topic… [Creativity is dead, long live curation](https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/special-report-q3-creativity-dead-long-live-curation/?ref=howardgray.net): Ok, the title is pure clickbait, but there’s some interesting stuff happening in the fashion world that may mushroom out elsewhere. And besides, this entire newsletter is curated, so naturally I’m bullish on this trend :) --- # Jukebox ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/cbdd1332-a61b-47dc-baad-590d8403b79f_988x682.png) ### [Laurent Garnier in The Alps](https://soundcloud.com/radiomeuh/laurent-garnier-le-champ-des-platines?ref=howardgray.net) When it comes to culinary excellence, France is right up there. And if DJs are chefs, Laurent Garnier holds multiple Michelin stars (ok, I’ll stop the food metaphors now). I also referenced Garnier in the workshop podcast (above) because of his ability to switch between masterful smooth mixing and highly contrasting, almost incongruent styles. [Here’s a wonderful 4 hour mixtape](https://soundcloud.com/radiomeuh/laurent-garnier-le-champ-des-platines?ref=howardgray.net) that highlights those skills. There are 1930s French spoken word tracks; 70s Brazilian cuts; reggae; house; techno; and much more. I’m always in awe of those who can cover such depth and breadth simultaneously. Also: [here’s a great little 7-tracker from a new(ish) artist called Al Pagoda](https://open.spotify.com/album/0OcPET0uJHX6K1CzDc8KXN?si=bdg7wVvlRIG51yFcfYsN4g&ref=howardgray.net). Thanks to my sibling Murray F. Gray for putting this my way. --- ## Footnotes A few other things I’ve been up to this month: - Cooking (as you may have guessed). The [Turkish Eggs](https://www.nigella.com/recipes/turkish-eggs?ref=howardgray.net) were the highlight. - [Hitting the post-gig low](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6729473555584569344/?ref=howardgray.net) - Slowly improving my skills in giving feedback on creative work - Procrastinating on the new podcast (but it’s happening!) Finally abandoning plans to go back to the UK for Christmas :-/ --- Does someone in your world need this newsletter in their life? Sharing is caring. ### Zenith & Nadir URL: https://www.howardgray.net/zenith-nadir/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:06:44.000Z When I was a talent agent, there’d be a couple of times a year where a client would hit a deep dip straight after a tour. After the zenith, came the nadir. I never really understood it – until last week. I spent the week flat-out on an intense project. It had a tight deadline, a challenging scope, and stakeholders in multiple timezones. On Thursday morning I delivered the work. I was exhausted, but satisfied. Mission accomplished. Some people said some nice things about what I’d done. I took the next day off. And suddenly, there was the dip. That low feeling after the previous night’s gig. From the zenith to the nadir. It took me a while to shake. But it’s part of the practice. Dealing with the strange gap in between. When the next thing is still unknown, but that previous tour is instantly history. The work is as much about finding momentum when it’s quiet, as it is delivering when you’re in the spotlight. ### Pareto in a pandemic URL: https://www.howardgray.net/pareto-in-a-pandemic/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:04:22.000Z The theme of last month’s [newsletter](https://howardgray.net/newsletter/?ref=howardgray.net) was *Dormant Ties*. As the professor and author Herminia Ibarra puts it, dormant ties are those connections that were once strong but have gone dormant for 3 years or more. The dormant ties can easily be fossilized, disappearing forever. Resurfacing them gets especially tough when 3, 5, or 10 years have passed. But there are those other ties, the ones that typically won’t go dormant, but in accelerated pandemic times go from active to passive in a blink of an eye. Last week I resurfaced one of those still active yet potentially passive ties. This friend and I hadn’t spent time together since a workshop we co-facilitated in the halcyon days of February: pre-pandemic, on the road, sun shining in the Southern states. I was excited to catch up. Working with him never really felt like work, and so it wasn’t surprising our 30-minute calendar slot spilled into a freestyle 90\. It was Friday afternoon, after all. Of the many things we talked about, one in particular grabbed my attention. It’s a concept you’re probably familiar with – the Pareto principle, or more colloquially, the 80/20 rule. He mentioned he’d found his new enforced working conditions to be a good reset: although some curriculum design work had inevitably disappeared, his web development projects were on the up. It had also reminded him of his preferred balance: 80/20\. 80% on the heads-down work; and 20% connecting, teaching and facilitating. On reflection, he saw he was probably operating at 60/40 before the pandemic. Something hadn’t felt quite right. The March reset provided a welcome chance to rebalance. Now, he was ticking back up the other way; 90/10 on the heads-down, and so the desire to connect felt stronger. The balance wasn’t there right now, but no matter. What mattered was noticing it. Part of our practice is checking in with ourselves on our 80/20, whatever it may be. If there’s a feeling of discomfort, chances are our 80 and our 20 have fallen out of whack. ### The $15m unbranding URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-15m-unbranding/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:06:01.000Z When Matthew McConnaughey decided to stop doing romantic comedies, he told his agent, Jim Toth at CAA, to make sure any romcom scripts did not make it past the desk. For 6 months, that’s all that came in. Nothing got past the desk. Then, another romcom, but with a strong script, and an $8m offer attached. This makes it past the desk, and into the hands of the actor. *“No, thank you”.* 6 months in. A romcom fast. The offer goes up to $8m. *“No, thank you”.* $10m. $12.5m. *“No, thank you”. “No, thank you”.* And then $15m. Maybe time for another look. He re-reads it. The script suddenly feel funnier, tighter, more creative. By this point, the agent was really teetering. That agreement to do no romantic comedies suddenly felt hard to stick to. And still, “no, thank you” Message received. Everything stopped. No scripts. Nothing at all. For a full 12 months. 21 months in to the romcom hiatus, the phone starts ringing. The scripts stack up. Killer Joe. Magic Mike. True Detective. Dallas Buyers Club. The rest is history. --- Is the lesson here in saying no? Maybe. Is the lesson here in rebranding to become a dramatic actor? Perhaps. What’s more interesting is the disappearing act. Going to ground. Being gone long enough to become what seems to be a new, good idea. The lesson is in the *unbrand*, rather than the rebrand. And this is the step we usually miss. Instead of being constant, of making a pivot, what if we took a step back – completely off the court? It means a different kind of sacrifice and more sunk costs to ignore, but sometimes it’s the only way to go. Before the rebrand, unbrand. --- [Matthew McConaughey on The Tim Ferriss Show >](https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/?ref=howardgray.net) ### The flipped fortune cookie URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-flipped-fortune-cookie/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:03:14.000Z > “What would you tell your younger self?” It’s one of the most popular questions you’ll hear in interviews. The answers are nearly always reassuring. They give us a warm feeling; a gentle sugary surge. But this is the problem. It’s too often a confection; a hindsight-baked fortune cookie: *“Take your time”, “Don’t sweat the small stuff”, “Just be happy”.* For something more nutritious and flavorsome, flip it around. What would your *younger* self tell you now? What do they think of the person you’ve become? What would the 16, 21, 30 year old you make of this person they’re meeting? What do they see that you don’t? ### 18 elements of the Zoom revolution (remix) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/18-elements-of-the-zoom-revolution-remix/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:27:03.000Z In the latest instalment of his ‘Akimbo’ podcast, Seth Godin switched it up. On the surface, nothing was different. As always, there were no guests. Very little editing. The episode was the usual 20 minutes or so. So, what changed? This one was a listicle (or whatever the name is for a podcast version).t The Zoom revolution. 18 ideas how Zoom\* can – and will – change everything. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the Zoom revolution and its knock-on effects. And like Seth, I’m certain that Zoom is rarely used properly. There’s also a lot of unfulfilled potential to tap into. When it comes to looking further ahead at the next portal of possibilities, we’re pretty much still on level 1\. We’ll look back in 2, 3, or 5 years and even the most cutting-edge of today’s uses of the technology will feel laughably rigid and basic. Opportunity abounds. The podcast gave me a bunch of ideas on the future of work, learning, communication and collaboration. However, as I started to scribble some notes, I realized there was an opportunity to collate my thoughts a little differently. Instead of verbatim notes, or lightly augmenting someone else’s creation and calling it my own, here’s another approach: the stems of the original material, with my thinking woven in. It’s not an original cut; nor is it simply turning up the volume or the bass levels. Instead, it’s a remix. And because I didn’t ask permission to use the parts, let’s call this a white label remix: promo only; not for resale. You’re welcome to use it in mixtapes you may want to make; splice out a bit you particularly like; share it as is; or just engage once and move on. To check out the original, head over [here](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/akimbo-a-podcast/the-zoom-revolution-g-XFmMbixPp/?ref=howardgray.net), or search ‘Akimbo’ wherever you get your podcasts. Before we get into it, a couple of quick notes: *\* ‘Zoom’ in this case is shorthand for any video conferencing platform operating at scale.* *\*\* For brevity I tend to use the word ‘meeting’ here; it can extend to almost any gathering that may take place online* --- ## **The Zoom Revolution, by Seth Godin (Howard’s Rainy Day in Brooklyn remix)** ## 1\. **Timing** Meetings always used to take a while. There wasn’t just the meeting itself, but all the other stuff: walking, biking, driving, flying. There was planning; thinking; waiting; pausing; changing. Whether it was a sales pitch or a performance review; a wedding or a doctor’s appointment, it didn’t matter: there was always some lag, some space between. There was waiting for the latecomers, having a chit chat, or shoring up the schedule slippage. It meant meetings got plonked into big chunks of time: 30 minutes; 1 hour; 90 minutes; full day. Now, a lot of that latency has gone. What may happen next is things starting bang on time, and with that big chunk of time being trimmed. There will be less grace periods, but also shorter meetings. Additionally, attendees’ expectations will evolve to expecting to leave earlier than the designated half-hourly or hourly end-time. Smart organizers will design so that finishing up ahead of the hour is almost expected, not a surprise. Someone always complains when it runs over; hardly anyone complains when it runs early. Leave them wanting more. ## 2\. Commuting So, Zoom strips away excess timing. Perhaps the biggest excess when it comes to time is the commute. There are a few upsides (like the space and time to digest a podcast), but commutes themselves are largely made of fat: tasty here and there, but pretty bad for you every day. The *purpose* of commuting – and its endpoint – is more nutritious, though. It’s about being in a shared space to exchange ideas with other people. However, Zoom – when done well – could replicate the majority of this nutritious fuel. Per the ideas that follow this one, it could even make it more nutritious still. The obvious counterpoint to this particular diet is that not everyone is going to want to sit on Zoom all the time. And so, the balanced diet of the future will most likely be blended. At one end of the scale, some companies will go back to everything in-person (and some have to). At the other end are those that remain 100% remote (probably with in-person gatherings every 6-12 months). The middle of the curve – and it’s a big, fat middle – will be blended: some in-person, some online. The important thing here is to get better at the stuff that commuting serves: that sharing of ideas, and connecting with others. ## 3\. Group Sizes A phone call was typically limited to two people. Conference calls then opened it up to 3,4,5,10, 20\. The problem (ok, one of them), was that it was almost impossible to create any kind of space – let alone read a room, or make a proper connection with somebody. Video calls, if you know what you’re doing, are surprisingly effective at giving you that extra information. It’s possible to detect changes in energy, goodwill and connection even with 20 or 30 on board. The other related thing here is Zoom is misused when a meeting organizer attempts to command and conquer – lecturing relentlessly from start until end. Ironically, this approach tends to have the opposite of the desired effect. And speaking of iron, most people still treat the platform like an iron bar rather than something with elastic properties. With Zoom, some flexibility is in-built: there’s the ability to converse; to step in and out; to expand or reduce group sizes. And that’s before gaining additional elastic from shared documents and collaboration tools. Varied group sizes are a game-changer, but they’re woefully underutilized. ## 4\. Multimodal As touched on in point 3, Zoom is multimodal. On a telephone, you can only talk. Video platforms allow you to talk, see, text, and collaborate. This move to multi-modal is a big deal. It’s been coming for a while, but the level of latency allows the technology to keep up with the agility of our minds. There can be multiple conversations in the same space: sidebars can easily take place, or rapid sprints can start from nowhere. It’s possible to switch between these modals instantly, even running two or more simultaneously. Just like the iPhone, you can use it solely as a phone if you like, but you’re missing out on most of the magic. ## 5\. Creating something new Speaking of magic, Zoom allows something new – and perhaps something magical – to be conjured almost instantly. The nature of multi-modal means multiple things can happen in parallel, and it’s possible to merge and connect many ideas, materials, and tools together to produce something never seen before. A good way of thinking about this is what happened when DJs began to move from turntables to digital platforms. A box full of vinyl typically gave 80-150 options. Sure, you could mix and scratch and chop them up, but there were a finite number of paths. Now, there are hundreds of thousands of possibilities, and brand new works can be created on the fly – and that’s without even adding any collaborators or special effects plugins into the mix. ## 6\. Breakout rooms This one is more important than it looks. Breakout rooms completely change the rhythm of any meeting or gathering online. Instead of the same old marching drum, there’s the option for breakdancing, tango, or swing. [Different spaces and configurations are possible](https://howardgray.net/2020/03/04/the-joy-of-6/?ref=howardgray.net). Different types of conversation and exploration can take place. You can move between spaces, or focus in on a couple; it’s up to you. The best bit is that all of this can take place in the same container, so everyone can easily align when it’s time to sync back up. ## 7\. Video As we learned from another revolution – that of television – video is powerful. In the case of Zoom, people can see you when you’re on mute. There’s much more visual information available. The problem is that we’re still not quite used to this. Another purpose of offices is so people can see you. Zoom ostensibly does this, but it’s not a good substitute a lot of time because many of us just aren’t used to being on video. However, there are a couple of ways to make this better. First, bring energy. It’s not always easy to muster, but the difference is huge. Second, and partly to enable the first, it’s on the organizer to organize meetings with intent, and for the right reasons. Video opens up so much more, and gives us far more connection than conference calls, but again, it all comes back to design. ## 8\. Asynchronous Isn’t Zoom about live – synchronous – connection? Indeed. Which is all the more reason to focus on the other side; the asynchronous. In a Zoom world, many companies are even more mindful of ensuring everyone is ‘working’, so the old system once again gets grafted across – the system of power and status; of ‘checking in’; ticking the boxes. Instead of forcing synchronicity and causing Zoom fatigue through endless meetings to validate productivity, why not make a video, a slide deck, or a document and send it everyone in advance? Give them time to digest when it suits them best, and then make the synchronous part much shorter and efficient. This is a great example of the importance of prioritizing design to make the actual delivery and connection part feel effortless. ## 9\. Recording Recording can instil fear, sometimes with good reason. However, recording has all kinds of upsides. For some people, they may be more attuned to listening or watching back in their own time. For others, ideas can flow more easily within conversation than putting pen to paper. Recording means those riffs can be captured – the magic can be bottled. There’s also accountability: in what was said, in what was shared (and what wasn’t). Counter-intuitively, recording can create a safe space, a more secure space. And there’s quality. We’ve all heard the hold message on the phone; “your call may be recorded for quality purposes” – the same applies to Zoom. The quality of an interaction – what’s working, what’s not. How we can make it better. It’s probably worth assuming that things are being recorded. And it’s probably worth recording. ## 10\. Translation More magic. Translation. On the fly, ship it wherever you like. Any Zoom call can be subtitled by Google, for free, and forwarded on in the blink of an eye. Go back 50, 25, maybe even only 10 years ago, there’d only be one word for this: magic. The ways in which we can connect can make a step-change. Dynamic translation services mean connecting Global and Local just got 10x easier. And anything that becomes 10x easier tends to get very popular, very quickly. ## 11\. Transcription In the spirit of mixing and remixing, bringing ideas 9 and 10 together give us this: transcription. A meeting can be recorded and translated. It can also be transcribed. Of course, you can do this yourself, or outsource it to another person. But what’s happening next – no, scratch that; *now* – is Machine Learning is doing the transcription. A computer will transcribe your conversation into a full script, which can be packaged up with a recording and shared. What’s more, it can be analyzed and extrapolated. Then it can be translated too. It’s multi-modal – both inside the experience, and after. ## 12\. Computer-aware Building on top of ideas 9-11, what happens when a computer is brought deeper into the mix? What happens when we don’t just run a meeting using a computer, or hire a computer to document what happened… What if we brought a computer *into* the meeting? This is where our gatherings become computer-aware: information tracked in real-time; from shared documents to words spoken. The computer could take the form of a blank image, a simple avatar, an AI generated human face, or something far more detailed and lifelike. The computer will be aware of what’s happening, even before we are. ## 13\. Triggers After awareness are triggers. Perhaps a computer will know exactly when to play that video presentation, rather than a human host scrambling to find the file in their downloads folder. It could send a text, or share a file. We can start with simple triggers, like programming a music sequencer to play certain loops or sounds. Beyond these basic triggers, we could ask a computer attendee any question. It could pre-empt the next question to discuss, or serve up some prompts for an exercise. Maybe it’ll spin up a pre-designed whiteboard activity. It could tell when someone is zoning out, or is fully engaged. It could take the place of a co-host. The AI adjunct avatar is arriving. ## 14\. Gamification Points, streaks. badges, leaderboards. Gamification elements are commonplace not just in traditional games but in all sorts of unexpected applications from healthcare to language learning. Why not work? After all, marketers play a game of acquisition and conversion. What other work games are there? Media company OZY took a look at this [on their podcast](https://www.ozy.com/the-new-and-the-next/listen-to-the-latest-episode-of-the-future-of-x-on-workplace-gamification/244232/?ref=howardgray.net), but that was before Zoom life took hold. Now, with all the data and triggers available, there’s a different kind of gamification opportunity It needs thinking through carefully, though. There’s plenty on [why and how gamification fails](https://robhaisfield.com/notes/most-gamification-sucks?ref=howardgray.net) – and implementing streaks and points into work activities has a bunch of potential issues surrounding it (as well as just having the potential to suck). Maybe a decent start point is from those triggers; anonymous data that tells you six of the group tuned out when you started talking. ## 15\. Unlucky for some? There wasn’t a number 15\. Time for a brief pause. ## 16\. Always on Thinking about the 9-5? Fuhgeddaboudit. Zoom rooms have the potential to be always on, 24/7\. This doesn’t mean *you* need to be. Instead, the rooms can take on different forms: libraries or co-working spaces; meditation booths or water coolers. People can drop in or drop out whenever they like. Themes begin to appear. New microcultures start to emerge. Time Zones begin to diffuse just a little. Our global groups feel just a little more local. ## 17\. Scales to Free When something can scale to free, it invariably becomes widely adopted. The network effects then get very, very powerful. In 1985, it would seem weird if someone didn’t have a phone number. Soon, everyone will have a Zoom account – or at least know how to dial in to a video call. Once something is ubiquitous, other things start to shift – second and third order effects. In the case of Zoom, once it’s ubiquitous, it’ll seem crazy to drive to the office, sit there for 8 hours, then drive back. At the time of writing, Morgan Stanley have called 500 of their 8500 NYC staff back to the office. Will they demand all 8500 return? Of all the 18 ideas, this one perhaps has the biggest knock-on effect on other seemingly disparate areas of our world. ## 18\. The Long Tail Kevin Kelly’s now-legendary concept is at play once more. Currently, there are only small circles, and relatively few of them. As the middle (all those mind-numbing webinars) fade, the long tail opens. The long tail opens up lots of tiny pockets, all with common values, feelings, or interests. Portable, online, circles, where geography and company are irrelevant, but they still have an urge to be connected. It could be the 9 people who are launching a novel on Kickstarter today – that’s a circle. It could be the 7 people who are preparing for a performance review at Series B tech companies this week. The 15 people who really want to learn more about an article they read in a niche science magazine. Or the group who are going into something for the long-haul. It could ad hoc for an hour, or 10 years deep. We’re starting to see it in places like Discord, and in cohort-driven future of learning programs. Watch out for more like this. --- What’s the big takeaway from these 18 ideas? This isn’t going away. It’ll continue to shape the way we work, learn, collaborate and communicate – and way beyond the pandemic period. It’s massively disruptive, and the knock-on effects are hard to fully fathom. Transport; Real Estate; Fashion; Design; Psychology. It’s all set for change. There’s tension, fear, and fatigue here. It’s not easy to overcome, and there are of course limitations and constraints. But the possibilities are huge. Remote can be magic, when done well. It gives us the opportunity to be connected with anyone, anywhere. To make new things, to create new ideas, to make more of the time we have. It’s worth figuring out how to become good at this. It’s worth figuring out how to be great at this. At [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) we work with brands and creators to create a new wave of online communities. We run interactive workshop programs on designing and producing online workshops and spaces. If you want to make your remote world better, [we’d love to hear from you](http://www.wavetable.net/contact?ref=howardgray.net). ### The Rough Edges URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-rough-edges/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T23:02:59.000Z The photographer who infuses their biology degree into the art. The fashion stylist who spent time as a national-level rower. The educator who links teaching with rave DJs. The big-city brand strategist who built social enterprises in rural Africa. --- They’re not going to be for everyone. They’ll get overlooked plenty. But that’s the point. They’re *definitely* going to be for someone. And when there’s alignment, they’ll be the only one to work with. It’s easy to suppress the eclectic background, or smooth off the rough edges. Maybe your rough edge *is* your edge. ### The cycles of alchemy URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-cycles-of-alchemy/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T18:02:24.000Z For the last 2 or 3 years I’ve become more interested in behavioural economics – or rather, I’ve realised there’s a name for some of the stuff I’ve long been interested in sticking my nose into (so to speak). One of the more well-known voices in this area is Rory Sutherland. After watching a couple of his TED Talks, reading tweets, and hearing him on Shane Parrish’s Knowledge Project podcast, after a good few months away from his work I was reminded of him last week, this time via a dig into the archives of the [‘Invest like the Best’](https://player.fm/series/invest-like-the-best-2394923/rory-sutherland-moonshots-and-marketing-invest-like-the-best-ep191?ref=howardgray.net) podcast. I find the podcast itself a little myopic – it has a strong focus on white men with plenty of privilege and can at times come off pretty tone deaf to wider society (although given the title I guess it’s something of an occupational hazard) – but there are some interesting conversations to discover. The discovery of the Rory Sutherland episode came while I was in the middle of formulating a project for a client in the beverage business. A good chunk of the episode gets into Rory’s thoughts on Red Bull – these in turn cleared the path for me to clarify some key strategic insights for said client project. It’s funny how timing and context can hit you; that funny old thing of facilitated serenpendity perhaps The Red Bull reference is also the lead-in for his book ‘Alchemy’. At the time of writing I’m only a chapter or so in, and already get the sense I’ll be writing a few more posts looking at bits of the book. Here’s one for starters – a bit on cycles. Rory writes: > “This isn’t the Middle Ages, which had too many alchemists and not enough scientists. Now it’s the other way around; people who aren’t very good at deploying and displaying conventional, deductive logic and everywhere, and they’re usually busily engaged in trying to apply some theory or model to something in order to optimize it. Much of the time, this is a good thing. I don’t want a conceptual artist in charge of air-traffic control, for instance. However, we now unfortunately festishise logic to such an extent that we are increasingly blind to its failings.” The takeaway here isn’t just alchemy vs science (or more specifically, logic) – it’s that an astonishing amount of trends, themes and phenomena are cyclical rather than being one-offs. We vastly underestimate the cyclical nature of things – especially when they may take years, decades or centuries to come back around again. ### Adventures #46: Resurfacing our dormant ties URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-46-resurfacing-our-dormant/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:24.000Z A lot of us feel pinned up against a wall watching this new dance unfold. While some people are out there moving smoothly in their careers and companies, the rest of us are uncertain which way to look, let alone which way to move. London Business School professor Herminia Ibarra is well-known for her work exploring career changes and networks. One of the concepts she explores are the strong and weak ties we hold in our personal and professional lives. Our strong ties are the ones that have sustained. We’ve carried them with us into the tumultuous tide of the past few months. Many of our strong ties have fortified and become even stronger. The weak ties? Most of those have dissolved. Sure, we can pep them up with a bunch of energisers and stimulants, but in times like this it’s difficult to organically strengthen them rep by rep. There are also new ties. In some ways the pandemic has enabled more of these to be made. The challenge is that new ties start out weak by default. They need dedicated time, effort and energy to strengthen, and too often it can feel like we just don’t have those reserves to draw upon - especially now. So what to do? #### Disturbing the dormant In a [recent blog post](https://hbr.org/2020/04/reinventing-your-career-in-the-time-of-coronavirus?ref=howardgray.net), Ibarra suggests moving away from the traditional wisdom of focusing on amplifying strong and weak ties, and instead looking at the hidden space between: the dormant ties. She classifies these as relationships that were once close, but with no contact in the past 3 years. Ibarra references a study where 200 executives were asked to reconnect with such people to get advice that might help them on an important work project. The executives reported that what they received from the dormant ties was more valuable and novel than from their strong ties. There’s huge value in the dormant ties, and for almost of us these dormant ties are plentiful. They can also bring much discomfort. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/3e8bbeb2-8d0e-498a-9a19-df934f78690b_1567x1175.jpeg) As time winds on, the fidelity of our dormant ties warps and fades. They get buried deeper, and with enough time and pressure, begin to fossilize: merging into the earth of our personal history, where only a trace of their remnants remain. We can’t really identify them as we could before, and so we forget. Of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of people I knew from the ages of 5-25, I can count on one hand the number of people I’m still in regular contact with. From ages 25-32 it’s probably less than 10. Hardly any of these ties snapped; they just picked up dust and went dormant. But then they got forgotten. Some started to fossilize. When it comes to resurfacing these ties, the barriers to restoration can feel overwhelming: so much effort; so much energy. It’s much easier not to disturb the dormant. And the longer it goes, the harder it gets: worrying about what they think if you get in touch; avoiding sounding like an idiot or an opportunist; over-thinking which ‘version’ of yourself to put out there. It’s like being at the school dance; pinned to the sides of the room, unsure and uncertain of how to be. Waiting for someone else to go first. Until the dance is over, and we too become a remnant out of view. #### The other kind of confidence game Last week I wrote a [post on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/howardgray83%5Fstrategy-activity-6713863489875664896-FbY0?ref=howardgray.net) that got a bunch of people liking and tagging. Many of them were dormant ties. Along with the dopamine hit, good memories flowed. Yet despite the ostensible engagement, these ties are still dormant. A bit like the other kids stuck to the sides of the room at the school dance, they can give me a look of encouragement or a half-smile, but it’s up to me to actually commit. I’m reminded of what [Derek Sivers describes in his TED talk on how to start a movement.](https://www.ted.com/talks/derek%5Fsivers%5Fhow%5Fto%5Fstart%5Fa%5Fmovement?language=en&ref=howardgray.net) Rather than ‘leading’ in the traditional sense, what’s most important is to find the courage to show others how to follow. Or, to take a David Mamet bit and flip it on its head: *“It’s called a confidence game.* *Why? Because you give me your confidence?* *No. Because I give you mine.”* Resurfacing the dormant ties aren’t about hard grind, or careful styling of our virtual persona. They’re about memories, shared histories, and a just a little bit of courage. Going back to the school dance, I’m plucking up the courage. It’s not too late. I’m getting off that rickety old gym bench and onto the parquet floor - actively inviting others to join. It’s not always comfortable, but the music’s playing and I don’t want to become a fossil of regret. And if, like me, you can’t dance - just nod your head. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. Howard --- ## Career Fuel **[The Age of We Need Each Other](https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-age-of-we-need-each-other/?ref=howardgray.net)**: This past few weeks I’ve been really feeling the resistance around creative output. This Charles Eisenstein article is a remedy: pulling apart success fantasies, and instead finding a place as “*a kind of receiving antenna for information that a certain segment of humanity is asking f*o*r*”. A big shout out to [Josh](https://www.joshupton.com/?ref=howardgray.net) for putting this under my nose - just when I needed it most. Speaking of noses… ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/3876e366-646a-471a-a12a-25c1d1ca522d_700x701.jpeg) **[Dom the Somm](https://www.ft.com/content/765d0a41-e446-423d-8bd4-5e4df0a64323?ref=howardgray.net)**: The tale of a renowned MC and rapper spreading his wings into a dual career. Taste, curation, and hyping it up are most definitely transferrable skills. Lots of us are going to need to think about what our skills truly are, and how they can translate, reconfigure, and merge into new lanes. Luckily, there’s a [startup for that.](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net) **[How to work with a brand strategist](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/howardgray83%5Fstrategy-activity-6713863489875664896-FbY0?ref=howardgray.net)**: A quick bit from me on LinkedIn. Thanks algorithm, and thanks [Shanley](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanleyknox?ref=howardgray.net) for the push **[Permissionless identities](https://littlefutures.substack.com/p/lf10-permissionless-identities)**: a new bit from my pals Tom and Brian on narratives, labels and modular jobs --- ## Entrepreneurial Endeavours ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7159335a-3b94-45a6-bcf1-59ed1f13f6e1_360x342.jpeg) **[Welcome to your bland new world](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-07/welcome-to-your-bland-new-world-of-consumer-capitalism?ref=howardgray.net)**: Is this article cynical, irritable, and cantankerous? Yes. Is it a fair skewering? Yup. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time, and also contains the Mamet gem I mentioned up top (in its original context) --- ### Learning < > Doing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a2885298-6eec-4375-bea9-479295098dda_1456x819.jpeg) **[The future of fandoms](https://zoescaman.substack.com/p/the-future-of-fandoms)**: I’ve gone through this deck by Zoe Scaman a few times now. There’s plenty to chew on when it comes to building engagement between different depths of fandom, plus helping forge (strong) ties between seemingly disparate tribes. **[Google AI plays football](https://www.kaggle.com/c/google-football?ref=howardgray.net)**: Manchester City got thumped 5-2 by Leicester City last week, with their $400m defensive line getting a pasting in the press as well as on the pitch. City have just announced a Kaggle competition with Google to explore how AI agents may perform better than their carefully-coiffured centre backs. Comedy is all about the timing. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Bringing Kaggle’s “behind the scenes” approach into other environments. Oh, and offering Kaggle teams more prize money than what City midfielder Kevin DeBruyne pockets every 3 hours. ``` ## Entertainment **[How Hollywood agents are going to survive the pandemic](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/how-hollywood-agents-are-going-to-survive-the-pandemic?ref=howardgray.net)**: Agents are in a tricky spot right now. While performance work has been the biggest piece of the pie for a while, the tail-risk that is the pandemic has wiped out the vast majority of their business, and not being in the quarterback position a manager occupies now leaves them exposed. Amid ongoing rounds of layoffs, several agents have (unsurprisingly) moved into management. As this continues, expect a bunch of new businesses looking to differentiate by occupying the space somewhere between regular management companies and startup studios. ``` Opportunity for Adventure: Providing specialist services to the new breed of talent development companies. ``` ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a9e423f8-baa4-47dc-b18b-eb7e68abaebe_750x422.png) **[The entertainment value curve](https://www.reforge.com/blog/entertainment-value-curve?ref=howardgray.net)**: The TL;DR here is *Entertainment Value = Production Value + Social Value*. The cases in point here are TikTok (wriggling out of a ban) and Quibi (wriggling out of blasting through more than $1bn), but this model applies into plenty of adjacent areas too. Also: - **[Receiptify](https://receiptify.herokuapp.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**: strangely simple, but aren’t most of the best ones? Get a receipt of the songs you’ve listened to most on Spotify. Oh, and no refunds, no store credit. - **[Techno Club](https://firstfloor.substack.com/p/techno-clubnet-interview)**: A virtual nightclub, with DJs streaming their sets? Sounds old hat, but this take is interesting. *Techno Club* has entry prices like an actual nightclub, the music is fully licensed, and it rethinks a system that was already teetering. The rather large elephant in the room is competing against a torrent of free content - of which a growing amount has premium production involved. --- ## Jukebox: Leaving Laurel ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/3211448e-ff86-4505-aa11-22b815a2878f_310x163.jpeg) A week ago I was scrambling for new music. Now, there’s new stuff from Sufjan Stevens, Sylvan Esso (including a[ music video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-NUC2enkl8&feature=emb%5Ftitle&ref=howardgray.net) created within Nintendo’s Animal Crossing), and a [Nicolas Jaar album](https://open.spotify.com/album/4uR6L8Gq7xozMSBpuxIQUp?si=DezkwaelRbi-n8nsOmy5Rw&ref=howardgray.net) I had no idea existed. However, this month’s Jukebox goes a little further towards the edges. I’ve been thumping out *a lot* of electronic music this month. Amongst other things, it’s done wonders for my morning run: the 12 minute carcass-dragging plod around the East Village has magically transformed into 35 mins of Forrest Gump focus. Maybe it’s New York humidity dropping, but I’m putting this progress strictly down to 4/4 techno grooves and jungle mixtapes. This month’s selection comes via one of my dormant electronic music ties. When I was an agent, I worked quite a bit with the team at Anjuna Beats and Involved Management. The label shared this live set by Leaving Laurel on Soundcloud (note: a good reminder about those dormant ties staying visible), and I was hooked. --- ## **Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Moving in. After 3 weeks there’s still no shower curtain in place, but we’ve invested into a pro-level coffee grinder. Priorities. - Writing again. Just one horribly bad blog post so far, but I’m back baby! - Pondering producing a podcast, and appearing on a couple of podcasts. More news on those next time. ### Do you like dogs? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/do-you-like-dogs/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:28:34.000Z A few weeks ago, we went upstate for the weekend. As you can imagine, the demand for places to stay outside the city has rocketed, and we had to move fast to secure something – especially as it was a last minute thing. In moments of haste such as these, the visuals tend to seduce more than the words. We found a place that tickled all the visual sensors. We didn’t have time to read the small print. On arrival, the small print was there to greet us. “Do you like dogs?” our host asked genially as he opened the farmhouse door to welcome us in. We stiffened slightly. No, not really, we thought. Yapping, hair-shedding, crotch-grabbing, smelly, gnashing. No thanks. Nonetheless, we stammered an unconvincing affirmative and crossed the threshold. We awaited the inevitable shock of a pack of feral canines thrashing through the room at any moment. A full minute later, and a pair of bulldogs lumbered into view. They were weathered and gnarled, yet slow and gentle. Two veterans who still stationed their posts manfully, even though the battle was already won. They nosed around us for a moment, snorted, then went back to their preferred positions. No problem at all. The question our host asked us was completely reasonable and polite. What was missing were our follow ups. We were either too polite or not attuned enough to ask them. *What type of dogs?* *Are they used to guests?* *Will they make me sneeze?* So, do you like dogs? Or, do you like ice cream? Do you like Spain? Do you like working in teams? Do you like being under pressure? It depends. Until we follow up. ### Adventures #45: Long-Haul URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-45-the-long-haul/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:24.000Z Each year, both the US and UK hold a public holiday at the end of the summer. These occasions are an opportunity to celebrate the nation’s workers and all they have achieved in the year to date. It’s a time for those final summer trips, and some recalibration ahead of the Autumnal shift. This year, the holiday, its meaning, and much of the definition around it have blended into a sepia-tinged background. Instead, the focal point is occupied by a sense of the long haul. We’ve all been somewhere, somehow, but don’t remember much of how we got there. Time plays tricks. There’s the fog that comes with Groundhog Day; a strange, diffused amnesia from countless long stints up in the air. Now, we’re sitting at another departure gate - part of a multi-stage journey where the final destination is unknown. And the jet lag from that previous leg has just touched down. At this juncture, many of us are beginning to look up and out at what’s next. Simultaneously, we’re bracing ourselves for this current mode - as passengers in a restrictive, cabin-pressured version of reality - being life for a while yet. It’s time to strap in for the long haul. And this trip is a triple header. ### 3 degrees, 4 columns First, there’s the economic journey: the turbulence of recessions; unemployment; bringing businesses back from the brink. Starting and restarting. Then, there’s the societal flight. New York City has been painted as being a long-haul casualty - perhaps even dead forever (I think not). Mental health is a growing concern (I know mine’s been lurching harder than a trainee pilot after a daytime Martini sesh). And actually heading up in the air for real long-haul travel explorations feels a long way away. Finally, there’s a long haul that runs even deeper. The shape of today’s media landscape means most of what we see regarding Coronavirus is made up of bullet points, snapshots, and quick bites (no, not from Quibi). And there’s *that* chart. Just three columns: infected; recovered; dead. Yet there’s so much more to understand here - as well as the members of a fourth column, too often made invisible. There are many thousands of people in column four. They’re still suffering - many months since their first brush with the virus. Their ongoing symptoms are [hugely debilitating](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/?ref=howardgray.net), and the long haul view of their lives is still unknown. For those complaining about masks being muzzles and suggesting the pandemic is one giant hoax - read up on those in the long haul. I’ve seen it first-hand: the spectre of this virus has lived in our house for nearly half a year now. It’s real, and it’s scary. As a friend said to me - don’t think of this like flu; think of it like polio. There are many more shades, distances, and complexities than those we see at first glance. So, the long haul cuts both ways. In some ways it’s disappeared - leisure trips and long-term planning are largely off the table. In others, we’re just buckling up. Whichever way we’re going, there’s something important about sitting here at the departure gate. It’s a place to think about the 6-month journey that brought us here, and to look out at the path we’re about to take. It’s also a place to give ourselves permission to dream a little; and also to recognise what really matters most. Thanks for reading, and always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. Howard --- ## Career Fuel **[A departure lounge for your next career journey](https://www.itsfondo.com/depart?ref=howardgray.net)**: Just like physical travel, today’s careers have new destinations and discoveries, tight-running transfers, and the odd quick escape. Many of the best journeys also start with serendipity. The latest [Fondo](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net) update includes our new Departure Lounge: a place for you to meet fellow career travelers for small group conversations. [Sign up now to get first access](https://www.itsfondo.com/depart?ref=howardgray.net). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/973a2006-a58e-4be7-bd83-21cf99c1e5e1_2400x1500.jpeg) **[Why you feel awful](https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c?ref=howardgray.net)**: Understanding your surge capacity, and some tips on navigating the long haul. **Also**: here’s a quick bit on letting go of imposter syndrome from a friend who’s involved in a new organization helping move a distressed industry forward. I found the email they sent me empowering and quietly hopeful in a world that’s still intent on throwing binary winners and losers at us: > *I've not been dealing with imposter syndrome for the first time in my career. Helping to build this from scratch has been one of the most rewarding, challenging, time-consuming, and stressful things I've ever done, professionally or otherwise. But the good thing about this is nothing existed before and we're all learning together. I know as much as anyone else does or could. We're navigating new territory with no roadmap. Of course, knowing that there are literally thousands of businesses depending on us getting it right weighs on every action. However, in many ways, this project has been completely liberating.* Learning and Doing in tandem… which brings us to: --- ## Learning < > Doing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/2c3935b6-b89f-4ab7-ad15-c57e97fe365d_766x381.png) **[MasterWiki](https://masterwiki.how/?ref=howardgray.net)**: Another cheeky drop from MSCHF; this time lampooning startup darling Masterclass. Underneath the parody, there’s a real story here: the content alone isn’t worth too much, and there’s a real conflation between high status and being a good teacher. Is Steven Spielberg the best person to teach you to make your first movie? Is Anna Wintour telling her life story going to [help your journalism career](https://longreads.com/2020/08/20/how-to-learn-everything-the-masterclass-diaries/?ref=howardgray.net)? We can sit and marvel, or just be entertained, but the real value is in the combined stack of curriculum, coaching, and community. ``` Opportunity for adventure: The future of learning is more about creating environments than transferring information. ``` **[Ken Robinson RIP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17fbxRQgMlU&ref=howardgray.net)**: Not just a great teacher, but a true innovator and raconteur. His talks have a lovely lightness and a crisp, dry humour to them. I only discovered his work a couple of years ago, and reading his bio this week I was reminded of a few things: the path is long; success doesn’t happen overnight; and if you’re [in your element](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17fbxRQgMlU&ref=howardgray.net) then the work doesn’t feel much like work. I wish I got to meet him. **[Video games are the future of education](https://nabeelqu.co/education?ref=howardgray.net)**: Beyond the clickbait title, I’m into this. There’s the explicit layer (video games), but there’s also the implicit (a variety of experiences using video game mechanics). Also, I expect Epic Games’ *Unreal* game design engine to become absolutely enormous. --- ## Entertainment ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/5d5bb63b-2a21-4988-b317-8f1bf1b28a03_1904x1218.png) **[The event industry’s Napster moment](https://skift.com/2020/08/26/the-event-industry-is-being-confronted-by-its-napster-moment/?ref=howardgray.net)**: A good piece from Rafat Ali, CEO of Skift, a company hit with the double-whammy of being in both the travel AND events businesses. Right now it’s hard to imagine large-scale conferences or festivals being anywhere near full capacity in 2021 (if they even run in-person). Sidenote: [Napster was bought for $70m last week](https://qz.com/1897131/napster-was-just-bought-for-70-million/?ref=howardgray.net#:~:text=Napster%2C%20yes%20that%20Napster%2C%20was%20just%20bought%20for%20%2470%20million&text=The%20live%20online%20music%20company,Yes%2C%20that%20Napster.). **[Global/Local](https://www.exberliner.com/features/people/club-culture-is-being-reborn/?ref=howardgray.net)**: One area that’s most definitely in for the long haul is the nightlife industry. It’s not been helped by what’s being dubbed as ‘plague raves’ - big name DJs going out across Europe and playing large outdoor gigs with very few protective measures. [In this interview with Exberliner](https://www.exberliner.com/features/people/club-culture-is-being-reborn/?ref=howardgray.net), Berghain resident ND Baumecker talks about the future of nightlife, and the onus shifting from global to local: less long haul travel, and more focus on local talent and [residencies](https://howardgray.net/2019/04/01/the-rise-of-the-residency/?ref=howardgray.net). ``` Opportunity for adventure: a fellowship for burgeoning resident DJs from across the globe to develop their craft together ``` **[The rise of animated music videos](https://theface.com/music/dua-lipa-billie-eilish-animated-music-videos-rise?ref=howardgray.net)**: This one feels like a long haul trend; especially when we start thinking about virtual worlds and avatars. (hat-tip to Jeffrey for the link) ``` Opportunity for adventure: animation is a compelling form of communication and storytelling, and a growing industry to boot. Why not bring it into more school curriculums? ``` Also: these two have both done the long haul on the drum kit: Dave Grohl (51 years old) and Nandi Bushell (10). > [](https://twitter.com/foofighters/status/1299740995538485248?ref=howardgray.net) ## Jukebox ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/cd79f44b-ced3-48bb-a35b-0d544705ca9a_1044x484.png) #### **[Blowing Up the Workshop](http://blowinguptheworkshop.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** This mixtape series has just come to an end, with 118 sessions to choose from across a range of genres and vibes (with a slant towards the experimental). In line with my cool credentials continuing to evaporate, I’m only familiar with a handful of the guests. However, a few tips I can pass on are Jack Murphy (110), Yaeji (98), Patrick Quick (82), and Galcher Lustwerk (12). Otherwise, pick a card… any card. --- ## Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Reaching the 3 year wedding anniversary. How she puts up with me, I’ll never know. - Getting more comfortable with telling stories and putting my face on things. - Signing the lease for an apartment in Brooklyn. It’s been emotional, Manhattan. - Working with a brand strategist. Being a client isn’t easy. - Mapping out the workshop I’m running at the [JAM2020 conference](https://bit.ly/JAMOnlineTickets?ref=howardgray.net) in October. You can use the code **SPEAKERFRIEND** at the [checkout](https://bit.ly/JAMOnlineTickets?ref=howardgray.net) to get **20% off** any ticket tier. Because I’m a speaker, and you’re my friend. Innit. And hit the orange button below to share this newsletter with a friend or a foe. ### A slice of Saatchi URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-slice-of-saatchi/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:57:28.000Z Here’s one way to get people talking about your brand – especially when you’re a B2B services company. Dubai’s [Freedom Pizza](https://www.freedompizza.ae/?ref=howardgray.net) hired Saatchi & Saatchi as their ad agency. As part of the deal, Saatchi asked for a piece of the pie. Quite literally. Visit a store or head to the website and alongside the Margarita, Smokey Joe and the Meat Eater is the ‘*Saatchi&*‘. Yes, the agency’s very own pizza. They haven’t scrimped: it comes with Pimento Chili, Onions, Buffalo Chicken, Creme Cheese, Cheddar Cheese, Mozzarella, and Buffalo Red Sauce. I’ve heard it’s very good. So good, in fact, that their rival agencies order it when they’re working late into the night on a big pitch. “Double Down? Fired Up?” “No. It’s just got to be a Saatchi.” Humble pie indeed. ### Adventures #44: A different kind of range URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-44-what-do-they-remember/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:23.000Z There was a delivery waiting for me. International mail. Inside the well-travelled packet was a nonfiction book with a mint green cover. It was a gift from a good friend, sent following our conversations about their career transition. They’d left a touching handwritten note on the first page. By now you may already know the book from its distinctive colour. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/5ed69be2-851d-4663-8a12-30e95315f4ce_499x274.png) ‘*Range*’ by David Epstein looks at generalists - those with *range* \- and why they’ll succeed in a world of specialisation. The book makes some compelling arguments and I enjoyed many of the *wide-ranging* (yes, I know…) anecdotes and studies, yet found myself frustrated that it didn’t do much to acknowledge the tension of reality. Generalists may indeed be able to conjure interesting ideas and innovative solutions for all kinds of problems, but most of the world doesn’t really care. Post-pandemic, my bet is we’ll see a small number of very large companies with outsize influence, and a very large number of small companies (with a noticeable growth in one-person businesses). I don’t see the huge companies wanting generalists; they just don’t fit the required molds. Meanwhile, a significant number of the small operations will be part of the ‘passion economy’ (which I linked to [last time](https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-43-no-time-for-scuba/)). Here, the received wisdom is very much on niche specialisation - becoming almost maniacally narrow in one’s focus. It’s great advice - unless you have range. Niche specialisation can be repellent to the generalist: it’s boring; restrictive; a waste of possibility. --- Where’s the space for the generalists in this new world? Somewhere in the middle, perhaps. But when the internet is involved (and the internet *always* gets involved eventually), the middle gets squished. Where else? The generalists can [build their own worlds](https://medium.com/@packym/two-ways-to-predict-the-future-1087f3b818bc?ref=howardgray.net), or become [multi-experts](https://thecreative.cafe/jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-610d01afd6a8?ref=howardgray.net). Both valuable, but certainly tough. As Epstein suggests, generalists are creative, adaptable and flexible - just what the new world demands. The skills are valuable, but the value is hard to realise and capture. Right now, many of us are being pulled between generalist and specialist. There’s tension in not knowing which way to go; or where to put our[ time and energy](https://howardgray.net/2019/10/22/the-tension-time-energy/?ref=howardgray.net). A strange concertina effect begins to happen: Learn new things; Diverge. Get specialised and focus; Converge. An emerging trend to explore; Diverge. Be specific; Converge. And so on. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/874f3876-5fd2-4a64-b745-cc0dd1b39cf7_960x540.jpeg) This can be exhausting. It bends us out of shape. Instead of shapeshifting, we’re a single 2-dimensional shape - one’s that being stretched and contorted. This tension between generalist and specialist is both macro (our broader careers), and micro (our projects, presentations, and conversations). Which way to go? But what if that’s the wrong question to ask? Here’s a different one that may be more empowering to help find the thread and concentrate the mind: ### *What do they remember you by?* Maybe it’s your niche specialism or your job title, but I bet this little question opens up something more. The ‘what’ starts to uncover the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. Personality and quirks emerge; there are angles and shades; contours and colours rather than black & white checkboxes. And ‘they’ is whoever you want them to be. Clients, peers, or the person you want to meet but haven’t just yet… Try talking through it with a friend, a mentor, or a sparring partner. I still don’t quite have my own answer yet, but it’s well worth a wide-ranging journey to explore. **What do you remember me by?** **And what can I remember you by?** Let me know what comes to mind. Just hit reply. [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/) --- ## **Career Fuel** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/981bdbaa-1f48-45c7-b596-21419b6b774f_1060x553.jpeg) [Be Like Bowie](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/20/career-fuel-be-like-bowie/?ref=howardgray.net): I wrote this a while ago, but keep returning to it. As it happens, this post is about a meeting where a very successful person told me with absolute certainty that I’d *“never build anything of material value”.* I still think of him from time to time. [Our remote work future is going to suck](https://www.seanblanda.com/our-remote-work-future-is-going-to-suck/?ref=howardgray.net): Two key points stand out for me on this one: the future is in *blended* experiences (work, learning, gigs, whatever); and we’ll see far more localism (which may have a bunch of second-order effects…) Speaking of generalists, I made a couple of very small contributions to this post on [polymaths and generalists](https://salman.io/blog/polymath-playbook/?ref=howardgray.net) by my pal Salman. It got pretty popular - he nearly doubled his newsletter following in just a few days *(note to self: write better stuff!*). --- ## **Learning < > Doing** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/262cec02-dee5-4329-b3bc-23423036b072_1024x410.png) [How to calculate the time you need to build a workshop](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/14/time-and-magic-how-to-calculate-the-time-to-create-a-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net): A guide I wrote on how to use a few simple formulas to figure out your design and development investment. [mmhmm](https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/7/21314035/mmhmm-personal-video-presence-beta-phil-libin-sequoia-app?ref=howardgray.net): I haven’t been this excited about a new bit of software in a long time. I’ve long thought about Ableton / [Traktor](https://blog.native-instruments.com/the-art-of-djing-on-the-go-with-traktor-dj-2/?ref=howardgray.net) for learning (live performances that can be pre-planned, completely freestyled, or a combo). This may well be it… except I’m still on the waitlist :-/ --- ## **Culture** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/26f1ec39-1362-4072-82ea-e3bbf8d4545c_640x420.jpeg) [Back to the coffee shop](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/31/back-to-the-coffee-shop/?ref=howardgray.net): A new bit from me. This is a tale of small business, classic jazz, old neighbors, and new friends. [I May Destroy You](https://www.vulture.com/article/michaela-coel-i-may-destroy-you.html?ref=howardgray.net): Plenty to take in here. There’s laddering from one media to another (from poem, to spoken word performance, to script, to TV); Hollywood accounting; and retreats to the wilderness - let alone the importance of the show’s subject matter. It’s also been bittersweet to watch a TV show filmed on many streets I used to walk down. --- ## **Entertainment < > Entrepreneurship** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/2bb63c98-986f-4c17-8784-410fe2dbc170_448x252.jpeg) [Street Food Latin America](https://www.netflix.com/title/81249660?ref=howardgray.net): I watched the first 3 episodes of this last night and it’s wonderful. Each is a story of culture and community; constraints and creativity; conventions and kicking against them. It’s Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, and Education blended into something delicious and authentic. And there’s a lot of queso. **Music Industry Business Models**: The music industry is again in flux: magazines going under; venues under threat; virtual spaces emerging as a real thing. With Spotify’s Daniel Ek [getting a pasting ](https://twitter.com/kasracritical/status/1289158850164269062?ref=howardgray.net)over his comments around musicians needing to ship constantly, many artists and record labels - like it or not - urgently need new models. One path forward is through the humble membership club - [here’s an example from Life & Death](https://lifeanddeath.us/passengers/?ref=howardgray.net). I expect lots more of this to come (and it’s a great opportunity for smart consultants). > [](https://twitter.com/HowardGray/status/1285538172773040128?ref=howardgray.net) [Hulu brings in small businesses](https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hulu-advertising-small-medium-marketers-500-1234707223/?ref=howardgray.net): This is a smart move. Small businesses are going to be hugely important in the recovery (as well as being underrated sources of community and innovation). There’s also still a certain magic in having your brand featured on ‘proper’ TV. --- ## **Jukebox** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/13e1148e-7677-4433-bfb4-a15c4f838af6_334x329.jpeg) Last month’s edition dreamed wistfully of Ibiza’s sunny climes. This month’s jukebox pushes the feeling on, with a 3-part [Balearic selection](https://medium.com/@koopstakov/balearic-brits-the-mixtapes-2c2e5803659b?ref=howardgray.net) from James Cooper - complete with copious sleeve notes and trippy artwork. See you on Cala Benirrás. --- ## **Footnotes** Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Searching for a digital marketing maestro (is this you? let me know). - Strongly considering moving to Brooklyn. Manhattan doesn’t make much sense right now. - Feeling anxious about time. There’s never enough, it’s running out, I’m not getting things done quickly enough. Urgh. - Watching ‘The Bodyguard’ at the Tribeca Film Festival drive-in. Popcorn, non-alcoholic beer, and Kevin Costner’s full expressive range (he’s more a niche specialist) - all from the safety of a Nissan Rogue. What could be better? --- Lastly, Adventures are always better together. I’d be delighted if you could share this with a friend, or even a foe. ### Back to the coffee shop URL: https://www.howardgray.net/back-to-the-coffee-shop/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:28:52.000Z The Big Apple. Gleaming skyscrapers. Grand Central. Wall Street. Times Square. Bright lights. Big city. Big business. Big bucks. But what really runs this place are the small potatoes. The small business is what makes NYC tick. In my particularly populous region of Manhattan, there are small businesses everywhere. Sure, there’s a Starbucks near the subway, and a CVS up the street, but take a walk through the East Village and independent businesses fill both the streets and the avenues. During these times of pandemic, I’m thinking about small businesses more than ever. *Who’s doing well? Who’s on the brink?* *Which ways can – and should – they pivot?* *How are the owners and employees feeling about the future?* *What’s going to happen next?* In a world that continues to laud 10x returns, unicorns, and the big winners in the stock market, small business gets overlooked. I’m no economist, but one thing I’m sure of is that the stock market is *not* the economy (and visa versa). The real lifeblood of an economy isn’t the small group of huge companies, but the huge group of small companies. And small business isn’t just the lifeblood of an economy; it’s much more than that. Where the company town has eroded, small business has become the linchpin of communities. It’s the same in cities too; even in the fast-paced, hard-charging city of New York. As I walk (and occasionally run) around my neighbourhood each day, the small businesses I think of most often are the coffee shops – and two in particular. ## A tale of two on tenth On 10th Street, just an avenue apart, lie City of Saints and Third Rail. These two unassuming stores helped shape my New York story. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/image-asset.jpeg) Third Rail Coffee, East Village, NYC (I’m not sure that’s really Joe Biden…) There were the winter mornings of early 2018 at Third Rail. Figuring out how to show up in this crazy, tangled city, I’d spend an hour or two sat hunched over my laptop; writing; searching; seeking. Many projects and plans were hatched in Third Rail with my back – literally and figuratively – against the wall. Then, last Autumn; the Fall. Our morning ritual began to pass through City of Saints. Two flat whites, we perched on the bar stools, chatted breezily to the baristas about hiphop and North Carolina; bicycles and politics. Refreshed, we went onwards – her to the maws of the subway, me to heave the nearest Citibike downtown. And so it became: perched on the skinny bench outside Third Rail watching the Saturday afternoon village traffic whizz by; City of Saints for that jutting quick fix to catapult us into the throb of midweek NYC. Little did we know that unmistakable Manhattan energy would suddenly fade. On the week of March 14th, when lockdown began to envelop the city, we headed to City of Saints to get a takeaway cup. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/city-of-saints22-1024x768.jpg) City of Saints, East Village, NYC (image: NYC Undergrounds) It was deserted, save for one figure: the manager. He sat crumpled on the edge of the bench just inside the door. His gaze went to the floor, meters below ground. He’d just let everyone go, including himself. The company offered him offered a salaried role a few months before, but he decided to remain on a flexible schedule. Now, like the rest of the crew, he had to step away. Destination and path unknown. They were closing until further notice. And he’d just told them all the news. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. I’d been there. Different situation, but same feeling. I’d broken *that* news to someone I cared about. We bought a big bag of coffee, left a hefty tip, and said goodbye. I murmured something about seeing him in a couple of weeks. On the way home, we took a quick detour to see if Third Rail was open. The doors were locked. I assumed these were temporary measures. These two coffee shops would survive and even thrive in the midst of what was going on. They had the goodwill and trust from a large base of regulars. As essential businesses supplying food and beverages, they were permitted to continue trading. Some local shops did indeed stay open, braving the tundra. Most closed down quickly, then re-emerged as lockdown began to lift. But these two didn’t. Nearly 5 months later in the dog days of summer, the spaces are still sadly dark. Why does this matter? Why not the florist, the barber shop, or the sneaker store? Why care about the coffee shop more than the others? The coffee shop isn’t like the rest. The coffee shop – perhaps especially in New York City – means something more. ## Art, Ing, and Joy In lieu of our two go-to spots being shuttered, we’ve found other places for our trendy Antipodean coffee cravings. There are other cafes ready to welcome us, but our main source of caffeine has come from the French Press in the kitchen. It’s no La Marzocco, but it’s gamely cranked back into action nonetheless. And it’s been fine, of course. We’ve managed. It’s only coffee. However, this past weekend we were reminded of the true magic of the New York coffee shop. Early on Friday evening, we hot-footed home as a thunderstorm began to brew. At the restaurant underneath our building, a brightly-dressed older couple were taking custody of their Friday night takeout. Our friend and neigbour, Art Baron I recognised one of them. It was Art. The block’s resident trombone professional, he’d toured with luminaries like Duke Ellington, Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen. I met Art 6 months previously, at Third Rail of course. Our conversation led me to one of my favourite books, and re-energised me about life in this part of the world – and this part of the city. During our conversation, he’d mentioned his wife – a Norwegian artist and designer named Ing. And of course, as the sky rumbled overhead this was her standing in front of me: funky floral dress, and floppy fuchsia hat tilted on her head. We got chatting – about the storm, and the pandemic, and those other things that seem to make up many conversations right now. Suddenly, Ing said “how about coffee tomorrow?” Our British reflexes kicked in. Coffee? With strangers? Who are old enough to be our parents? Tomorrow? *Automatic excuse algorithm now commencing…* Luckily, after 3 years in New York, we’ve learned to overcome this pattern. Saturday at 10am confirmed. The next day we went to Mud. Arguably the most well-known coffee shop in the locale, it’s something of an East Village institution, sat directly across from the equally venerable Ukrainian diner Veselka. I don’t like the coffee there much, but coffee shops aren’t *really* about the coffee. Over 2 hours sat out on a (socially distanced) bench positioned in place of a parking space, we shared stories of love and loss; immigration and inspiration; invention and reinvention. And a 30 years age gap isn’t really a gap; it’s a bridge. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. A pair of new friends, from just down the block. All thanks to the local coffee shop. ### Howdy, Partners The next day we decided to go for a walk. Naturally, we wanted a coffee. We took the newspaper with us. It was sunny and we could find a spot outside to digest the stack of New York Times supplements. Heading West into the other village, I somewhat arbitrarily picked a coffee shop. It was closed. As was the next one. Third time lucky, we crossed 7th and landed at Partners. Awnings, benches, and a nice line in piccolos and cortados. Said benches were full, so we took a place on the neighbor’s stoop. We were out of luck and out of shade as the sun blazed. Just as I unfolded my legs to start the wander to the next spot, someone made the motions of beginning to vacate one of the coffee shop’s benches. The reshuffling of the bag; the slow stretch; the mid-view gaze. I snapped into action. It was hot, and I knew the drill: no time to waste. I lunged for the vacant place within a second of their posterior departing the seat. Feeling pleased with myself, and energized by the course of caffeine flowing through me, I chirpily greeted the lady on the neighboring bench. She was wearing a funky floral floral dress and a floppy hat. Just like our friend from the day before. ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ she replied. Two hours later, we said farewell to a new friend. Joy was a researcher with a similar background to my wife, and a line in passion projects that closely mirrored my own ([education programs for young people, especially through music](http://www.beyondthebio.com/?ref=howardgray.net)). She’d had lives in multiple countries, multiple cities, and although her passport came from elsewhere, this place – New York, Manhattan, West Village, Partners Coffee – was home. New York is where you can be anyone, meet anyone, become anyone. You can hear stories like nowhere else. You can find the others, find a friend, find inspiration. You’ve just got to know where to look. Where better than the coffee shop? --- PS. The evening before I published this, I walked down 2nd Ave. As I arrived at 10th St, I saw Third Rail’s lights were on. ### How to transform a webinar URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-transform-a-webinar/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:54:16.000Z Let’s be honest. You’re probably sick of webinars by now. And if you’re not sick of them just yet, you’re probably more wary than you were a couple of months ago. It’s not that webinars are objectively *bad*. They can be a valuable method of transferring information. They’re easy to access and easy to run. But too many of them… well, suck. They can feel dull, heavy, and lacking in value. The most obvious culprit here is [Zoom fatigue](https://ideas.ted.com/zoom-fatigue-is-real-heres-why-video-calls-are-so-draining/?ref=howardgray.net). It’s a contributing factor to your malaise, but the biggest issue with webinars is something more fundamental: design. Most webinars fall flat because they just aren’t designed very well. However, with just a few simple adjustments and a guiding hand, a webinar can be elevated into something so much more. And you don’t need to be a [capital D](https://howardgray.net/2018/12/11/lowercase-skills/?ref=howardgray.net) designer to make it happen. This post features 6 tips you can action right away to transform your webinars. Before we get into it, let’s take a quick look at the landscape. ### Building the bridge Everything is pointing towards the future of learning being [active](https://www.smartsparrow.com/what-is-active-learning/?ref=howardgray.net#:~:text=Active%20learning%20is%20any%20learning,re%20learning%2C%20students%20perform%20better.). There’s tons of opportunity here, and when it comes to creating online events it’s going to become increasingly tough to make a case for webinars being the default format. ![The Future of Learning](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-1-2.jpg) > 99% of online events suffer from being 99% passive. > > — Howard Gray (@HowardGray) [July 16, 2020](https://twitter.com/HowardGray/status/1283868203580641280?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=howardgray.net) However, there can be additional preparation and investment in designing and developing active sessions. For the uninitiated, delivery of an active learning experience can feel like a high-wire act. While the future is most definitely active, fully active sessions may not be right for every situation. You may have been tasked with running an event on top of other projects; the [return on investment](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/14/time-and-magic-how-to-calculate-the-time-to-create-a-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net) is uncertain; or you haven’t yet got around to building your [workshop skills](http://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net). The good news is it’s possible to bridge the gap between passive and active. Even better, it’s easy to do, and you can put in all the safety nets you need. Let’s get into it. --- ## **1\. It’s not about you, it’s about them** A lot of webinars follow a format that looks something like this: - Host intro (5 mins) - The host’s background, their stories of overcoming challenges and their hero’s journey to incredible success (15 mins) - Topic background, host’s insights & some recent market trends grabbed from the relevant news outlet / expert of choice (25 mins) - *Note: valuable stuff buried somewhere in here* - Carefully-screened Q&A (10 mins) - Host’s new book / course / consultancy offering (5 mins) Yikes. You’ve probably already spotted that this agenda is very much about the host, not the audience. As the host, it shouldn’t be about you, it should be about *them*. In active learning, putting the participantsfirst is the default setting, and the design incorporates everyone as part of the experience. However, the construct of webinars means focusing on yourself instead of the attendees is a really easy trap to fall into. A webinar is anonymous, you can’t see anyone’s faces, and you have no idea what those faces are expressing. But just because you can’t *see* who’s in the room, that’s no reason to make it all about you. One easy way to start making it more about them is with your introduction. Here are 3 simple steps to take with an intro: 1. Use [Credibility & Humanity](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/22/how-to-introduce-yourself/?ref=howardgray.net) 2. If in doubt, keep your intro under 1 minute 3. Tailor your introduction to the audience, and especially to their objections Note: Tailoring to the audience can manifest in a few different ways. [Clay Hebert](https://twitter.com/clayhebert?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor&ref=howardgray.net) is a good example of using the introduction to make it about the audience. He smartly positions the agenda of his webinars against the tired self-serving narrative mentioned above (i.e. ‘*most sucky webinars look like this…. our webinars look like THIS’*). By signposting what’s coming, focusing on the stuff people really want, and keeping the intros short, the session feels more appealing straight away Applying this principle of taking the focus off yourself is a good starter, but much more powerful is to shift the format completely. Which leads us to… ## **2\. Change the format** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Screen-Shot-2020-07-22-at-13.09.16-1024x494.png) This one is simple. If you’re using Zoom, change the type of session from a Webinar to a Meeting. On the surface, this sounds like a functional suggestion – using one option in a software system instead of another. It’s far more than that. Just like shifting the focus from you to them, this is a mindset shift. Doing. this means you will lose some features such as the anonymous Q&A function which can be handy for larger-scale events. You’ll also lose some control, but I believe the trade-off (especially for smaller events, say less than 100 people) is well worth it. Using the Meeting format means you’re opening it up, not closing it down. Everyone has a voice, and they’re actually able to use it. You’ll be able to see the humans in the room. Suddenly it’s a 2-way street. Guess what? They’ll probably be more engaged. And as a host, speaker, or even a member of the team behind the scenes, so will you. Instantly, it’s a conversation; a group space; a shared environment. The chat is available. There are breakout rooms. Screen sharing! A whole new world. And if you’re nervous about taking your hand off the rudder, there are a number of settings you can tweak to ensure attendees don’t go (too) wild. *[Note: Here’s a primer on running workshops in Zoom](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net)* As you may imagine, I get a lot of resistance on this one. Sure, sometimes a webinar is just a better idea (think high-stakes, large-scale sessions where any mistake can cause multiple people to get fired). However, a huge percentage of webinars should take the simple step of *not* being set up as webinars. You’ll be amazed at how much things open up. ## **3\. Don’t just transfer… *transform*** Webinars, when done well, are very effective at transferring information and building knowledge. One of the best ways of doing this is through lectures, especially those that are designed and delivered with multiple learning styles in mind. However, this transfer is typically one way. And the type of transfer doesn’t tend to deviate much from words and charts. Instead, what if you could *transform* the information? Pull it apart and show it in a different form? Share an idea through a metaphor they haven’t seen or heard before? Or better still, could you encourage the audience to transform it? *Here’s some information. Go and do something with it.* This doesn’t need to be complex. Let’s try out an example. #### Example: The Graph Imagine you’re helping put together a webinar session on France’s economic recovery post-pandemic. ![](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/f/fe/Figure_Standard_output_by_main_type_of_farming_FR_2010.PNG) The French Agriculture industry, 2010\. Source: European Commission The host could share a graphic that looks at the breakdown of a particular industry (either by screen share, or sharing the actual file with the group). However, instead of the regular graphic, they deliberately leave out a detail or two. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Group-2-1.png) A mystery… Instantly, there are questions and provocations: - ***Which sub-industries are these?*** - ***What do you think happens to the pie next year?*** - ***Which other industries might have similar percentages?*** Write down some ideas. Or share them in the chat. *Did you get it?* *Are you surprised?* *Well, you won’t believe what’s coming next….!* #### *Here’s some information. Go and do something with it.* If you were in a fully active workshop-style session you could build all kinds of cool stuff around this, but a little can go a long way. Even with just a nod to the audience and a little bit of stagecraft and suspense – something happens. Don’t just transfer – transform. ## **4\. Match the energy** When facilitating a group session – whether a workshop, meeting, class, or webinar – it helps to match your energy to the energy and needs of the room. The same goes for speaking at an event: the softly spoken presenter won’t fair too well at a Tony Robbins gig; and a big, brash performance may be a bit much for a conference that brings together more introverted and introspective folks. *Note: sometimes these polarities can be magic, but generally it makes sense to match either the energy, the needs, or both* Unfortunately, this matching can be a bit trickier online. Nuance is lost, there are more distractions, the screen is 2D, and it’s often a single player game (no fellow participants in close proximity). Even if you decided to make that switch from Webinar to Meeting and participants cameras are on, there are limitations on how much you can glean on the energy of the group, and how your own energy carries across. A good rule of thumb online is to amp up your energy by 20% or so. ![Workshop energy, online!](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-4-4.jpg) A snippet from one of our [Express sessions](http://www.wavetable.net/wc/express?ref=howardgray.net) Get more your body in the picture (no, not *all* of your body; make your hand gestures more animated; increase those modulations in your voice tone; perhaps extend the pauses and the enunciation if you’re delivering insights that are searching or challenging. Of course, you don’t want to become a pastiche: that’ll have the opposite effect, and why you want to increase energy by 20% rather than 80%. Turning up the right dials a notch or two can lift any session. ## **5\. Create a second space** Let’s move to the finale of your session. Even if you decide for your webinar format to stay as a webinar, there’s still scope to open things up. Why not offer attendees the chance to continue the conversation in a different environment? I’m amazed how few people offer this as an option. Sure, guest speakers are busy, but an extra 30 minutes is absolute gold for the attendees who are most highly engaged, curious, and hungry for more. This can be run a few days later in a facilitated Office Hours or similar format (gotta avoid that Zoom fatigue, right?) *Pro Tip: The percentage of people what want to stick around for this is also a good heuristic for testing how engaging the session was* You can provide abundance through the offer, but scarcity in its availability – with only 50, 20, or 10 places up for grabs. You may even want to make it [gamified](https://trends.vc/trends-0021-gamification/?ref=howardgray.net) if you fancy really ramping up the narrative and the mystery. Taking this route gives you, and more importantly your audience, the best of both worlds: there are the tight rails of the webinar where the trains run on time; and an open excursion for those who want to explore further. ## **6\. Play the name game** This final tip is counter-intuitive. *Don’t* change what you’re offering. Too often I see webinars (passive sessions) being pitched as workshops (active), when they’re not. As more people get behind the future of learning, they’ll distrust sessions that portray themselves as active but end up being a snoozefest. You don’t want to get caught in this trap, especially when you’re starting out on your journey from passive to active. But even after you’ve made adjustments to your webinar and are on the way to building that bridge, I encourage you to resist the temptation to call it a workshop for as long as you possibly can. Why? Surprise and delight. Or in business-speak: underpromise, and overdeliver. #### Case Study: Webinar Jiu Jitsu ![Workshop Activities](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Sprint-3-1.jpg) a prompt for some active learning; which activities are most appealing to your team? I experienced the value of underpromising and overdelivering first hand when I was invited to run what was ostensibly a webinar as part of a series. On seeing the advertising, my natural instinct was to push back against the conventions (yup, story of my life…) and request the session to be clearly billed as a workshop. Instead, I realised there was a jiu jitsu move available. By being billed as a webinar, I could easily sprinkle a few unexpected active learning elements into the session. It wasn’t much (especially relative to a fully-active workshop), but by underpromising and overdelivering I ended up with a bunch of emails in [my inbox](https://howardgray.net/contact/?ref=howardgray.net) after the session asking me to come and host ‘*webinars*‘ for the attendees’ own companies and communities. Even as a proponent of active learning, I’d much rather attend a webinar that makes me sit up and tune in, rather than a workshop that falls flat. The language, positioning, and expectations matter. --- Alright! That’s the lot for this time. I’ve got a bunch more webinar ideas on my mind, but this post is already nudging 2000 words and I could do with a cup of tea. If I can leave you with one final takeaway, it’s this: as you follow the path from passive to active, remember that you don’t need to get to your destination all in one go. Besides, the journey is where all the best experiences are. --- For more on building better webinars, workshops, courses, and programs, head over to [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) or dive into my other [education & learning guides](https://howardgray.net/blog/education-learning/?ref=howardgray.net) ### How to introduce yourself URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-introduce-yourself/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T14:56:28.000Z Like it or not, first impressions count. Regardless of whether you’re running a [workshop](http://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net), kicking off a class, or meeting a potential business partner for coffee, the way you introduce yourself can be an incredible lever to build trust, empathy, and engagement. It sounds almost too simple to be worthy of discussion, but introductions can also put you on the back foot straight from the get-go. A confusing, nervous, or verbose introduction can ruin all the other hard work you’ve put into a project. We don’t want that, so this post is all about how to nail a strong intro. This post has been written with workshops and classes in mind, but the principles outlined here apply in many other areas too. Try ’em out for yourself. *Note: If you prefer moving pictures to text, here’s a video version I created, including two of my alter-egos:* --- ## The 2 elements of an introduction At its essence your introduction should do two things: assert your **credibility**, and display your **humanity**. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Creative-Mornings-Field-Trip-11th-April-2019-5.jpg) the two keys to a successful introduction --- #### Credibility **Credibility** is companies you’ve worked at, projects you’ve completed, notable people you’ve collaborated with, and events you’ve been invited to be a part of. It often boils down to names and accomplishments. You don’t want to be a name-dropper, but sprinkling in a couple of relevant names your attendees are familiar with is an easy and effective way to display credibility. Credibility in your introduction indicates you are confident, professional, and possess gravitas. #### Humanity **Humanity** is about you as a person. It’s your life experiences, your personality, the places you’ve been, the emotions you’ve felt. Authentically displaying your humanity in your introduction can give the audience a sense you’re empathetic, approachable, charming, and charismatic. It’s really as simple as that. Showing your humanity also often does wonders to reduce an audience’s nerves or concerns, which in turn will probably do the same for yours. Good news for everyone involved. --- ### Three principles for a great introduction That’s right: just three principles are all you need to help make your introduction a secret weapon for success. Here they are: 1. **Credibility & Humanity** 2. **Take one minute** 3. **Tailor to the audience** We’ve already talked about Credibility and Humanity; let’s look at the others. #### Just one minute The second principle is even simpler than the first: keep your introduction to a maximum of 1 minute. If you’re a great storyteller you can get away with longer, but as a rule of thumb keeping your introduction short and sharp is the best way to go. This is especially applicable when you’re starting out with a new workshop or audience and the nerves are jangling. #### **Tailor to the audience** The third principle requires a little more work – vary your introduction depending on the audience. This is important, as what’s credible for one audience may have next to no credibility with another. To explore this principle a little further I often ask myself the following question ahead of my workshops: > “To DJ, or not to DJ?” ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/photo-1493676304819-0d7a8d026dcf-1024x768.jpeg) Like a DJ with music, it’s worth taking the time to consider which stories are going to resonate with your audience When I’m running sessions focused on tech, I obviously want my introduction to frame and underline my interest in technology. To do this, I have a story about my life as a [DJ and talent agent](https://howardgray.net/past-lives/?ref=howardgray.net) and how I utilized the power of software to build my business. This story can be very effective when talking to younger (i.e. under 35) audiences who are in more junior positions in a company, or work for themselves. However, for a more senior corporate audience it’s unlikely to land so well, especially when the session is more specific, technical, or mission-critical. For better or worse, DJs have a bit of stigma attached and it can make me come off as a bit too casual. On these occasions, I may instead mention my work coaching executives at multinational companies, or in technical product management roles where I saw certain thorny challenges appear. Alternatively, I can tell the same DJ story but talk it about as building the systems to run an entertainment company. Same story, same desired outcome, different context. In both cases, my introduction aims to assert my **credibility** (through the brands and partners I’ve worked with over a period of time) and my **humanity** (through working in situations very similar to theirs). --- ### Pro Tip: Overcoming Objections Introductions are also a good way to cover off objections before they overtly come up. For example, using your intro to mention a common frustration people have with the topic can simultaneously build empathy and nix negativity. Here’s a really simple example you could use: > *“Like a lot of you shared in your registration forms for this session, my early time getting hands-on with \[technology/product/skill\] X felt really overwhelming.* > > *After just a couple of hands-on sessions doing \[Y\] with my team I suddenly found myself feeling much more comfortable.* > > *We’ll be aiming to do exactly that today.”* This may tip you over the 1 minute guideline, but for trickier crowds or sessions with more uncertainty, it’s well worth that extra 30 seconds. --- ### All of this… for an intro? Yup, this may seem like a lot of detail for what’s a very small part of what you’re doing, but a strong introduction can be one of your secret weapons. Although it can feel weird, it’s definitely worth practicing your introduction so it feels solid but natural, and doesn’t overrun. Do it in the mirror, with a friend, on a walk with your dog – whenever, wherever and with whoever. And as you start to stack different flavors of Credibility, Humanity, Audience, and Story, you’ll find yourself having a handful of clear, concise and relevant introductions ready to roll whenever you need them. ### How to calculate the time you need to create a workshop URL: https://www.howardgray.net/time-and-magic-how-to-calculate-the-time-to-create-a-workshop/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:19.000Z *Using time and magic to bring workshops to life* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/1402_dbs1-1024x410.png) Time & Magik: The first video game I got hooked on --- The economy is rapidly evolving into a ‘connection economy’: an economy that rewards value created by building relationships and fostering connections. This economy rewards those who know how to build leverage. Leverage used to be associated with investing capital, utilizing complex financial instruments, or hiring more people to do the (dirty) work. [Now it’s available ](https://podcastnotes.org/naval-periscope-sessions/naval-nivi-22/?ref=howardgray.net)through products (whether physical products like suitcases or watches, or digital courses and apps) and media (podcasts, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds, newsletters, and so on). If you’re looking for leverage and connection in the connection economy there’s one medium that remains relatively hidden. I haven’t found a more effective way to build both leverage *and* connection than through creating workshops. I’ve even seen entire careers springboard through workshops – my own included. ### **Hold on! What do you mean by a ‘workshop’?** Workshops aren’t like regular online courses or webinars which are largely passive, single-player experiences. They’re not like traditional education; sitting still obediently, listening to an expert who’s been put up on a pedestal. Instead, workshops are about connecting with others, applying ideas, and trying things out. They’re about developing and improving work, and learning every step of the way. And they offer a degree of interactivity, generosity, and shared experience that’s hard to match. > *“Workshops are about the cohort. The other students. The people you meet, the people you learn from and the people you teach.* > > *Workshops involve work, not the compliance inherent in testing and certification.* > > I*’ve been a teacher my entire career, and the workshops we’re running now are the most effective way I’ve found to help people level up.”* > > *Seth Godin* Thanks to the internet, workshops now have more scalability than ever. Sure, they’re real-time which means an inevitable cap that other formats can avoid, but the best workshops are global by design. Everyone’s welcome. ### The workshop barriers Workshops are seriously undervalued, but there are perceived barriers that keep people from stepping into the world of what workshops can bring. These barriers can be summarized as: > *“I don’t have the skills to do this. Some people just aren’t cut out to do teaching or workshop facilitation.”* > *“A workshop will take me way too much time to create and deliver – it’s not worth it.”* You can probably see these barriers are closely connected. When it comes to the first barrier, our [Workshop Creator](http://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net) programs have already proven it’s not difficult to overcome. Workshop skills can be learned, and you don’t need a teaching degree to do so. I’ve talked about the workshop skill set in previous posts, and will address some more specifics in future posts too. For this piece I want to take on the second barrier: time. ### Time for movie magic Time is the ultimate finite resource. It’s naturally a concern for any creator; anyone who seeks leverage. The advantages of workshops – that they’re human-first, fluid, exploratory, and connected – can also feel disconcerting when it comes to estimating the time needed to produce them. In our Workshop Creator sessions, one of the parallels we look to is that of the movie producer – the person behind much of that movie magic. The movie producer is a: - **Story Builder** - **Resource Collector** - **Detail Detective** - **Compelling Speaker** - **Team Enabler** Perhaps most of all, movie producers need to be **time pessimists**. The movie producer’s worst nightmare is time overruns, and the knock-on effects they create: miscalculations on a star’s schedule; expensive extra shooting days in a faraway location; a director’s cut that’s an hour too long… Workshop creators share many of the movie producer traits: building stories; collating resources and teasing out important details; enabling teams. And they most definitely also need to be time pessimists. Although it’s at odds with being a *project optimist*, time pessimists we must be. ### Workshop Time & Magic To help you balance this tension and manage your own workshop creation expectations, this guide will help you plan and estimate each stage of creation, as well as iterations to improve your workshop and even create new products. We’re going to go through a series of simple steps to figure out how much time to allow to bring a workshop to life. Doing just a few calculations can remove much of the cognitive load that comes with the thought of *“ugh this is going to take so long”*; the feeling that so often reinforces that perceived barrier. Once you follow the steps here, you’ll be able to confidently get to work creating some of the magic that makes workshops far more visceral, memorable, and shareable than any passive format can ever hope to be. Here’s how it shakes out: 1. **Choosing a flavor** 2. **Preparing the process** 3. **Applying the formula** 4. **Iterating the product** 5. **Rebuilding and reimagining** Without further ado, let’s get started. --- # Part 1: Setup ## What’s in a name? The word ‘workshop’ throws up different things for different people. Some think of a short evening session focused on shaping a skill; others of company-organized training mornings or two-day team off-sites. Indeed, some workshops last an hour, others may span several days. Some may even run for a period of several months (although these are more likely to be programs with several modules – a topic for a later post). For this post we’ll work on the basis of building a workshop that’s 1 day or less, but as you’ll see, there’s some mathematical magic to come that’ll work for just about any size of session 😉 ## 3 Flavors Before we get into the time needed to build, let’s talk about flavors. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Group-1-6-1024x280.png) A few flavor combos (images courtesy of Blush.design) There are 3 main workshop flavors: - **Strategic**: working towards an insight (e.g. surfacing a brand’s values) - **Operational**: finding alignment (e.g. helping a team work more effectively) - **Educational**: a learning experience (e.g. understanding the principles of blockchain) Just like the best combo bowls, you can mix and match a few flavors, but what’s most important is to know which flavor you’re primarily focused on. This is important for a number of reasons – one of which is the build time varies depending on the flavor of workshop. A Strategic or Operational flavor is generally going to take a little less time. There’s more open space and exploration for participants, and your work is tilted more towards responsiveness *in* the session as a facilitator, and less to the construction and design beforehand. An Educational workshop typically means more time needs to be invested. This flavor is more content-rich, and requires more format switching to maintain energy and groove. A really good Educational workshop can be magical because of the blend of content, concepts, and group connection, but there’s a higher upfront cost in the design and development phase (plus more active facilitation on the day, and arguably a higher risk of the magic falling flat, aka the workshop not working). **Here’s the rub**: if you *think* you’re doing a Strategic session, but really you’re doing an Educational workshop, you’re going to have problems. And because of the multiplier effect we’ll encounter later in this guide, the bigger the workshop, the greater the risk of time issues. No bueno. Once you’ve picked your main flavor, it’s time to move into the mindsets of workshop creation. ## 4 Workshop Mindsets ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Intro-11.jpg) Hopefully, you’re already thinking like a movie producer. This should get your creative juices flowing, as well as maintaining an eye on the business side of things. Let’s build on this with some mindsets for workshop creation. We use 4 mindsets in [our programs](http://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net). They’re aligned closely to the British Design council’s Double Diamond model which you may have seen used in various design thinking scenarios. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/DoubleDiamond.png) The Double Diamond, with some accoutrements (via Resource Gate) Here are our 4 mindsets: **Thinking**: Recognizing the difference between traditional learning experiences and the future of learning; understanding different learning styles; embracing mistakes; becoming part of the experience **Designing**: Design thinking essentials, as well as crafting effective outcomes, flexible and robust structure, plus utilizing different workshops formats, and surfacing the narrative of a workshop **Developing**: The design phase provides the skeleton of the workshop. Development is about sculpting and crafting; workshop activities, narrative, presentations, and supporting materials. Prototyping will happen here too **Delivering**: The actual delivery of the session. This is about preparing in the days and weeks before; applying fundamental principles of facilitation; using story in effective ways, and troubleshooting Embodying these mindsets happens first, but it doesn’t stop there. The mindsets become the foundations of a process to follow when creating any workshop. Mindsets become principles, become process. As you can see, the double diamond above doesn’t look at the effort expended during each stage. As with many things in life, it’s not evenly distributed. An outsize amount of effort in the creation of almost any workshop is going to come at the design stage. The double diamond helps break down the workshop creation process, but how do you figure out the actual amount of time to invest? It’s time for part 2: some workshop mathematics. --- # Part 2: Number Magic ## Delivery time First, take the number of hours of delivery. This is the length of your workshop, excluding any breaks of more than 15 minutes. For example, a full-day workshop from 9am-4pm with 1 hour for lunch and a couple of 15 min breaks is 6 hours of delivery (7 hour day, minus the 1-hour lunch, ignoring the shorter breaks). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2900-1024x479.jpg) number magic! If you’ve done this before, calculating the delivery time should be pretty easy. Alternatively, if you’re doing a workshop within a conference or festival the delivery time has probably been set for you. For example, many conferences schedule workshops to last 1 or 1.5 hours. If you’re not sure, look up the previous year’s schedule or ask your conference contact. Some client workshops will be similar – they have a set slot for outside workshop sessions. But what if you haven’t done this before and have no idea how long your workshop is going to be? Work on the basis of doing something that lasts 1.5 hours. Why this length of time? There are a few reasons: most audiences both online and in-person are comfortable with an hour and a half session; there are a bunch of workshop creation best practices that map really well to this number; and 1.5 hours gives you some space without overstretching yourself. Now that you’ve got the delivery duration, we can move onto the multiplier. ## The Multiplier Effect Ok, so here’s a bit of mathematics to get into the real crux of why you’re here. For every hour of delivery time, add a multiple to cover the time you’ll be spending in the other three phases. Here are the multiples for each flavor: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2899.jpg) ok so i didn’t get the perfect white hue on my hand-drawn sketch. whatever. These multipliers can decrease for an experienced workshop creator, but as you’ll see below there are additional factors that can crank up the multiple too. Either way, the multiplier matters. Abraham Lincoln was definitely wise to this: > *“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.”* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/original.png) Although maybe he wasn’t enough of a time pessimist (just the 2x multiplier for his lumberjacking)… Whether your workshop is on lumberjacking, safecracking, or vacation packing, you need to get your multiple. Let’s take a pause to see where we’re at. You should now have your workshop flavor, your delivery time, and a multiplier. For example: - ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2893.jpg) - ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2895.jpg) - ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2894.jpg) Sweet. Let’s look at some of those extra factors I mentioned. ## Fun Factors, Fear Factors The steps we’ve followed so far all look straightforward: one flavor, two numbers. Alas, life isn’t always as as easy as we’d like. There are a few other things we want to bear in mind before running the numbers. Luckily, we can do a decent job of quantifying these to help us plan effectively. Here are some of those additional factors, and we can add a multiplier to these too. To keep it simple, just apply the multiplier to the delivery duration, irrespective of the flavor. - There’s a client stakeholder: +0.5x to +1x - Attendees have significantly varied levels of expertise: +1x - Your workshop experience level: -0.5x to -1x - Brand new material: +0.5x to +1x - Material you’re already very comfortable with: -0.5x to -1x - Need for road-testing: +0.5x - A significant change in audience size from one version to another: +1x Here are a couple of examples: **Example** **1: A 3-hour workshop (any flavor)** - There’s a very tricky client stakeholder: that’s a +1x multiplier - Duration (3 hours) x Multiplier (1) = 3 - Add an extra 3 hours to your design and development **Example 2: A 6-hour workshop (any flavor)** - There’s with some brand new material: a +0.5x multiplier - There’s a complex activity needing road-testing: another +0.5x multiplier - The audience has a wide variety of expertise: 1x multiplier - Duration (6 hours) x the Multiplying factors (2: 0.5, 0.5, and 1) = 12: - Add an extra 12 hours to your design and development *Note: Your mileage will vary, but I’ve found these additional multipliers a good rule of thumb for contingency planning.* Alright, that was a bit of mathematics! Let’s take a look at a real-world example to bring all this together. ## All aboard the Express ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/Workshop-Creator-Express-Sneak-Peek-10.jpg) As the pandemic kicked in I began running a very fast-paced and interactive 90-minute Educational workshop called Workshop Creator Express (it’s now a [2.5 hour session for teams](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) which has been very popular with all kinds of groups). As it’s an Educational flavor workshop, the multiplier is 8x. **1.5 hours x 8 = 12 hours** The material wasn’t all brand new, which pulled it down by 0.5x; let’s say 1 hour. And I’ve racked a good couple of hundred workshops by now, but only a dozen or so online, so my experience level dropped it by another 0.5x – again let’s call it an hour to keep the numbers each. **12 minus 1 minus 1 = 10 hours.** However, this workshop was an unknown quantity (open sessions for any audience who wanted to show up): 1x It was also the first time I’d done this one online: 0.5x I also didn’t road test it in advance (bad dog): Let’s say 0.5x for that omission That’s 2x for that little lot. 3 hours. **10 hours + 3 hours = 13 hours** Yup, that was pretty much how long the first one took before delivery. So this sounds like a lot, right? 13 hours work for a 1.5 hour online workshop?! Maybe. But just like developing any product, the value comes later – once that big load of thrashing and chopping and cutting is done. Let’s see how it looks once we iterate. But before that, why not have a snack, a cup of tea, or take a few breaths? You may also want to sign up for my [monthly newsletter](https://howardgray.net/newsletter/?ref=howardgray.net). --- # Part 3: Iterations Ok, you did it! Nice one! You’ve crossed the chasm and delivered your workshop. Enjoy that feeling of creating and delivering something that’s engaging and valuable for people. You won’t get sick of it, I promise. However, just like most early-stage products, you probably won’t have completely nailed it the first time (and if you think you have, it’s more likely you haven’t). ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/4095d49512cbeb8897f8e90bbfa5b4cd-1.png) All being well, you’re probably somewhere between the skateboard and the scooter in the product development sketch above: agile, DIY, a bit rough around the edges, but getting attention from those who know what’s hot. Of course, you can’t be a skater forever (sorry), and eventually you’ll be evolving your workshop into a lean mean solar-powered racing machine – with tinted windows. To start taking those next steps you’ll want to make some adjustments and iterate your workshop. The degree of iteration can vary wildly depending on how your first version came out, but if you’ve taken on the Workshop Creator mindsets and principles (and [hopefully dived into some of m](https://howardgray.net/blog/education-learning/?ref=howardgray.net)[y](https://howardgray.net/blog/education-learning/?ref=howardgray.net)[ other guides on workshops](https://howardgray.net/blog/education-learning/?ref=howardgray.net)), you may be pleasantly surprised at how little there is to change. After the first of those 90-minute sessions I mentioned in the example above, I had a laundry list of changes to make. These were things I’d scribbled down during and after the session, and also some feedback from my collaborator [Josh](http://www.joshupton.com/?ref=howardgray.net) who was facilitating breakout rooms and also observing the main room session which I led. At first glance it looked like a ton of stuff to change, but using the tools in this guide and the workshop creation process I try to abide by (!), I was surprised how I was able to move quickly from speedy but wobbly skateboard to sleek racing bike. *Pro Tip: Having a friend/associate join a session (especially your first) is always, always worth it.* As you may have guessed, to calculate our iterations we’re going to use the multiplier once again, along with a couple of other handy tools. The first one of those tools is to rate the success of your session. This is where having a friend observing is *really* helpful. ## Your first iteration #### **Step 1: Add a Success Rating** How did the workshop go? To help with this, think about what you need to add, change, or remove. Then, apply a number. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2896-1024x624.jpg) yes, that is how bad my handwriting is. Use a scale of 0-1, but flip reverse it: - 0: aced it! (increase yourself to a 0.1 if you think this) - 0.5 a few things didn’t work quite as planned, but overly pretty smooth - 1: all over the place, horrible, let’s never speak of this again For this first example, let’s say it didn’t go too well: 0.7 #### **Step 2: Divide by 2** Because you’re iterating, you can reduce the multiplier effect. The easiest way to do this is just divide by 2. - Multiply your workshop duration by the flavor multiplier (e.g. 4-hour Strategy workshop is 4 x 5 = 20) - Divide the total by 2 (20 / 2 = 10) #### **Step 3: Iteration Time** Multiply the results from Step 1 and Step 2 E.g. 0.7 (success rating) x 10 (hours from step 2) = 7 hours This formula usually comes out a little conservative (especially for longer sessions), but it’s all good. Remember; time pessimists. Let’s look at my Workshop Creator Express session once more. That was a 1.5-hour Educational session. - **Step 1**: It went pretty well. I’m giving the success rating a 0.4 - **Step 2**: 1.5 x 8 = 12\. Divide by 2 = 6 - **Step 3**: 0.4 x 6 = 2.4 hours Now, I did a little more fiddling with making slides look nice, so probably came in nearer to 5 hours, but 2.5 hours of iterations covered pretty much all of the snag list from the first version. In case you’re not keeping count (and I don’t blame you), that’s 13 hours for v1, 5 hours for v2\. 18 hours in total. ## Iteration Station – versions 3 and 4 For the second and third iterations (i.e. creating version 3 or 4), there’s one change to make to the formula. This time, in Step 2 divide by 4 instead of 2\. Why? Typically, the amount of work to move from version 2 to version 3 is pretty low. It’s more fine tuning than full engine repair. Let’s go back to my Workshop Creator Express session. As reminder, it’s an Educational workshop, 1.5 hours delivery time. #### Step 1: Success Level Version 2 went well but I garbled my intro and there was some confusion on the worksheet I shared (yes, both of these happened right at the start – not a good look!). The success level was 0.3\. Solid, but some tweaks. #### Step 2: Divide by 4 - First, multiply the delivery duration by the flavor multiplier.The delivery time was 1.5 hours. The multiplier is 8x as it’s an Educational workshop. 1.5 x 8 = 12 - Divide by 4\. 12 divided by 4 = 3 #### Step 3: Multiply the results Multiply the results from Step 1 and Step 2\. 0.3 x 3 = 0.9 hours For this one, I did some clean up on the worksheets for the groups, created a short Bit.ly link, and changed my intro bit. Yup, an hour or so. You may be thinking this formula will go down to almost zero, especially for short sessions. It may well do. Not much point in doing maths to figure out you need to do 20 minutes of updates. However, remember that workshops are open format, exploratory, and scalable. And things can change. ## **The sub-session** A couple of weeks after iteration 6 of the Express session, I found myself booked to run another session for over 150 people – more than three times the highest number I’d had previously. The changes that kick in at different group sizes (especially online) is a topic for another post, but the success level for that session inevitably dropped a bit. This wasn’t helped by me getting a little complacent about the shift in environment and added logistical complexity. The main realisation I had was a workshop for a group of that size becomes a different session: in effect, a new product. I now had a product that could serve groups up to 200 without too much trouble. I could also see a path to a variety of durations, meaning more flexibility to cover different audiences and scenarios. The downside was additional iteration work. Was it going to be worth it? For this new product, I went back to the version 1 iteration (dividing by 2 rather than 4): #### Step 1: Success Level This one needed significant changes. It went well overall but felt very fast, and running breakouts with 170 people (some of whom didn’t want to fully engage) was a much bigger facilitation challenge than I anticipated. I also needed to think about how best to manage my energy, as I was exhausted from running it. This one needed work. 0.8 for success level. #### Step 2: Divide by 2 - Once again, first multiply the delivery duration by the flavor multiplier. The delivery time was 1.5 hours. The multiplier is 8x as it’s an Educational workshop. 1.5 x 8 = 12 - Divide by 2\. 12 divided by 2 = 6 #### Step 3: Multiply the results Multiply the results from Step 1 and Step 2\. - 0.8 x 6 = 4.8 hours The 5 hours I invested here split roughly 50/50 between content and structure updates and prototyping some different delivery methods. The results of the latter led to the first version of what would become a new 2.5-hour session for company teams. 5 hours very well spent. ### Scores on the doors Alright, we’re nearly at the end of part 3! Here’s the time investment for the first 6 iterations of the Express workshop, plus that sub-session: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/07/IMG_2898-778x1024.jpg) \= 27 hours of design and development Results: - 1.5-hour express session for up to 100 people (run 7 times) - 1.5-hour express session for up to 200 people (ready for the first run) - 2.5-hour express session (ready for prototyping) And I’d reached over 500 people along the way – live and direct, for a full 90 minutes every time. There’s one more area to cover in this guide. We’ve looked at the fine-tuning; now it’s time to have a look at what a full restoration job may look like. --- # Part 4: Rebuilds Depending on the flavor and lifecycle of your workshop, at some stage you may want to do a rebuild. Rebuilds are most typically precipitated by a shift in trends, clients, or culture. For example, the explosive growth of TikTok could necessitate a rebuild of your social media workshop; a change in government immigration policy probably leads to a rebuild of a workshop for international students settling into US universities. The other factor that triggers a rebuild is simply old age. Your session will just start to creak after a bit and benefit from a refresh (likely accelerated by the factors mentioned above). As you get better as a workshop creator, you’ll also learn better ways to design, develop and deliver. For shorter sessions you’ll probably be looking at rebuilding no earlier than version 8-10 (if at all), but for bigger programs it’s more likely you’ll be rebuilding at version 5. Rebuilds don’t usually take as long as building from scratch, but are definitely more work than just an iteration (although sometimes they can be worse than building from scratch…that’s a discussion for another time). ## Rebuild Mathematics For a rebuild, the maths is a little simpler than before. There are two changes to make. First, ignore the success metric from the previous calculations. Second, take the multiplier and divide by 1.5 instead of 2. Here’s a rebuild of a one day (6 hour) strategy session - **6-hour Strategist workshop** - **Multiply by flavor (5x)** - **Divide the total by 1.5** 6 x 5 = 30 30 / 1.5 = 20 hours for the rebuild Again, this is conversative – about 2.5 days work. Most strategy workshop creators I know would probably need a little less than that, but then again they do love to strategise… 🙂 *A note on flavors: Rebuilds tend to be more common for Educational flavor workshops, especially those that are longer-form and resemble more traditional curriculums. For Educational sessions, content can go out of date more quickly, and there are many concepts and ideas that can be added in (very much a double-edged sword!). The chance of overruns here is high. Suffice to say, plan and price accordingly.* By now, of course, you know: be the time pessimist – especially when rebuilding. --- ## Wrapping Up Ok! There was a lot in here. What have we covered? - First, workshops can provide both **connection** *and* **leverage**. There’s a tension here of course, especially when it comes to keeping a handle on time. - Next, we looked at the similarities between workshop creators and movie producers – especially when it comes to being a time pessimist - Before getting into mathematics, pick the flavor of workshop, and take on the 4 workshop creation mindsets. - Decide on your delivery time, then apply the multiplier. There are always going to be additional factors that can cause overruns, but some simple maths can help us here, too. - When iterating your workshop, layer in your estimate of success to plan ahead. Sometimes an iteration will become a sub-session, or even a brand new product. This is where a whole load of extra magic can be conjured up. - Finally, rebuilds happen – especially on larger projects. Once more, there’s a formula to help here. While your mileage will inevitably vary (workshops are human-first!), the tools in this guide can be used to help estimate and manage the time and energy you need to build, iterate, and rebuild a workshop of any size, flavor, or scope. And once you know the time, the magic can appear… --- Thirsty for more? Check out more guides, resources, worksheets, and courses at [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net) Thanks to [Tom Critchlow](http://www.tomcritchlow.com/?ref=howardgray.net) and [Josh Upton](http://www.joshupton.com/?ref=howardgray.net) for giving feedback on drafts of this post. ### Adventures #43: No time for scuba URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-43-no-time-for-scuba/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:22.000Z Hello there, First off, welcome to the new subscribers (and there have been quite a few of you in the last month). Thanks for joining. Meanwhile, if you’ve been here a while, I want to apologise. Yes, indeed. A couple of the recent editions of this digest haven’t been so good. Sorry. And thank you for still being here. The good news is that the tension and frustration have become the fuel for this month’s in-email article. Beyondthat, keep scrolling for a selection of ideas and resources spanning **education**, **entertainment**, and **entrepreneurship**. I’m putting a renewed focus on weaving the thread on how these intertwine and where there may be new opportunities to help fuel your journey... because that’s the ‘*Adventures*’ bit, after all. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/) --- ### Furiously stirring It was obvious why those previous dispatches came out badly. Moving to a new interface caught me in a strange no man’s land between blog and newsletter. Hours were spent on the intro bits. They came out undercooked, were then left to simmer for far too long, before being furiously stirred and hastily plated to meet my first Thursday deadline. Word sludge. Then there were the 50+ pieces of video content I was producing for the [workshop](https://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net). Those took their toll in time and energy. So, it was obvious. Or was it? ### Back to the Trap A layer deeper, and history was repeating. From the beginning of lockdown, I saw so much creativity out there from others. Inspiring? Yes. Crippling? Also, yes. Their lucid essays; pithy Tweets; witty videos; clever podcasts. And me, with my blinking cursor; strange, unwoven thoughts; and stuttering grammar. I produced videos that took hours to put together and still didn't meet my hopes. What was on the canvas did not align with the mind’s eye. Rough blog posts sat stubbornly in the drafts folder; drifting further away from salvation as time rolled past. There was the Tweetstorm I crafted with quiet excitement before seeing it sink like the gruesomely impaled Ibiza cocaine foister from the *looks-great-oh-it’s-actually-trash-hmm-I’ll-watch-it-anyway-no-these-are-terrible-empty-calories-but-oh-the-sugary-sweetness-still-tastes-so-good* 'White Lines' on Netflix. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/34c086a5-2379-41a2-a950-f3b4a4b3c6ed_700x394.jpeg) Seeing all those other people’s creativity. And their prolific, relentless, focused output. And yes, there it was. The comparison trap. The most dangerous trap of them all. The realisation was clear: I hated my output. But there was one more layer to why so much of what I’d been doing felt lacking in some way. There was one layer deeper. --- ### Time to Snorkel Speaking of Mediterranean islands, I’ve been lucky enough to take a few family holidays in that wonderful part of the world. One of the biggest lures? *No, not thrice-cut narcotics. *Behave yourself.** Scuba diving. My Dad and brother love to scuba dive, but I could never do it. I found equalising too difficult and the sinus pressure overwhelming. After another despondent failed attempt at submerging, I’d leave them to explore the ocean depths as a duo. Instead, I pootled around with a snorkel; sun on my back, keeping an eye out for colourful fish. After a little while, I’d head back to shore and read a few pages of a book, sketch out some new ideas, have a chat with my Mum, or just gaze out at the shimmering water line. And then, in what seemed the blink of an eye, the divers returned and it was time for lunch. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/3e994f72-acf5-48cc-b949-447fdf6c5169_590x355.jpeg) *The most wonderful lunch spot you may ever find: Fish Shack, Ibiza. Simplicity is indeed the ultimate sophistication.* --- ## No space for scuba Today, in New York’s concrete lockdown, there’s a bit of room for outdoor dining, but no space for scuba. I can’t equalise, and those depths of working 3, 4, 5 hours straight on one thing are far, far away. Yes, our attention spans are getting shorter and become harder to stretch back out, but it’s not just the usual internet distractions at play. There are check-ins with my wife as she continues to recover from Coronavirus; a love-hate relationship with a rolling roster of video calls; the concerns of how to make a living; a nervousness about family, friends, and community. While my pressures are minimal in the grand scheme of things, they still feel very real. And the scuba - the Deep Work, as Cal Newport calls it - is hard to come by. I want to dive deep, but because the window is only 60, 45, 30 minutes at a time, scuba isn’t possible. And I can’t equalise. Maybe you can’t either. However, not going deep doesn’t mean staying shallow. Snorkeling isn’t worse than scuba. It’s just *different*. Snorkeling allows a breadth of vision. There’s the chance not just to look down into the water, but up at the sky and out over the landscape. A chance to see something new; or something always there that you never noticed before. There’s no tank on your back. No training required. You don’t even need to be able to swim. Almost anyone can snorkel. And it’s easy to do together. I can’t get to the depths right now. Maybe you can’t either. And that’s ok. Let’s snorkel. --- # Career Fuel [The Passion Economy](https://li.substack.com/p/how-the-passion-economy-will-disrupt): Here’s another good bit from Li Jin. One of the questions I’m getting asked most often at the moment is about the ‘stack’ for building a digital business: whether it’s the most effective-route to producing video content; or taking payments for a workshop. I’m interested to see which ‘full-stack’ solutions may emerge here in the coming months (there’s also an opportunity for a service business that teaches how to do put the stack together…) [Freelance pricing](https://twitter.com/tom%5Fhirst/status/1277933730078785537?ref=howardgray.net): Here’s a good Twitter thread on how to scope and bill projects when you’re out there in the jungle. > [](https://twitter.com/tom%5Fhirst/status/1277933730078785537?ref=howardgray.net) [The Observer Effect](https://www.theobservereffect.org/marc.html?ref=howardgray.net): Interesting long-form interview with Marc Andreessen on productivity, learning, and keeping a calendar --- ## Learning <> Doing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/f8bb4faa-1fa4-4aa9-a8f7-f94ecc1bb350_640x460.webp) [Mirror acquired by Lululemon](https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/29/lululemon-set-to-acquire-home-fitness-startup-mirror-for-500m/?ref=howardgray.net): What? Eh? Pardon? What’s this doing this under the ‘Education’ heading? I see a lot of parallels between at-home fitness like Peloton and Mirror, and new models in learning. I wrote a blog post on this ages ago and didn’t ship it (see above re. *“rough blog posts sat stubbornly in the drafts folder…”).* Imagine learning from incredible teachers and guides, anywhere in the world, directly through the mirror. There would be content adjusted for your expertise; multiple leaderboards; even historical figures leading a class via a hologram… [The Future of College](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/scott-galloway-future-of-college.html?ref=howardgray.net): Love him or loathe him, Scott Galloway seems to be everywhere right now. Here’s his take on the future of college. There are a few points I disagree with, but I think he’s spot on with the suggestions of big tech burrowing into education, and gap years growing in popularity (although I think they’ll look more like rotational expeditions; 3-5 shorter tours across different cultures and environments). [The Age of Superstar Teachers](https://thegeneralist.substack.com/p/the-next-michael-jordan-teaches-grade): I’m big on this one. Someone (me?) is going to build CAA for teachers. --- ## Media & Entertainment [Quibi takes a quick bite out of $2bn](https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/quibi-mobile-tv-tepid-hollywood-moralizing-1202688676/?ref=howardgray.net): Quibi has burned $1.8bn (yes, *billion*) on content and advertising so far. And the initial 3-month subscription deal they gave to early customers is about to run out. Youch. Just imagine what else could have been done with all that cash. [The new wave of video game music](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/video-game-composers?ref=howardgray.net): The scale of the gaming industry is hard to understate (and the lines are definitely being blurred on what ‘gaming’ means). As the complexity and budget of top-end production keep increasing, it’s not surprising to see top composers flock to games studios. Let’s be honest though, [the days of the MegaDrive are where it’s really at](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uy1tdRt0nM&ref=howardgray.net). --- ## Jukebox ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/35bf900d-42ac-46d1-b0fc-91d18a3d7cc5_500x500.jpeg) There’s been a lot of talk about podcast listening dropping as activities link commuting and gym workouts have declined. I’ve noticed my music consumption dropping too. Perhaps it’s that lack of scuba. Instead, here’s something from the recent past: in a bar in Bushwick, I picked up a magazine published in Bristol, featuring a band from Brighton. They had tour dates in Belgium and Belfast, but those got canceled of course. The band is called [Squid](https://open.spotify.com/artist/685XjGzGztyivfR3fAjoxo?si=w-tg9GaQRMaHjLThOvasvQ&ref=howardgray.net). And elsewhere in NYC, they probably would have fitted in well at [CBGBs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBGB?ref=howardgray.net)… --- ## Footnotes Other things I’ve been up to this month: - Finishing up our second cohort of [Workshop Creator](https://www.wavetable.net/wc?ref=howardgray.net), and launching the next one to take flight in August. I’m really excited about these kinds of community-driven learning experiences - Getting my hair cut - twice! (big shout out to both Jacinta and Astor Hair) - Becoming older. I’m now 37\. Terrifying - Running around the East Village each morning. Further confirmation that although a) it’s good for my energy and creativity; b) I’m out of shape; c) I will never, ever, enjoy running ### How to run a workshop for the C-suite URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-run-a-workshop-for-the-c-suite/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T14:57:33.000Z An underlying theme that comes up our Workshop Creator program is what I simply call **THE FEAR**. THE FEAR is real (and capitalised). THE FEAR can strike when the technology doesn’t work; when we get asked a question we don’t how to answer; when we forget what’s coming next; when we’re running out of time. And THE FEAR can strike when we’re out in front of senior executives at a big-name company. How do we run a workshop for the top dogs? How do we overcome THE FEAR? --- I remember being absolutely terrified at the prospect of my first workshop delivery for a board-level group of executives. They ran a big telecoms company, and it was the first day of their two day annual off-site. Each member of this group earned millions a year, and were responsible for billions a year. They had thousands of staff. Their time was precious. These two days were their opportunity to set the tone and the strategy for coming year. Yup, it was a big deal. THE FEAR was real. I knew they’d grill me, pick holes in anything that was even a fraction off-base, be looking for everything to be tight as a drum and run with military precision. No room for error. Be the expert. Lunch is for wimps. I had THE FEAR. But it wasn’t the case. Not at all. It turned out a workshop was the perfect format for them. And the feedback at the end of the day was incredible. They left smiling and energised. They were open, curious, and eager to learn more. They’d seen a new way of looking at the world, and a new way to approach their work as a team and a company. Bar one notable exception (that’s for another post…), this has held true for every senior executive workshop I’ve run. It didn’t start that way, though. --- Soon after they arrived, I quickly realised that they too had THE FEAR. They were isolated. They had to wear a mask in the world. Their heads were heavy from wearing the crown. They very rarely had the opportunity to open up, explore, play, test…and fail. The layers had built up, and they had THE FEAR. They didn’t have THE FEAR like I did. But they still had THE FEAR. My co-pilot and I quickly realised our job that day wasn’t going to be what we thought. How we were going to handle a full-day workshop with this group? Instead of performing magic, of blinding them with science, or hitting them with the latest trends in quick succession, we did just three things. --- First, we cut the content back. By 50%. At the last minute. This was risky, but we knew we needed to go in a different direction, to move with less weight on our backs. We knew there was still some key information to transfer and expertise for us to convey (and it needed to be tight, accurate, and clean), but the majority of the session focused elsewhere. Second, we took the stance of creating a place for them, rather than a platform for us. Our role wasn’t to as expert sages, nor sycophantic servants. We became part of the experience – as guiding sherpas for the journey. We knew the majority of the terrain, and could explain what the group may be encountering, but our default was to allow them to explore. The real value was going to be in offering a handful of catalysts and provocations, then creating the space for them to explore in ways they wouldn’t normal be able to. We knew they’d be able to find ideas and answers for themselves. Third, we treated them as human beings. Real people with emotions, needs, frustrations, motivations. Not sitting in a hierarchy, ordered by the org chart. They were real people, with bad hair days, a busy inbox, quirky hobbies, and real-life stories. Of course, THE FEAR still showed up from here and there. It was important we introduced a new concept succinctly; were careful to avoid mentioning competitors in overly glowing terms; that we helped them overcome obstacles in the right way; and kept the session running on time. Yet with these three things we kept at the essence of the workshop, THE FEAR dissipated. In fact, it started to shapeshift into excitement and curiosity. And it became infectious. --- THE FEAR is real. We must recognise it. But we can channel it into the environment we’re creating, to serve the people we’re with. And we should always check our assumptions about those in the room. Because I bet they’ve got THE FEAR too. ### A Workshop Canapé URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-workshop-canape/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:54:32.000Z In week one of the first edition of our Workshop Creator program, we sent out a few thought starters to our cohort of participants. One of these was a brief slide deck on Audience and Topic Ideation. It was one small asset before the main program started; a tiny canapé before the appetizers and entree. We knew it mattered, but as the program unfolded, we realised this little canapé deserved its own place on the menu. A key part of our workshop creation journey is the design phase, and a key part of the design phase is that canapé – now a very tasty appetiser – on Design Thinking Essentials. Design Thinking has many courses and workshops of its own, but for the work in our workshop kitchen we can reduce it down to its two essential ingredients, two questions: **Who’s it for?** **What’s it for**? The ‘Who’ tends to get people pretty animated – we see new target audiences emerge, network thinking starts to happen, views on psychographics rather than just demographics. Are the people in our workshops Novices, Practitioners, or Experts? What do they already know? What are they not voicing? Where may they be frustrated, confused, nervous? A common error is in making a workshop for just about everyone – thinking through the ‘Who’ helps us avoid this trap. --- However, the ‘What’ is just as important to consider. There are many purposes workshops can have: alignment; decision making; prototyping; ideation; even failing. This is a good start point, but we can go deeper. One question that can take us into new frontiers is ‘What will happen?’. What will happen to them? What will happen to their work? What will happen to their team? Their community? Their mindset? And then, turning it back on ourselves, what’s it for… for us? Now, workshops are definitely about them – our audience – rather than us. But this question can be helpful to us as well. If we’re careful with it, we can discover something new. Is it for me to position as an authority? Is it a gateway drug to something more? A portal to new opportunities? How about a way to access – and play – the game inside the game? To avoid the traps of being the everything – or the everyone – store; we just need to remember who and what it’s for. ### Adventures #42: Union Square URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-42-union-square/ Last updated: 2026-05-15T08:03:37.000Z One year ago today I graduated from my coaching certification course. For sixteen Saturdays and Sundays during the brittle Winter and sporadic Spring, I'd walk from the East Village to the New York Open Center on Madison and 30th. While the course's learning experience was somewhat lacking (a wandering agenda, no visual aids, and a fair few mixed messages), there were learnings. They just weren’t the ones I expected. The real learnings came from being in a peer group, with others who had different stories, experiences, and perspectives to my own (and in this group, I was one of two white men in a class of thirty). Many of my cohort were focused on social justice, and I was able to get a better understanding of how painful injustice has been - especially in America, and especially when it comes to race. When I arrived here from London just under 3 years ago the issue of race felt overt and charged in a way I hadn’t seen before (the [UK definitely has deep-lying problems too](https://medium.com/@kwakunortey/growing-up-black-in-london-a-cry-for-help-747bb6cb8782?ref=howardgray.net)). When it came to building an understanding of this issue as a new arrival in the US, I didn’t know how to best approach it. My peers in the coaching course certainly helped, but there was - and still is - so much to understand. So much to learn; to unlearn; to relearn. I had plenty on my mind each time I took that journey to and from 30th St. I still remember many of those walks. And every one of them went through Union Square. --- #### Vital For almost two hundred years, Union Square in New York City has been a place for talking, thinking, listening, and gathering. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/c69054fd-6863-427a-9815-050ef1ff37fc_512x425.jpeg) It’s hosted rallies and protests supporting unheard groups: from the early 20th century garment workers and department store employees; to pro-choice advocates, and those fighting for racial equality and justice. Union Square is also about the sound of the saxophone in the shade. A quiet lunch on a park bench. The local artists setting up shop come rain or shine. Local apples from the market. The capsuled intensity of the subway station; all low ceilings and slaloming foot traffic. Instigators and influencers; hipsters and Hari Krishnas; VCs and vagrants. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/51157df4-724b-4f96-b64b-490b9cdf612e_1280x988.jpeg) Less touristy than Times Square, more alive than Bryant Park or City Hall - it’s where the seams of Downtown and Uptown get stitched together in union. Union Square is a vital part of a vital city. It’s a vital part of the place I’ve come to call home. --- Now, just a couple of blocks away, I sit here listening to helicopters overhead, and police sirens on the avenue. There are the remnants of burning trash in the street, and just about every storefront is boarded up. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/f77f8a91-b129-47a8-b926-adf26706d5e1_900x774.jpeg) The city’s intensity is still there, but it’s changed. It’s changing. Along with that NY toughness, there’s rage, hurt, and confusion. Part of me feels discombobulated, disconnected. I have ‘visitor’ stamped in my passport. An expiry date on my tenure. I’m a non-immigrant alien. Uncertain status. I pay tax and have a state ID, yet I am not permitted to vote. I’m neither here, nor there. Yet I sit here in a gentrified apartment building, knowing full well I’m fortunate, I have privilege - inbuilt, both seen and unseen. I could have done better at recognising this before. I’ve sidestepped some issues; got blindsided by my unconscious bias. I can still do better. And I’m still part of something. Still a citizen. Still a human. #### Finding the fuel One of the questions for me this week is involvement. Do I get involved by posting a black square to my Instagram page? I understand why people have done it, but no, it’s not for me. And much of it has drowned out important voices. How do I avoid talking above others who should be heard? How do I get involved? What can I *do*, rather than just say? What’s my **fuel**? The answer lies in those walks through Union Square. The coaching course’s poor learning environment is fuel. Fuel to make learning better and more meaningful. Fuel to open learning to all. Fuel to build peer groups, where valuable discoveries and connections happen. For this edition, I’m sharing just two projects I'm building to try and make a small contribution to keep things moving forward. I’d be delighted if you can share them with someone you believe will benefit. = Thanks for reading. And I’d love to know what’s fueling you right now. Until next time - be safe, be well, be in touch. [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/) --- ## Building workshops, programs, and connections *More than a just workshop about workshops* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b0337245-26a8-4e1f-94a8-0dd3ddeeed89_1743x354.png) Over the past 5 weeks we’ve welcomed 28 people from across the globe into our [Workshop Creator live program.](https://www.workshopcreator.net/?ref=howardgray.net#live-program) We have participants from nonprofits, music, tech, journalism, social impact, media, hospitality, and more. It’s quite the crew. Whether it’s through workshops, programs, courses, or peer groups, each and every one of our group is seeking to create something new to help others learn and connect. We believe the skills, confidence, and community that drive workshop creation are needed now more than ever. We know this workshop works. So we’re doing it again. Registrations are open now. We’re also offering 2 more ways to join us: - **3 is the magic number**: Because workshops are better together. Sign up with a friend or colleague and bring someone else along [free of charge](https://workshopcreator.net/?ref=howardgray.net#live-program-groups) - **Scholarships**: We’re offering both [Full and Part scholarships](https://workshopcreator.net/?ref=howardgray.net#scholarship-application-live). Anyone can apply, but we’re giving priority to applicants focused on fighting inequality, as well as those with a demonstrated need for financial assistance. The next cohort starts on July 10th. We’d love to see you there. [Dive in](https://www.workshopcreator.net/?ref=howardgray.net#live-program) --- ## Opening your career aperture *Way-finding in the future of work* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/85c82d28-b4d4-4d7c-ae32-d93e8698237c_4376x877.png) The catalyst for this project came about back in 2016 in London. I saw how challenging it was for many people, especially those from underserved communities, to access career opportunities and begin to realise their potential. I started to wonder… *What if you could see your unique personal alignment with any job or career path, by just picking a route and playing a few fun games on your phone?* So I started building it. It stuttered along for a while. Then my wise and wonderful co-founder Jeffrey came on board. Over the last 9 months or so, we’ve been working away at crafting Fondo - a career navigation portal with a difference. [Fondo](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net) empowers you to broaden your career horizons and way-find through tomorrow's world of work. Along the way, you’ll earn Fondo credits. Credits unlock visualizations of career ideas and paths, and the opportunity to connect with industry experts who can help you on your journey. To get going with 25 credits, hit the button below, create an account (it’s free), and use the coupon code ADV42. We’re also building out our network of experts to help others find the way forward in their careers. [Head here if you want to be a part of it](https://www.itsfondo.com/contact/add-expert/%20?ref=howardgray.net). [Get started](https://www.itsfondo.com/redeem?ref=howardgray.net) ### Workshop Creation: Any Questions? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/workshop-creation-any-questions/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:15.000Z Imagine yourself telling a story. Any story you like. Picture where you are and what’s happening. Perhaps you’re in a small cabin, writing that novel you always had in your mind; working diligently in the writers’ room for a new TV show; crafting the next breakout Broadway hit; or standing on stage as you share an amusing anecdote. Whenever we’re creating and crafting a story, there are lots of questions an audience may have that the creator – the *storycrafter* – has to consider. If you think about it, the storycrafter has to surface and answer a lot of these questions in advance so the audience can make sense of what’s going on. Here are just a few: > *Why is she doing that?* > *How did they end up there?* > *Why did this character suddenly appear?* > *Who is going to save him?!* As Workshop Creators we can take this same mindset – after all, designing and delivering a workshop is essentially about crafting a story. And just like in other forms of storytelling, workshop questions are everywhere. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/M3-E1-S3.002-1024x576.jpeg) A true question master: The Riddler. What a fiendish workshop creator he would have been. Questions lead us to: - Stories (yes, the infinite loop!) - Talking points - Interactive activities - Q&A sessions - Assessments And so much more… ### Surfacing the questions What are the questions we need as Workshop Creators? Typically when thinking about this, we’ll surface content-related questions first: - **How do we introduce the topic?** - **What about *that* element?** - **What about doing *this* activity?** - **Which conversations do we want to encourage?** - **What do we want people to avoid?** These are just a few – there are lots of questions! Sometimes these questions will lead to a straight True or False answer; a fact of some kind. More often though, there are multiple, subjective responses. And these responses tend to lead to more questions… and more responses…and more questions. This isn’t surprising, because in a workshop we’re exploring and navigating the unknown; working through the challenge space – whatever that may be for the topic we’re focused on. This is exciting, but it can also feel overwhelming – one branch to another, to another, to another – an intertwining web of questions, answers, and ideas. Crafting and delivering this can be challenging. Let’s make it easier on ourselves. ### 3 types of questions We can categorize these questions into 3 groups: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/M3-E1-S3.005-1024x576.jpeg) Let’s take these one by one – starting with the most straightforward. The middle group is fairly obvious; questions we’ll ask our group when we’re delivering the workshop. We’ll probably have a few of these primed and ready to go. The third group looks simple, but is a little more complex than it appears; these are questions we’ll be asked, but we may also want to prime, prompt, or tease these questions out. How we do this leads us to the most complex group – those *we answer in advance*. These are questions we’re answering through our design, content, or activities. We’re weaving the answers and quite possibly also the questions into the materials and the experience. This is the art and the science working in tandem – and it’s where the storyteller mindset shows up. We want to answer questions in advance to help the audience make sense of what’s going on, but also to level-set, remove objections, increase comfort, and sometimes just to save time. We don’t want to answer too many in advance or there’s nothing to explore; yet leave it all open and our audience will feel the dip in the learning and narrative curves too abruptly. This first group of questions – while delicate to balance – can be hugely valuable to us as Workshop Creators. ### Weaving the thread Once we’ve categorized our questions, we can then start applying into our workshop structure, and the wider narrative for our story. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/M3-E1-S3.007-1024x576.jpeg) A question could sit within a small part of the narrative of one of our many workshop chunks. It could form a chunk itself, or lead from one concept to another. A question could form a pillar of our workshop, lead directly to a learning outcome, or even be the crux of the entire workshop. And just like any other storyteller, part of the magic for the Workshop Creator is in layering, priming, and sprinkling these questions throughout the story to allow for tension, release, challenges, and resolution. Because that’s part of what makes workshops… work. --- To learn more about questions, story, narrative, and dozens of other workshop creation concepts, [join us as a Workshop Creator](http://www.workshopcreator.net/?ref=howardgray.net) ### How to turn up the dials in your next workshop URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-turn-up-the-dials-in-your-next-workshop/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:54:41.000Z One of the best things about workshops is the ability to mix and match ideas, formats, activities, and themes. We can shift from one lane to another; bring in different concepts; sprinkle in story; encourage exploration. Workshops are a responsive space where change happens. However, it gets a little more challenging when we move things online. The tension between order and chaos shows up more easily, and the flexible frame we use can start to feel rigid and brittle. We may be tempted to revert back to the ways of old, those crutches we once used; grafting what was a safe yet passive IRL way of doing things into an online environment, when instead we should embrace the opportunities for an active, energetic experience. There are many ways we can do this. Here’s one way of looking at our workshop structure and using three dials to crank up the colours, or turn down the glare. First, rotation. ## Rotation One of the key tenets of a workshop is its use of multiple delivery formats. We can use these in a linear manner, but we can also rotate between them: from lecture bit; to Q&A; to small group discussion; to a hands-on activity. This idea of rotating between formats every 30 minutes (or every 15 when we’re online) instantly adds some surges and curves to the energy, the learning, the connection. It’s hard to overstate what a big difference this can make. That’s the first dial – and it’s one we can have our fingers on throughout our design phase. We can go a couple of steps further though. First, timing. ## Timing Let’s take a look at our various formats first. Here they are as coloured blocks. For this example, we don’t need to worry too much about which format relates to a particular colour. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/Untitled.001-1-1024x576.jpeg) Next, let’s lay these blocks on top of our learning curve and narrative curve as well as the diamonds we use for our session structure (more on these in separate posts). Doing this helps us sense where we may see energy begin to dip. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/Untitled.002-1-1024x576.jpeg) Our formats definitely go a long way to addressing this (e.g. a hands-on or a pair discussion will bring the energy back up after a longer lecture portion). We can of course adjust the duration of each format – as you can see here the orange and green are shorter than the others. Changing the durations can do a lot for energy too – 15 mins of lecture, 5 min pair discussion, 10 min group discussion, 15 min q&a, and so on. These two elements – changing format and duration – can make a huge impact; changing a flat 2D session into something far more energetic and colourful. Let’s go one step further. ## Intensity As well as switching formats, we can turn the dial up and down when it comes to intensity. Here are our formats again. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/Untitled.001-1-1024x576.jpeg) This time, we’re going to change out our Y-axis from being focused on energy to intensity. Here’s what happens. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/Untitled.003-1024x576.jpeg) By nature, some formats will be more intense than others – for example, a rapid ideation hands-on (which could be number 4 here), will be more intense than a medium length lecture portion (which could be number 1). We can then lay our narrative, learning, and structure back in again to help us see where we may want to ramp things up, turn it down, trim some time, or expand out. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/05/Untitled.004-1024x576.jpeg) These three simple ways to look at our session – format, duration, and intensity – can easily improve any [flavor of workshop](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/26/3-flavours-of-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net). ### Adventures #41: The Accelerator, The Amplifier... The Tension URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-41-the-accelerator-the/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:21.000Z Hello! This edition of *Adventures…* has a different vibe. I’ve packed up my Mailchimp knapsack (in the form of a 100mb zip file) and trundled over to Substack. The format and design will probably evolve a little over the next couple of editions as I get to grips with things. One change I’ve noticed is the new interface has led to a few more words being written. I hope you’re cool with that. Please do let me know your comments on this new format - I’ve learned I benefit hugely from getting the perspectives of others. Speaking of which, many of my recent conversations have leaned towards the question of *‘what’s next?’.* I’m not sure any of us have the answers, but perhaps some clues lie in what's already been happening. --- First, there’s the **acceleration** of existing and emerging trends: from overpriced MBA programs becoming eroded; to office space going from company foundation to unwieldy, unwanted overhead; and all that *stuff* people so coveted being called into question. Second, there's **amplification**. The amplifier ramps up the volume on what you can already hear, but it also gives voice to the previously inaudible. The loudest have a habit of being those things you've either put off or haven't ever really been much good at: that team communication process you never got around to overhauling; those two dirty pans left in the kitchen sink a little longer than they should have (ok, guilty). Sometimes, the amplifier and accelerator work in tandem. The movement becomes too rapid, the noise gets deafening, and the tension builds. Before you know it, you question your work, your skills, your habits, your mindset. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/eb84139f-726f-4b5a-97b1-fc94130c58f1_900x600.png) However, this cuts both ways. The accelerator kickstarts your [slow hunches:](http://nicholasachow.com/the-slow-hunch-theory-of-good-ideas/?ref=howardgray.net) that idea you thought *could be a thing*... now you see it *can* be a thing; it *needs* to be a thing. And the amplifier truly surfaces the skill that maybe... just maybe... you thought you could become good at. --- What about when things come back to a semblance of normality? What about when now becomes… next? We can continue using the accelerator and the amplifier. They won't - nor shouldn't - look like the ones that came before. They’ll be more human, attuned, holistic. The accelerator can be used to galvanise small business owners trying to recover; the new entrepreneurs wanting to go out and start something; and those with a desire to learn and push things forward in larger organisations. The new accelerator will utilize network thinking, human-centered design, and active learning. It’ll have social impact and the SDGs woven into its DNA. As for the amplifier, it won’t be ours to use, certainly not to shout and scream. Instead, we’ll prime it, then pass it to others. --- Just to be clear, it still feels fast and scary right now. Accelerator and amplifier together. Gradually though, as we move into what’s next, we can start to understand and then harness their power. To quote Jon Kabat-Zinn: *you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf them*. Thanks for reading, and as always I’d love to hear what’s got your attention right now. Just hit reply. [Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/de7daca1-cb97-4d05-ad6e-93d7cc94a243_1000x60.png) --- ### [A simple recipe for working independently](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/26/a-recipe-for-working-independently/?ref=howardgray.net) Two of my biggest flaws are struggling with focus and sometimes feeling overwhelmed by ideas for projects to take on. For those of us working independently as freelancers, consultants, creatives, or solopreneurs this can be pretty common. Here's the recipe for a hugely helpful practice I've been doing for the last 6 months alongside my friend and collaborator Josh. It keeps us focused, positive, energised, and reminds us that - yes, indeed - we are human beings. --- ### [A pair of podcasts](https://lift.comcast.com/podcasts/howard-gray-ideas-elevated/?linkId=85772765&ref=howardgray.net) This month I was on the other side of the table; featuring on Comcast’s LIFT Labs podcast, and returning for a second appearance on the Portfolio Career Podcast. Click below to check ‘em out. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/05fdac66-e845-42a9-9e78-c82d6e19350f_723x133.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/bc398506-0714-40b1-9c8a-45650e034dbc_841x196.png) --- ### [The Quarantined Independent](https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/08/the-quarantined-independent/?ref=howardgray.net) I love the metagame. [Tom](https://tomcritchlow.com/?ref=howardgray.net) is a consultant who, as well as his work as a consultant, writes about being a consultant, and how other consultants can be better consultants. I reckon he’ll soon be hired by consultants as a consultant (if not already). Here are the first three in an excellent series of posts he’s put together on [working independently during quarantine](https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/08/the-quarantined-independent/?ref=howardgray.net). --- ### [Back to The Tension](https://howardgray.net/portfolio/the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net) [This was a podcast series I created last year](https://howardgray.net/portfolio/the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net). It's some of the better work I've done, maybe because I just did it for myself rather than focus on a projection of what I thought might be popular. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/608894bb-d799-4e78-a4ff-b1c383279c7a_300x300.png) Counterintuitively, each 2-4 minute episode took longer to produce than my 45-60 minute podcast 'Tickets', particularly as it was tough to craft the language I wanted. As (I think) Van Gogh said, the most frustrating and challenging thing about creative work is getting what you put on the canvas to match the vision in your head. *(I’m sure there’s a cheap gag here re. ears and podcasts; I’ll leave that one with you)* I shipped episodes weekly from late Summer up until Thanksgiving, then felt I needed to take a pause. Writing each episode became harder, and frankly the metrics weren't very good (yes - contradicting the earlier point about doing it for myself). I felt bad about shelving it, but energy and $ needed my focus. However, over the last 2 months, I’ve found myself talking about tension in so many conversations, and the need to explore this topic feels stronger. I pledged to bring the podcast back, but have still struggled to find the creative energy for the podcast. So, as a prototype / cop out, this - in a very small way to keep it moving - is *The Tension*. Three to start: **Creating / Capturing:** There are times to focus on creating value, and others on capturing it. Doing the latter feels troubling right now, even when there are customers knocking on the door. But giving away absolutely everything for free isn’t sustainable. Instead, perhaps it’s better to take on a slightly different stance - that of *contributing*. **Accelerator / Amplifier:** See the beginning of this email :) **US / UK (English)**: I’m switching between them more regularly than ever. This adds a lot of time to double-check depending on the context and audience, but I’m not willing to use only one. Most importantly, I just hope I don’t use an ‘ize’ instead of an ‘ise’ in a WhatsApp message to my Mum. That will not go down well. --- Also: [The perks of being a weirdo](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/the-perks-of-being-a-weirdo/606778/?ref=howardgray.net): I’m all for thinking like this, but I don’t really see much changing at a broader level. Many organisations proclaim they embrace diversity of all forms, but when it comes to being…well, *weird* \- I’m not sure they actually want it. In the new normal, safety and stability will become more popular, and the weirdos will need to create other platforms for their weirdness to be accepted and encouraged. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8fa94417-f59f-4d05-a94d-47dbc9ab9c31_1000x60.png) --- ### [Crossing the online course chasm](https://twitter.com/i/status/1249079896955125760?ref=howardgray.net) I did my first ever [Tweetstorm](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/tweeting-up-a-tweetstorm?ref=howardgray.net). I guess I’m now part of a club I probably don’t much want to be a member of. TL;DR: workshops beat courses, especially when you’re starting out. > [](https://twitter.com/i/status/1249079896955125760?ref=howardgray.net) --- ### **[How to introduce your workshop](https://youtu.be/OU5NfwSffko?ref=howardgray.net)** Featuring a couple of my alter-egos, here’s a riff on introducing yourself in a workshop, class, or just about any public speaking situation. This is my first foray into putting videos of my face onto YouTube. I’m still not sure how I feel about this; by the next time you hear from me I may have [counted to 100,000 in a bid to go viral](https://blake.substack.com/p/who-is-mrbeast), or done absolutely nothing at all. It could go either way. --- Also: [How to create an interactive workshop in Zoom](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/85276865-8903-432e-b18c-f21ee8e6fbca_1000x60.png) --- ### **Does the world need this restaurant anymore?** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/5a3986f9-5114-4fbd-93cf-7d2513c897fa_1800x1200.jpeg) Last time out I mentioned I didn’t want to include any Coronavirus-related content as there’s just so much out there already. I’m already breaking that rule because; a) frankly, it’s very hard to avoid, b) I don’t like rules, and c) [this piece in the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/magazine/closing-prune-restaurant-covid.html?ref=howardgray.net) by restauranteur Gabrielle Hamilton feels more about a life’s work than solely a story on the pandemic’s impact. Additionally, it hits close to home for me as the restaurant in question is 5 minutes walk from my apartment. The bit about her frustrations with the NYC brunch crowd is especially delicious. --- Also: the 2nd and 3rd order effects of where [fast fashion and influencer culture collide](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/fashion/coronavirus-coachella-festival-fashion.html?ref=howardgray.net) (not to mention the pain the live music sector is feeling right now - a few friends in the industry have told me that many companies are now drastically revising their projections for when live shows will come back in any kind of significant way) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/af7a83d0-d27e-4176-9553-5bb3a9de1ebf_1000x60.png) --- ## **[Shabaka and the Ancestors](https://open.spotify.com/album/4S5MLu2PKU7uElm2V3JphK?si=xEC6FQv1QKi-rTud4MW7aw&ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/db1039b9-ceca-41b0-a503-2aaae8f760e6_1200x800.jpeg) I have to shout out my Dad for the tip here: this octet (that’s 8 - I had to double-check) led by Shabaka Hutchings originally got picked up by Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label, and after spending two years recording in South Africa they released their new album last month. *‘We Are Sent Here By History’,* blends African, Afro-Caribbean, and London jazz vibes: perfect for the warm glow of a late Spring evening. [Listen](https://open.spotify.com/album/4S5MLu2PKU7uElm2V3JphK?ref=howardgray.net) --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7835fe05-2146-45aa-934a-425b1a483cc1_1000x60.png) --- Other things I've been up to this month: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/e762e220-ad0d-48a7-b56b-c8739da0ba6b_2499x1411.jpeg) - Kicking off the May edition of [Workshop Creator](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net#creator): our crew is made up of 28 people from around the globe who are all looking to deliver interactive, engaging learning experiences for others. I’m biased of course, but from just our first group gathering there’s a wonderful positive energy and sense of connection happening. Workshops may indeed be the future of learning - Making banana bread. Yes, another mid-30s cliche to go on my list. Nonetheless, I continue to tell myself I’m just *so* individual and unique. - Not reading any books. Not learning any languages. Not doing burpees at 6am (or any other time). Not writing a novel. Not cutting back on mid-afternoon snacks (e.g. banana bread). Sue me. **Spread the word:** Who are 2 people you know who are looking to find ways forward in their work? I'd be delighted if you could share this email with them. Hit the button below. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a1c6bba6-1817-4eca-b9a0-02a9cc51c87a_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I help people who want to make a difference get where they want to go. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. [Check out the full archive here >](https://www.howardgray.net/welcome) ### A simple recipe for working independently URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-recipe-for-working-independently/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T13:52:17.000Z It can be hard not to marvel at those productivity gurus; the creative mavens; those extraordinary entrepreneurs. They’re so flawless, so sleek, so in-tune. *How do they get it all done?* *How do they stay focused, primed, able to shut out the noise?* *How are they able to work on the right things at the right times?* *Why do I feel so lost, overwhelmed, and scattered?* *Why does every day seem to yield so little?* *Can I go and have a cup of tea now?* When we’re working alone – as consultants, solopreneurs, freelancers, seekers – these feelings tend to amplify. To help us mere mortals on our quest there are now courses, books, and podcasts galore. Many of them can help unlock what we need, but here’s another recipe to try – with a big tasty serving of reciprocity built in for good measure. --- ### Time to stand up A practice that’s helped me immeasurably over the past 6 months is a daily standup. You’ll probably be familiar with these if you work in an agile team building digital products or services. It’s a short meeting to get focused, take a brief look back, and then find a clear path forward. However, if you spend much of your time working alone this practice may not feel like a relevant or viable option. It’s designed for teams, after all. And you went the other way. But here’s the thing; you need it even more than they do. And you need it now more than ever. Here’s a standup recipe for people working independently. It’s a little different from a typical team check-in: while it too looks back and looks forward at what’s next, this standup also provides a flexible frame to get grounded, and to remind yourself of what really matters most. You can use this once a day, once a week, or at whatever time cadence you choose. I recommend daily during the working week if you can. All that’s required is yourself, a peer, and 20 minutes or so. The person you do this with doesn’t need to work in the same field as you (in fact it can be better if they don’t), but what you do need is to be invested in other’s success. I’ve been fortunate enough to undertake this practice with my good friend and collaborator [Josh](http://www.joshupton.com/?ref=howardgray.net), and it’s helped me overcome so many obstacles and avoid dozens of dead-ends (the vast majority of which were self-created). I’m also fortunate that this particular practice is part of Josh’s wider practice – he designed this recipe, and coaches and advises independents, teams, and organizations who want to do better work. When using this recipe, each partner should be given time and space to speak, but the listener should also be comfortable asking questions and challenging as needed. One area where I find myself being challenged (with good reason) is on my priorities for the day. Often there’s too much, or I create new things for myself that sound good (no, they sound *great*!) but really aren’t important (ok, you’re right). Without a peer who notices those patterns and calls them out, I’d find myself overwhelmed and frustrated. As with all recipes, some ingredients can be substituted, and you can season to your taste. This is the version of our recipe I tend to gravitate towards most often. However you use this recipe, the core nutritional value is in checking in with each other, getting clear on priorities, and – as Josh likes to say – reminding yourself that yes, indeed, you’re a human being. I hope it’s as beneficial for you as it has been for us. --- ## Recipe: **A Daily Stand-Up** #### **Instructions:** - Serves: 2 - Preparation Time: 2 minutes - Cooking Time: 20 minutes - Serving suggestion: One question each and rotate, or you can opt for a full go-round for each person before changing (the former usually gives far more flavor) - Pairs well with: Morning coffee, no distractions #### **Check-In Round** - **Is anything preventing you from being present?** - **How are you feeling today?** #### **Previous** - **What are 1-3 highlights since we last spoke?** (the number of highlights depends on your cadence) #### **Priorities** - **What are 1-3 things you’re working on?** (this could be today, or this week – we do a weekly view on Mondays, then a daily view thereafter) #### **Team Time** - **What do you need from the team?** (this is an opportunity to set up a separate time to help the other work through a particular challenge, or review some work. We’ll usually have something here once a week or so) *Note: Team Time has been massive for both of us on a number of occasions* #### **For yourself** - **What are you doing for yourself today?** (It could be going for a run, baking a cake, calling a friend, or sitting down for 10 minutes and doing…nothing. Every day, make space for doing something for yourself) #### **Quick Review** - **Is there anything else on your mind?** - **What’s changed for you over the course of today’s stand-up?** ### Pre Game / Post Game URL: https://www.howardgray.net/pre-game-post-game/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:04:23.000Z Think of the last time you were nervous about something. Perhaps it was public speaking. Or starting a new job. Firing an employee. Traveling to a faraway destination. Proposing to your spouse. Meeting with investors. All of these experiences are moments in time. Moments in life. They’re new, novel, unknown. As well as the nerves we may have felt during the experience itself, you’ll probably also remember the nerves we had in the lead up. Pacing backstage as the speaker before you finishes up; the elevator that takes you to where all those new colleagues are located; asking that staff member to step outside with you for a private conversation. But do you remember how you slept the night before? Perhaps you got your full 8 hours, not even the slightest disturbance. More likely, you probably tossed and turned a little. Maybe you were wide awake for a half hour or so, or woke up way earlier than usual. Perhaps you had a completely sleepless night – eyes wide open for hours, brain whirring and spinning, irrational alertness. Now, imagine how you’d feel the night before competing in a big sporting event: the Super Bowl; a World Cup final; the bout to become the world heavyweight boxing champion; an Olympic Games’ 100m sprint for the medals. Excited? Sure. Nervous? Probably. Pre-Game Nerves. Something new, novel, unknown. A moment in time. A life moment. Here’s the thing. Sometimes, with experience and reps, the pre-game nerves start to shift. --- The restlessness, nerves and energy move elsewhere. They go from pre-game to post-game. It may not feel like it at the time, but unlike pre-game’s ability to paralyze, post-game’s purpose is to propel forwards. Post-game is about processing, reflecting, synthesizing, augmenting. When post-game starts to shows up, pre-game probably still bring nerves and excitement, but it’s a groove to ride rather than an overwhelming wave. Pre-game has shimmering energy; gentle anticipation. Pre-game is a sense of business as usual, but with enough kinetic energy to remind of the importance of staying in the groove. Over time, as experience and experiences grow, the surges that come from post-game restlessness settle into the subconscious: the synthesis and integration occur without you even realising. There are different games of course. Some are infinite; there is no pre or post-game visible to the mind’s eye. Others may occur just a handful of times in a lifespan – if at all. Here, pre-game and post-game are unlikely ever to be in sync – nor should they be. Yet the majority of games are played time and again. The company all-hands. Tonight’s gig on the new tour. The strategy session with the team. Kicking off the next creative project. Date night. For these games, perhaps the goal is to find the magic combination of pre-game’s light effervescence along with the attuned absorption the post-game brings. There are many ways to get there, but in the end it just comes down to one thing. Practice. ### How to cook up a tasty workshop URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-cook-up-a-tasty-workshop/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:16.000Z Whether your culinary skills are Michelin star or you’re limited to toast, you don’t need much to be able to cook up some tasty workshops. Here’s a 6 step recipe. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-8-1024x1024.png) ## 1\. Choose a flavo(u)r ### you can add a scoop of another if you like ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-9-1024x1024.png) ## 2\. You’ll need a couple of tools, and some knowledge of how to use them effectively. ### But it’s all good, you’re a quick learner ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-10-1024x1024.png) ## 3\. Gather some ingredients. ### It’s worth going out into the field: back to the source, and putting your hands in the earth. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-11-1024x1024.png) ## 4\. Prep those raw ingredients so you can see all their great colours. ### Start mixing and blending, chopping and stirring. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-12-1024x1024.png) ## 5\. Time to get cooking. ### There are a few rules to follow, but you can add your signature style. Remix a recipe, add seasoning to your taste. Maybe a little ketchup or hot sauce? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-13-1024x1024.png) ## 6\. Serve it up. ### But how do you know if what you’ve cooked up is any good? ### Two simple taste tests. ### Get some feedback, iterate, adjust. ### Share the recipe with others, cook it again, cook it for those who haven’t tasted it before – especially those who are going hungry. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Instagram-Post-14-1024x1024.png) ## 7\. Feeling hungry? Want to quench your thirst? [Our kitchen is open to all.](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) ### Crossing the online course chasm URL: https://www.howardgray.net/crossing-the-online-course-chasm/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:16.000Z *The path to becoming a creator in the future of learning can be fraught. Luckily, there’s a place to visit along the way.* Earlier this week I spoke with a new friend who’s taking a look at what’s next in his career journey. He had a pretty good idea of his plan: taking his existing skill set and previous work experiences and synthesizing them into learning materials that could help others become better in their field. The obvious next step was to build an online course. However, there was something missing. He felt overwhelmed, uncertain. There was a challenge to overcome. And it felt a like a huge weight on his back. I was a little surprised; he worked at one of the world’s well known companies, writes regularly about his field, and has already taught some classes (with his students creating a wonderful testimonial website for him). The challenge he faced? Crossing the chasm of the online course. ### The yawning gap Despite the myriad tools now available, and all the signals pointing to others’ success stories, producing something that was a true reflection of what he wanted to bring to the world felt… elusive, out of reach. Frustrating. Overwhelming. There were so many elements involved: - Breaking down the content in the right way - Making the lessons compelling - Standing out from the crowd - Teasing out his unique style and angles - Figuring out how to best prepare, record, and edit - Shipping the finished product - Marketing and communicating it in the right way - Iterating, adjusting, building, and rebuilding I wasn’t surprised he felt this way. Once we look closely, the chasm is wider than we think. ### The place beyond the pines Luckily, there’s a place we can visit along the way. It’s a little tucked away, just off the main drag. In this place we can practice all the key skills of building a course: preparation, distillation, designing, structuring, explanations, articulating, performing, energizing. It gives us the opportunity to get feedback. It makes it easier for us to make our work better. The work done in this place isn’t one and done; it’s instead allowed to be a work in progress. In fact, it’s *supposed* to be a work in progress. Once we spend some time in this place, we may decide to continue on and cross the chasm. Or we may choose to take a different path; this place has many paths leading from it. This place is the workshop. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Workshop-Chasm-741x1024.jpg) A one-color Sharpie sketch. It’s not perfect, but the mistakes are where the learning happens. ### A place where we can choose It lets us choose how small we want to start. It lets us test out our ideas, and receive feedback and input without having to worry about the big launch moment. We don’t need it to be perfect. In fact, the mistakes are where the most valuable learnings happen. In this place we’re showing up with something we’re passionate about, and encouraging others to explore it with us. In this place, things aren’t complete. We don’t know all the answers. We can be proud that we don’t. Not knowing is a feature, not a bug. We can easily arrive here from wherever we’re at: - A tweet or a blog - A full time role or a freelance gig - A life’s work or a new vocation - A side hustle or a passion project - A instinctive hunch or a proven scientific method The workshop helps us cross the chasm, if we want to. And if we don’t, there are plenty of paths in and out. The workshop is where we can take on fuel for the journey – whether we’re crossing the chasm, or taking another path to somewhere new. ### The secret skillset However, it’s not all plain sailing. We’ll need to develop some new skills to bring it all to life. These skills – and the energy and confidence and generosity they support.- used to be overlooked, elusive, niche, and inaccessible. Today, it’s different. [The secret skillset ](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/06/building-the-10-key-skills-for-2020/?ref=howardgray.net)of workshop skills are transferrable, scalable, and valuable. And they’re easier than ever to build – whichever chasm you’re crossing, or path you’re taking. Alongside a team of collaborators I’ve been [building a place to practice](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net#learn) – a place where you can build the skills you need to create workshops of any size, shape or flavor. The next initiative we’re running is our 1-month [Workshop Creator workshop.](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net#creator) It’s open for enrollment now. Hope to see you there. ### This ain’t no webinar URL: https://www.howardgray.net/this-aint-no-webinar/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T14:04:19.000Z Our world has changed quickly. Many of our social interactions have almost immediately shifted to be exclusively online, and for those of us not on the frontlines, our work interactions have done the same. It’s an interesting thought experiment to wonder how things would be if we were experiencing this shift 10 (or even 5) years ago. The technology we had would have strained and creaked and likely buckled under the weight of demand. As is the nature of progress and the joy of hindsight, tomorrow’s tools will make today’s look quaint, if not primitive. However, the tools we have access to today allow us to communicate almost seamlessly with audio and video, with text and animations, with multiple people, in synchrony. Many of these tools are inexpensive, if not free. And many of these tools are new. Whenever something new shows up, we have two choices: - We can stick with the status quo and do what we did before. Over time, if forced, we may grudgingly graft our existing ways onto the new. But we’d rather things stayed the same. - Alternatively, we can take the chance to do what we did before but go out and make it better. Maybe we keep the core of what we did before, and make it just a little bit better. Or we may see the chance to reinvent and rethink what we’ve been doing, and how we do it. We can even go one step further and reconsider *who* we’re doing it for, and *why* we even started doing it in the first place. When it comes to interacting and working online, we’re mostly taking the first option. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just get by. Silently gnash at the kinks and the bumps and the frustration. --- ### The status quo Let’s say we want to present some information, or teach a group something. Online, we can use a webinar. It’s the status quo. Webinars are ostensibly interactive, but it’s largely one way traffic. As an attendee, there may be space to ask your question – sometimes publicly, although usually it’s privately; through a filter. Perhaps there a poll for you to click on. You may be able to see who else is there. Or maybe you can’t. The host may be giving it their all, or they could be phoning it in from behind the slide deck. It doesn’t really matter too much. We’re 20 minutes into it and you’ve already checked your emails twice. The webinar is about a transfer. Get the information from here to there. Reach as many people as possible. Maximize efficiency. Get it done. Check the box. Sometimes this works just fine. There are plenty of reasons to transfer information. But far more often than we realize, we’ve missed an opportunity. Instead, we can choose to do something different. --- ### The tension of transforming ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Sprint-2.jpg) [The Tension of Order & Chaos](https://howardgray.net/2019/10/29/the-tension-chaos-order/?ref=howardgray.net) Instead of accepting what went before, and defaulting to the transfer, we can choose to *transform*. We can even transform *as well as* transfer. We can use the opportunity we now have to nimbly design for interesting interactions to occur. We can allow things to happen in real-time. We can instigate tension, suspense, laughs, gasps, and more. This means it’s more of a high-wire act. This means it may not work. And things that may not work are probably going to be *harder* work. On this path you can’t phone it in. You’re exposed, and you’re relying on more than just the slide deck you’ve run 10 times before. Because the audience are there – real-time, invested, committed. They’ve chosen to be there, and the nature of the beast means they can’t afford to slip away… if it works. If it doesn’t work, you’ll lose them, and you’ll know it. So will everybody else. And right here is the tension. Play it safe and transfer, or step into something different and choose to transform. How do we know if it’s worth the risk? --- ### The trailblazing chef Here’s what happens when it works. Yup, the transfer of information happens. Information can also be transformed. Into something interactive, tangible, instantly applicable. Or into something timely, culturally relevant, bang up to date. Maybe with an oblique or multiple perspectives. Perhaps it can become something playful and light to throw around and feel the weight and shape of. And yes, we can submit a question to whoever’s leading the thing, sure. But we also get collaboration. We can connect with the host, but more than that we can connect with the others. We get to meet new people. We may forge a lasting connection with them, or just a connection for an hour or so around a shared experience. We can learn from them, teach them, share our ideas and thoughts and feelings with them. We get to learn by doing, experimenting, trying things out. And one thing that’s certain in this uncertain space is that it’s ok if we try something and it doesn’t work. Because that’s where the learning is. It’s where the magic happens. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Sprint-1-1.jpg) If the webinar is the classical recital where we’re expected to sit up straight and pay attention, this is the mixtape: grab a few bits of whatever you like the sound of, and put it all together in a new way that elevates and inspires. It’s cooking up something fresh in the kitchen. The trailblazing exploration of [Daniela Soto-Innes](https://www.foodandwine.com/chefs/daniela-soto-innes-cosme?ref=howardgray.net) vs. the line cook in that ok local restaurant who’s following the recipe to the letter and waiting to clock off their shift. Both produce food you can happily eat, but which do you remember? Which one makes you want to go back for more, and tell your friends about what happened? Which one transfers, which one transforms? ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Sprint-1.jpg) Daniela Soto-Innes and the late, great Anthony Bourdain (who was as much a teacher as anything else) --- ### The open kitchen Here’s the best bit – unlike a top restaurant and its premium ingredients, decor, and pricing being pushed further out of most people’s reach – the opposite is happening with the new advent of connection and learning online. It’s becoming *more* open, *more* accessible. Everyone has access to great ingredients, everyone has a well-equipped kitchen, everyone can become a chef rather than a cook, or purely a consumer. And it’s easier than ever to find a few hungry diners ready to try what’s coming out of the kitchen. Of course, to make this happen we need some structure, some understanding of key tools and methods, as well as a little confidence and courage to go and try these things out for ourselves. Access to all this also used to feel scarce, but now [there are places](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) we can go to get everything we need. And the more we do choose to go this way, the higher the chance of the network effect flywheel kicking in: where the more of us who take the second option to make things better, the more they get better, and the easier it becomes to make them better still. So, no, *this* online gathering you’re attending isn’t a webinar. It’s not just a transfer of information. It’s about transforming information, and hopefully transforming you too. Whichever role you’re playing: guest or gastronomist; DJ or dancer; curious novice or generous expert. Because this isn’t a webinar. It’s a [workshop](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/13/what-do-you-mean-a-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net). It’s where learning happens, where work happens, where play happens, where collaboration happens…and sometimes – if we have [alchemy, chemistry](https://howardgray.net/2019/06/24/alchemy-before-chemistry/?ref=howardgray.net), and a little bit of luck – where magic happens. --- The next edition of our workshop to help you build your own workshop creator superpowers is [now open for registration.](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) And because we want to open up access for everyone to be able to get in the kitchen, we’re extending our early bird discount, and also offering full scholarship options. We’d love to see you there. ### How to create an interactive workshop in Zoom (Part 2) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom-part-2/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T14:59:24.000Z In the [first part of this guide](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/?ref=howardgray.net), I covered the advance setup of the workshop on Zoom. Now it’s time for the exciting stuff – running the workshop itself. As a reminder, this post doesn’t cover all the design aspects of a workshop (check out [our toolkits and courses](http://insession.crd.co/?ref=howardgray.net) for more on that), but there are a bunch of tips to get the most out of Zoom. *Coming Soon: A guide for Microsoft Teams!* [*Get early access* \>](https://insession-ck.wavetable.net/workshop-guide-teams?ref=howardgray.net) Ready to go? Let’s do it… --- ## **Before the workshop** ### **Preparation** At the end of part 1 we got the Zoom registration link set up. Hopefully by now you’ve had a bunch of notification emails hitting your inbox – lots of lovely people signing up for your workshop. In the days before the workshop, it’s worth taking a look at the answers they gave to the questions you asked (this was the ‘Custom Questions’ bit). This info doesn’t show up on the notification email – you only get someone’s name and email address – so you’ll need to go to Zoom to do this. Here’s how. Jump into your Zoom account, go to My Meetings, choose the Workshop meeting, then scroll to the Registration section. In the ‘View’ tab, click the person’s name and you can see the answers they gave you. It’s worth spending a bit of time here – even with a group of strangers you’ll probably see some common themes or challenges come up. *Pro Tip: Having a few of these noted down can be very helpful during the delivery of the workshop itself – you can use them as prompts or other talking points* I also suggest sending people a reminder email a couple of days in advance, ideally with some pre-boarding info (even a few bullet points is fine). Just because they signed up doesn’t mean they’ll remember to attend, let alone have an invite in their calendar. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Group-1-3-1024x543.png) *Pro Tip: Online sessions are pretty similar to in-person events when it comes to drop-out rates; most event organisers I know expect 30-40% of signups to show up for a free event – behaviour online seems to mirror this pretty closely.* *Pro Tip: People don’t read stuff. It’s definitely worth sending some pre-reading or onboarding materials, but don’t expect everyone to do it.* To get a handy list of all the registrants’ email addresses, go to Account Management > Reports > Meeting > Generate. It’ll pop out a nice little CSV file for easy copy and pasting. --- ### **On the day** You’ve got your materials prepped, you’ve practiced transitions and pacing, you have a bunch of participants who are raring to go. To give yourself time to settle in, get the meeting started 15 minutes early. Hop into your Zoom account, find the meeting and hit Start. The Zoom app will fire up and there you are – the one and only participant. Here are a few things to check off before the workshop starts. #### Recording - You may see the recording has started. I sometimes pause this as I don’t like the idea of 15 minutes of my gawping face being on tape, but it’s also very easy to forget to unpause once you’re in the swing of things, so I suggest letting the recording run – you can always do a bit of editing later. #### Screen Share - Hit the little arrow next to Share Screen. It’ll have defaulted to ‘One Participant can share at a time’. I suggest leaving this as is unless you’re looking to do some activity with multiple slide decks or demos. - Underneath, you’ll see ‘Advanced Sharing Options’. Click that and you’ll see a modal appear. I strongly suggest setting ‘Who can share?’ to ‘Only Host’. Obviously if your workshop involves participants sharing stuff you’ll need to set this to ‘All Participants’ but generally, I recommended using ‘Only Host’ as a safety catch. This prevents Zoom Bombing which I mentioned in part 1 – we don’t want someone randomly coming into our session and taking over the screen share with something NSFW (Not Safe For Workshops) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-14.12.27-1024x684.png) updating the screen share settings - Try doing a screen share to make it works ok. You may want to order your windows so your sharing materials (e.g. presentation is at the front). It’s also worth closing other applications and only having your workshop stuff visible. - In the controls at the top, you’ll see a ‘More’ tab. Hit that and choose ‘Disable Attendee Annotation’. Again, you may want to leave this on for certain types of sessions, and honestly most people a) won’t do this without permission (workshop people in general are wonderful), and b) probably won’t even know the feature exists, but it’s worth doing…just in case. Not sure I’d want an attendee writing ‘HOWARD STINKS’ in bright red crayon across my slides. - While you’re here, make sure you can see ‘Hide Video Panel’. This means you can see the video panel. You should see a thumbnail video tile of yourself towards the right of the screen. I find it helpful to be able to see the participants in thumbnail view when I’m presenting – it’s good to gauge if they are following the material, and digging my bad jokes of course. *Pro Tip: Once you get a bit more comfortable, hit the 3 dots at the top-right of the video of yourself, and choose ‘Hide Self View’. It’s weird how easy it is to get distracted by your own face during the session…or maybe I’m a narcissist. Remember, workshops are about them, not you.* #### Breakout Rooms Ok, time for the *really* good stuff. Breakout Rooms are probably the killer feature in Zoom right now. I’ve been surprised how many participants in the Workshop Creator Express sessions have said they’d never seen a workshop run in that way before. While I would love to think they were referring to my wit, charm, and beautiful backgrounds, what really gets them excited is the breakout rooms, and in particular the rapidly rotating use of them in the four sprints. All Zoom accounts come with Breakout Rooms, and I’m amazed how few people still seem to use them. Yes, setting them up and managing them is more work, but just like workshops in general, these opportunities for conversation, connection and collaboration are where the magic happens. *Pro Tip: Get a few friends to do a trial run of using breakout rooms with you as the room setup can be a bit fiddly when you’re not used to it* Here are the essentials for getting your breakouts set for success. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-14.18.37-1024x698.jpg) I spend a lot of time alone, ok? Hit the ‘Breakout Rooms’ option on the controls at the bottom of the screen, and you’ll see a black modal appear. There’s no one here yet, so they’re all empty. To get ourselves prepped we can do a couple of things. Hit ‘Options’. Again, how you set these is up to you and your preferences, but here’s how I do it: - **Move all participants into breakout rooms automatically**: I set this to No. This means participants have to hit the ‘Join room’ button that appears, but I actually prefer this for two reasons: it means they’re interacting, and I still have a few seconds grace to share any instructions I may have momentarily forgotten. - **Allow participants to return to the main session at any time**: I leave this set to Yes. Usually there will be either just me or no one in the main room, but the ‘Ask for Help’ option doesn’t get used much, so giving people this optionality is usually a good idea, especially if a group may finish up early for some reason - **Breakout Rooms close automatically**: No. Leaving this unchecked means more work for you, but it’s better in the long run. Some groups will finish early than others, you may realise the prompt you gave isn’t working, or you need to nip out some time or add a bit more. Having more flex here can help you a lot. *Pro Tip: Be sure to keep track of time! It’s very easy to let this slip and workshop creation success is often down to time management. I use a combo of a handwritten agenda with timing checkpoints, and my phone to manage breakout timekeeping.* - **Countdown after closing breakout room**: Yes, 60 or 90 seconds. Most breakouts are short (5-10 minutes) and this feature gives participants a heads up, lets them come back easily in one click, and pops them back into the main room at the end. When you’re done, close the Options second and the Breakout Room, and you’ll be back in the main room again. That’s it for prep. Give yourself 5-10 minutes to do all this. Again, practice makes…better 🙂 --- ### **Opening the doors** By this point you probably have some people showing up in the Manage Participants list. Real people. Here for you and what you’re offering. Yikes! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Sprint-4.jpg) We want to avoid this. Luckily, there are plenty of things we can do to ensure cool runnings. When you’re ready, hit Admit All. It’s good practice to do this on time, or maximum a couple of minutes after the scheduled start time. People don’t like to be kept waiting. Ideally you’ve got the majority of your attendees in the room now. I like to give a quick 20-second intro so people know who am I, and that we’ll be getting started in a minute. It’s worth asking people to turn their video on and mute their mics too. *Pro Tip: [Here’s a quick video on how to do a great workshop intro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU5NfwSffko&feature=emb%5Fimp%5Fwoyt&ref=howardgray.net)* This will feel weird the first few times. A bunch of strangers, looking at each other, waiting for… something. It’s fine, but don’t leave it like this for more than a couple of minutes. During this time there will probably be others hitting the waiting room (remember, the advance set up meant people have to be admitted by you). Those people will appear in the Manage Participants list. I just keep hitting ‘Admit’ as they show up so we can fill the room quickly. Inevitably you’ll have some latecomers. *Pro Tip: Depending on the design of your session, you’ll want to draw the line somewhere; my rule of thumb is 10 minutes. For anyone who shows up after that, I send them a message (copied from my pre-prepared text file with links and prompts for the workshop), that admission to the session is now closed but they are welcome to sign up for the next one.* Once you’ve got everyone in place, make sure you’re unmuted, and get the show on the road! --- ## **During the workshop** Let’s revisit that format as shared in Part 1: #### **Open** - 3 min assembling - 2 min intro - 5 min content bit - 8 min breakout - 2 min regroup & setup #### **Explore** 4 x 15 min Sprints: - 7 min content bit (3 scenes, 2 mins each) - 7 min team breakout - 1 min reset / rotate #### **Close** - 7 min Q&A / Pair Reflection - 3 min wrap #### **Bonus** - 10 min Q&A --- #### **Introduction**s You’ve already given yourself a few minutes for the assembling, then it’s intro time. I suggest making your intro short, then sharing your screen for some level-setting content, e.g. Why this workshop exists, why it matters, what people should expect to get from it, and an agenda. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Intro-10.jpg) My agenda slide You can then loop back (i.e. stop sharing screen) and pretty much do your intro again. Twice is nice. *Pro Tip: I’ve recently started using worksheets for everyone to reference during the workshop. These worksheets are very simple – just a Google Doc with the questions and prompts for the breakout sessions. Having this available as a shared doc for people to make a copy of saves a ton of time both in content delivery and pasting prompts into the chat. Just be sure to give everyone a minute or two to get the document open before the first breakout* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Intro-9.jpg) #### **Breakouts** It’s then time for breakout rooms. Hit the Breakout Room button, and you can choose the number of rooms you want to create. I aim for rooms of 3 where possible and then get Zoom to assign people automatically. You can do the manual selection, but this can result in a lot of fiddling around while you’ve got a bunch of people in the main room waiting for the breakouts to open. Hit ‘Create Breakout Rooms’, then ‘Open All Rooms’ and everyone will get a notification to enter the rooms. After doing your first breakout, you’ll be back in the main room for some more content. *Pro Tip: A great way to keep your workshop engaging and purposeful is to bake your breakout prompts into the content. This way, participants know they need to keep track during the content piece – if they tune out, they’ll feel kinda stupid during the breakouts as they won’t know what the prompt means.* Once you’re done with the first breakout, all you need to do for future breakouts is hit ‘Breakout Rooms’ on the main controls, then ‘Recreate’. Your rooms will be recreated with the same groups. Easy. *Pro Tip: I suggest keeping the groups the same for either all, or all but 1, breakouts. You want people to feel connected, and as this can be particularly tough online (especially in a short period of time), switching the groups around all the time is a surefire way to miss those connections. The one breakout where I change it up is a quick pair reflection at the end – this is a good chance to connect with someone one new and compare notes on the shared experience they’ve both just had.* #### **3 more sprints, and closing** Now it’s just about following the flow – content, breakout, check-in. Repeat x4\. Keep the energy up and the positive vibes moving, and summarise each sprint as it closes. As you move into the closing stages, you may have time for Q&A and/or a Pair Reflection activity. I found that more often or not I didn’t have enough time, so instead I built 15 minutes after the session for Q&A (and flagged it during my intro at the beginning of the workshop). My way of summarising the session is pretty simple: whizz through the learning outcomes for the workshop and a few of the key takeaways from each sprint (you can use slides for this if you like, just keep them light), mention I’ll be following up with resources, say thanks to everyone for their time and energy, and then get everyone to wave goodbye 🙂 Once you’ve done Q&A for those who want it (quite a lot of people probably do, which is nice), and everyone’s headed out, press End Meeting, and you’re done. And then…it’s time for a rest. Have a cup of tea, have a lie-down. Put on some heavy metal at full volume. Whatever works for you. --- ## **After** the workshop Fortune favours followups… or something like that. Regardless, it’s good to follow up promptly. In-person I’ll try and get feedback in the room, but online that can be kinda weird, especially in a short-form one-off session. Instead, I’ll run a report from Zoom of the participants, do a Bcc email (watch those ‘To’ and ‘Cc’ fields!) and send over some more resources and other bits within 24 hours of the workshop. *Pro Tip: Now, you can choose to email everyone who* registered*, but I’d suggest just emailing resources to everyone who* attended*. After all, they’re the ones who committed, and brought their vibes and energy to the workshop. Here’s how we do that.* To run a participant report, go to Zoom, then Account Management > Reports > Active Hosts. You should see your workshop listed. If not, toggle the date filter until it shows up. Hit the highlight numbers under Participants. This probably looks really high – were there that many people in the session? Alas not. This number is the log of the number of logins by participants, which I think includes the number of times they logged into the meeting itself, and also the number times they went from breakouts to main room, and the duration of each interaction. There’s also a thing called Attentiveness Score, which honestly I’m not a fan of as a metric (feels too much like an exam – and this ain’t school). Hit ‘Show Unique Users’ and you’ll get one record per participant. Export to CSV, open it up. You’ll see a total number of minutes for each person. Some of these may be very low. Two reasons for this: 1. They showed up, left quickly, never came back 2. They needed to sign in a few times, maybe with different screen names. Delete those in category (1). Check category (2) so you have one record for each person. That’s your final participant list – and they get the goodies. Stick em into the email, hit send. Workshop magic in their inbox. --- And with that, you’re done. A 90-minute workshop, run on Zoom, with multiple breakouts and multiple formats. Here’s the rundown of the all the bits this guide covered: - Setting up a custom Zoom room - Setting up registrations and auto emails - Reviewing your attendee list - Sending out a pre-workshop email - Setting up recording, screen sharing and breakout rooms - Introducing the workshop - Running the first breakout - Keeping the pace and closing the workshop - Following up with participants There’s so much more I could share on this – from activity design to presentation best practices; logistics to onboarding – but I’m already past 5000 words (!) for these two posts. If you want to learn more, here are a few steps you can take right away: - Apply to join our [workshop creator membership community](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQIxFK8Ey5AFOS9ylhx%5FRKvcJFjuLybPOPpYxtMppMpYVBuw/viewform?usp=send%5Fform&ref=howardgray.net) - [Become part of our next live program](https://insession.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) - [Send me an email](https://howardgray.net/contact/?ref=howardgray.net) with any questions you have – I’d love to hear from you. ### How to create an interactive workshop in Zoom URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:54:46.000Z ### A step-by-step guide to setting up and running an interactive 90-minute workshop in Zoom. *Note: This is part 1 of a 2 part serie*s. *[Part 2 is here >](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom-part-2/?ref=howardgray.net)* --- Millions of us have spent a lot of time on Zoom in the past 18 months: doing meetings, happy hours, conferences, and more. One of the most powerful and engaging formats to use in Zoom is an interactive workshop. I’ve run dozen of these sessions using Zoom in the past year: from focused client sessions; to all the live workshops in our [Workshop Creator program](https://www.wavetable.net/insession?ref=howardgray.net); and rapid-fire Express sessions with hundreds of attendees. While live sessions within a larger program tend to have enrollment and connections already forged and fostered, a one-off live online workshop has a different dynamic and needs a different approach. A lot of people in the open Express sessions said they really enjoyed the format (*‘a lot of online stuff is so dry!’*), and several asked me how I put it all together. This guide dives into some of the nuts and bolts of setting up and delivering a successful interactive workshop, live and online. #### **Before getting stuck in, a few notes:** 1. This guide focuses on the more practical aspects of setup and delivery. No doubt, this stuff is important but the real magic is in the design of the session, the content, and the experience. *Pro tip: you should allow [*at least* 5x the time for design as delivery](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/14/time-and-magic-how-to-calculate-the-time-to-create-a-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net)* 2. This guide takes the use case of creating a publicly-accessible workshop where some/all attendees don’t know each other. If you’re running a workshop for a team or group who know each other already, you may want to adjust some of the suggestions here. Just like any recipe, you can adjust a few ingredients, toppings, and condiments to your taste. I’ll take some extra aioli, please. 3. I’m currently using the Zoom Pro plan. One of the main upsides of this plan is it extends the meeting length limit (it’s 40 minutes on the free plan). In my opinion, a decent workshop needs 45 minutes at the very least. Thus, it’s a smart play by Zoom – just about everything else I need is available on the free plan, but the duration thing is a dealbreaker. Hence, they’re $180 a year better off. 4. I don’t work for Zoom, I’m not paid by Zoom, and I get nothing for writing this 2,400-word post about it (boo). I just find it a really useful tool for running workshops, but other tools are available 🙂 5. Just like all the [programs](https://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) we offer, this is, as one attendee put it – all delightfully meta. The metagame is wonderful in some ways (you can learn from the experience itself), and frustrating in others (it can get a bit confusing, and holes are far more easily exposed: ‘*do as I say, not as I do’*). This is to say, just like in workshops themselves, much of the learning is in the mistakes. Hopefully, there aren’t too many mistakes in here… and those mistakes are, of course, learning opportunities 🙂 Ok, that’s enough of the boring caveat stuff. Let’s get at it! But first, a couple of quick messages from our sponsor (me, and my company Wavetable!): *Want to dive deeper? [Check out my online course on how to create workshops that work >](https://courses.wavetable.net/p/insession-self-study-course?ref=howardgray.net)* --- ## **Design** There are lots of different ways you can design a workshop. Here’s the design I used for the Express sessions: ### **Wavetable’s Workshop Creator Express** #### **Open** - 3 min assembling - 2 min intro - 5 min content bit - 8 min breakout - 2 min regroup & setup #### **Explore** 4 x 15 min Sprints: - 7 min content bit (3 scenes, 2 mins each) - 7 min team breakout - 1 min reset / rotate #### **Close** - 7 min Q&A / Pair Reflection - 3 min wrap #### **Bonus** - 10 min Q&A Honestly, this plan is a squeeze, and I had to work hard to keep it all moving and finish on time. I suggest keeping your session plan a bit lighter with more flex in it, but you can definitely pull off this version with a good bit of planning and practice (and maybe some coffee). I’ll reference this design in more detail during the delivery part of this guide. Before that, let’s start at the beginning – our Zoom setup. ### In **Advance** I’m going to assume you’ve got a Zoom account, and you know your way around it a bit. If not, there’s a ton of help guides, webinars and other stuff on their site. First, set up a new **Meeting** in your Zoom account. *Note: You don’t want a webinar. A lot of people think they’re the same thing as workshops – [they’re not](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/10/this-aint-no-webinar/?ref=howardgray.net). Webinars lean more [passive](https://howardgray.net/2020/07/22/how-to-transform-a-webinar/?ref=howardgray.net), workshops more active. We want active.* So, you’re setting up a meeting. It’s more active and more open than a webinar. However, you want to put a few constraints in place to keep things moving smoothly, to reduce any nerves or overwhelm you may (will) have, and to prevent any [Zoom bombing](https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-get-bombed-how-to-host-zoom-meetings-hangouts-houseparty-and-more-11585819821?ref=howardgray.net) – you definitely don’t want that. Go to **My Meetings > Schedule a new Meeting** I’ll skip the basic stuff – you probably know about Meeting Titles, Times and all that good stuff. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-09.20.12-1024x725.png) Let’s jump straight to the business end of things. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-09.20.29-1024x499.png) - **Registration**: On. You want people to register for this. It helps you track numbers, plan activities, and communicate with them before and after the workshop - **Meeting ID**: I’d advise against using your personal meeting ID. You’ll probably be using this for your day to day meetings and catchups with your family (hi Mum!). Having your grandma, cousin, and 5 year old nephew rolling in to your workshop unannounced may not be the vibe you’re going for. (Btw, this isn’t shown in the screenshot above as I’d pre-set the ID) - **Meeting Password**: Off. You can set a password if you like, but I’d suggest leaving it switched off. It’s an extra hurdle for attendees, and re-sending passwords to people is a pain – you don’t want to be fielding questions in your inbox about lost passwords 3 minutes before (or after) the workshop starts. - **Video**: You want video for Host and Participants to be on – audio only (especially for people who don’t know each other) feels weird. You can feel assured this is important as I hate being on video yet I’m still strongly recommending it 🙂 - **Audio**: I usually leave ‘both’ on by standard, but telephone dial-in means people are going to be on audio, which makes the above point moot. On the flip side, you want the workshop to be accessible – not everyone has fast internet or a computer, so I suggest leaving it set to Both. *Note: Zoom published details of updated security settings. [Read those here >](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360041408732-April-2020-Setting-updates-for-free-accounts-and-single-Pro-users?ref=howardgray.net)* ##### **Meeting Options** - **Enable join before host**: No. You’re going to want a bit of time to get set up and settled in, especially in your first few workshops. Having participants in the meeting, looking at you expectedly, is not going to help your prep (and besides, we don’t want them to see all our magic tricks…) - **Mute participants upon entry**: Yes. This makes our introduction bit easier. Background noise, random conversations, phones ringing in the virtual vortex – none of this is going to help us. Set everyone on mute by default. - **Enable waiting room**: Yes. There are two schools of thought on this – some people like to allow people to arrive as soon as they like (once you’ve started the Zoom meeting), others prefer to have the waiting room set up. I’ve tried both, and while allowing people to jump straight in presents opportunities for nice icebreakers and setup info (e.g. sharing an intro slide; asking people to share something about themselves / their work in the chat), there are a few downsides: - People may not engage with the icebreaker prompt, thus eroding trust and vibes before you’ve event started; - Participants can show up at any point, meaning you don’t know exactly when to start (catching people up online is harder than in-person) - Latecomers can throw you off your game; you’ll notice them arriving as you’re talking For these reasons, I go with the waiting room option. When a participant tries to join the meeting, they’ll see a waiting room screen until you let them in. This is good for you as a host because you can monitor how many people are waiting, match it against your signup list to see how close to a critical mass you are, and also message all the waiting participants if you need to. - **Only authenticated users can join**: I suggest setting this to No. It’s ostensibly for security (users have to have a Zoom account, and thus any misdemeanors can be tracked more easily), but for me, it’s another accessibility thing. We want our sessions to be open, and some users may have trouble setting up a Zoom account or just don’t want to. That’s ok – if they want to be part of our session we want to make it easy for them to do so. - **Record the meeting automatically on the local computer**: The cloud recording feature is pretty nifty but has a storage limit (depending on your Zoom plan). It also can hit your bandwidth and takes a while to process after the session, so there’s a little bit of risk involved. Saving locally is probably safer, but make sure you’ve got plenty of disk space and your computer’s RAM isn’t already maxing out. You can choose not to record the meeting, but my suggestion is to have it set to record by default – you can always delete it if you don’t want it. - **Alternative Hosts**: While a lot of my in-person workshops are run with a co-pilot, most of my online ones are just me. Adding a co-host can be very useful though, especially when you’re starting and/or are running a session with a lot of people. The co-host can take control of screensharing, setting up breakout rooms, troubleshooting, and all that good stuff. This enables you to focus on the content and the experience of the session rather than doing your best impression of [Jeff Mills on 3 decks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoteWSZeQ6s&ref=howardgray.net). The alternative host can also run the session if you get kicked off for some reason, or have partied too hard the night before. On second thoughts, maybe I should use a co-host… Once you’ve done all of this, hit Save Meeting. Yay! Meeting created. The meeting will now be in the My Meetings part of your Zoom account. *Pro Tip: if you’re running your session multiple times but it’s not a recurring meeting (I.e. Each participant attends once, rather than something like a weekly team meeting), you can save the Meeting as a Template which can then be used to create all your other dates. Just be sure to complete all the steps below before you do this, otherwise you’ll end up multiplying your workload. And you don’t want that.* --- #### Registration Settings You’re nearly done, but you’re not quite done yet. You’ll need to get the word out about the workshop and ensure people can signup easily. There are some things you can do in Zoom to help make the marketing and onboarding part of your workshop a bit smoother. Go to the Meeting page, scroll down, and you’ll see a nice registration link like this: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-09.35.49-1-1024x135.png) Copy the link and pop it into a new tab. You should see a nice little landing page where people can register for the session. Sweet. Looks good, but you can make this a bit more dynamic (like this!): ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-18.18.38-1024x722.png) our old branding – we’re much more sleek and sexy now 🙂 At the bottom of the Meeting page, you’ve got options to view Registrations, Email Settings, and Branding. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-09.46.50-1024x318.png) Click view Registrations and, as you may expect, you’ll see a list of everyone who’s registered so far with their name, email, and timestamp of the registration. This is probably at zero for now, but it won’t be soon 🙂 There are a couple of things you can do to improve the registration process. If you hit Edit on the Registration Options section, you’ll see a modal appear. Let’s go through them one by one. **Registration Options: Tab One** - **Approval**. Whether automatic or manual is up to you. I default to Automatic – again this is for a public-facing session, and making it manual is just another step for both you and participants. For a public-facing session, you want to reduce friction. - **Notification**: Set this to On. You’ll update this in a minute. - **Other Options**: I leave these to On, but again up to you. **Registration Options: Tab Two** - **Questions**: In the next tab are Questions. Zoom has made sure First Name and Email Address are grabbed by default. As for other fields, you can go wild in here. I usually request Last Name, City, and Country. Once again, no need to add a load of friction. I want participants to be able to sign up in under 30 seconds. **Registration Options: Tab Three** - **Custom Questions**: Finally, there are Custom Questions you can add. To keep the friction minimal, I suggest a maximum of 3\. Here are two I ask: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/04/Screenshot-2020-04-02-at-09.53.03-1024x828.png) Save all this, and jump back to the meeting page again. Next, Email Settings. **Email Settings** The Email Contact is going to be your Zoom account email by default. Change this if you like, but it’s probably easier to leave it as it is. It’s worth taking a few minutes to update the next field – Confirmation Email to Registrants. I add some information about what to expect, anything participants need to bring, and a link to my website. Unfortunately, Zoom doesn’t parse weblinks into these emails so don’t include a ton of linked resources as it’s unlikely they’ll arrive in inboxes as clickable links. A few lines of info will definitely help though – you want to make life easy for your participants…because it’ll also make life easier for you 🙂 **Branding** Ok, last thing – Branding. Zoom is pretty constrained with sizing of logos on the registration page – best to keep the image fairly small as it can look pretty ugly when blown up big on the page. Once you’ve prettied up your page, you’re all set! It’s time to share your workshop with the world! --- Phew, that was a lot. It may have taken a little while to get this all done, but you can always template the meeting (see above) which saves a ton of time, and as with many things in life – it’s all about practice. --- [Time for part 2 – how to run the workshop on the day >](https://howardgray.net/2020/04/02/how-to-create-an-interactive-workshop-in-zoom-part-2/?ref=howardgray.net) *Want to dive deeper? [Check out my online course on how to create workshops that work >](https://courses.wavetable.net/p/insession-self-study-course?ref=howardgray.net)* ### The Entertainers URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-entertainers/ Last updated: 2021-07-05T15:00:51.000Z *This piece was originally the introductory bit to the 40th edition of my monthly newsletter ‘[Adventures](https://howardgray.net/newsletter/?ref=howardgray.net)*‘ --- There’s been a piano in my family home for as long as I can remember. While I never got past ‘[chopsticks](https://youtu.be/25CtoSJD9eo?t=96&ref=howardgray.net)’, my mum still plays almost every day. Back in my (fairly) innocent youth, one tune I remember hearing her play often was ‘[The Entertainer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8syRhvSZdk&ref=howardgray.net)’. However, she didn’t play ‘The Entertainer’ because she wanted to entertain. It was about practice; learning; quiet enjoyment (and a good way to tune out a pair of 6ft+ teenage sons crashing around the house). But what of the entertainers? The best ones create magic. They bring us together, and leave us wanting more. Life would be less colourful without them. Today many of the entertainers are in flux. They’re recalibrating, retooling, or being forced to sit at the sidelines. It’s harder for their colours to shine as brightly. However, the forcing function we’re all experiencing right now is enabling other entertainers to appear. We can create our own online group trivia night, happy hour, or canasta party. And online, educators are becoming more like entertainers. Some savvy entertainers are pivoting into being educators. This twisting and turning throws up a lot of questions. > *How do we show up in this different paradigm?* > *What could – should – we do differently?* > *How do we spend our time in this new now?* There are many choices we can make, but here are three to consider: **– Now is a time to learn**. Not that online course you thought about six months ago and never committed to (yes, guilty): but learning how to learn; learning about yourself; learning about the others; learning about what matters most. **– Now is a time to entertain**. Because that seemingly never-ending stream of big-name, high-gloss content is going to run dry soon. Their productions are suspended. But yours aren’t. And under a deluge of bad, sad news we need elsewhere to go – if only for a minute or an hour. **– Now is a time to find our people**. Because, well, you know why. Here’s the best bit: we can do all three of these simultaneously. Our incredibly networked world combined with our world’s new constraints enables us to learn, laugh, gasp, smile, connect, and collaborate in ways we never could – or would – have done before. New ideas and ways of doing things are showing up every day. This doesn’t necessarily mean my mum should live stream her piano practice with me on guest vocals(!). We can choose. But the options are there. Now more than ever. Learning through entertainment. Entertainment while learning. Connecting with all the others. Creating something for just one, two, or three other people. Doing that thing for ourselves. We can choose. Perhaps one upside of constraints is they show us how many choices we can still make. ### Adventures #40: The Entertainers URL: https://www.howardgray.net/5022361_dispatch-april-2020/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:21.000Z **An email digest from the desk of me - Howard.** **edition 040** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8176e981-20ba-442e-9549-9b402031018a_600x287.jpeg) *Five of this edition's themes in one photo. Click for the video :)* Hi There’s been a piano in my family home for as long as I can remember. While I never got past ‘**[chopsticks](https://youtu.be/25CtoSJD9eo?t=96&ref=howardgray.net)**’, my mum still plays almost every day. Back in my (fairly) innocent youth, one tune I remember hearing her play often was ‘**[The Entertainer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8syRhvSZdk&ref=howardgray.net)**’. However, she didn’t play ‘The Entertainer’ because she wanted to entertain. It was about practice; learning; quiet enjoyment (and a good way to tune out a pair of 6ft+ teenage sons crashing around the house). But what of the entertainers? The best ones create magic. They bring us together, and leave us wanting more. Life would be less colourful without them. Today many of the entertainers are in flux. They’re recalibrating, retooling, or being forced to sit at the sidelines. It’s harder for their colours to shine as brightly. However, the forcing function we’re all experiencing right now is enabling other entertainers to appear. We can create our own online group trivia night, happy hour, or canasta party. And online, educators are becoming more like entertainers. Some savvy entertainers are pivoting into being educators. This twisting and turning throws up a lot of questions. *How do we show up in this different paradigm?* *What could - should - we do differently?* *How do we spend our time in this new now?* There are many choices we can make, but here are three to consider: **\- Now is a time to learn**. Not that online course you thought about six months ago and never committed to (yes, guilty): but learning how to learn; learning about yourself; learning about the others; learning about what matters most. **\- Now is a time to entertain**. Because that seemingly never-ending stream of big-name, high-gloss content is going to run dry soon. Their productions are suspended. But yours aren’t. And under a deluge of bad, sad news we need elsewhere to go - if only for a minute or an hour. **\- Now is a time to find our people**. Because, well, you know why. Here’s the best bit: we can do all three of these simultaneously. Our incredibly networked world combined with our world's new constraints enables us to learn, laugh, gasp, smile, connect, and collaborate in ways we never could - or would - have done before. New ideas and ways of doing things are showing up every day. This doesn’t necessarily mean my mum should live stream her piano practice with me on guest vocals(!). We can choose. But the options are there. Now more than ever. Learning through entertainment. Entertainment while learning. Connecting with all the others. Creating something for just one, two, or three other people. Doing that thing for ourselves. We can choose. Perhaps one upside of constraints is they show us how many choices we can still make. Thanks for reading, and as always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Just hit reply. Howard *PS. A choice I’ve made: not to include any pandemic-specific content in this edition as there's more than enough out there already. Instead, I'm focused on some of the adjacent ideas that may help us keep moving forward.* *PPS. This intro bit ran longer than normal… but what’s normal, anyway? :)* #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/9f2b6237-f853-49a3-bd1e-a0e2314556ab_554x519.jpeg) **[Here's a book I'm writing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bhmd0S0TQ1u84eWE0S6QfBwpluMMZ43Rbqd21pe%5FXpY/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net)** Last summer I started writing a book on how to go independent in your career. Then I abruptly stopped due to horrible imposter syndrome. Impulsive decision; I'm sharing the first section of it with you here. I've set this document to 'comment' mode; feel free to add feedback and ideas. And if you want to read some more of it, hit reply and I'll send a few pages to you. **[\> Read more](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bhmd0S0TQ1u84eWE0S6QfBwpluMMZ43Rbqd21pe%5FXpY/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net)** \> The last in my **[series of free workshops](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1i2zvRujLVIPlVgFIkgIBptJnmGwIxPXDnqI2n3xOQE8/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net)** to help you design and deliver online workshops is on Weds 8th April. I've had over 250 people sign up so far - **[join us](https://zoom.us/meeting/register/uZQlcu2hqDMuU0YS9UtfAgfZH9e-X-FNww?ref=howardgray.net)** \> **[5 ways to run better remote workshops and meetings](https://howardgray.net/2020/03/05/5-ways-to-run-better-remote-workshops/?ref=howardgray.net)** \> A lot of people are feeling the tension right now. As such, I'm recording a few new episodes of my podcast '*The Tension'*. Meanwhile, **[here are all the previous episodes](https://howardgray.net/portfolio/the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/62dbf1a6-69c0-44bc-a8ca-049a1de045a4_500x333.jpeg) **[This is not capitalism](https://medium.com/@allenfarrington/this-is-not-capitalism-5ed0a9d5dfa9?ref=howardgray.net)** This is your brain on central banking, regulatory capture, and financialization. I can't help thinking there's a big gulf, and thus opportunity, in financial literacy. I'm interested to see efforts in making this topic easy to understand, and perhaps even fun. **[\> Read more](https://medium.com/@allenfarrington/this-is-not-capitalism-5ed0a9d5dfa9?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // INNOVATION I don't think it was a coincidence a lot of interesting side projects showed up during the collation of this month's digest. Here are three that have grabbed my attention in the last couple of weeks (and I could have done a whole newsletter on the ones using Zoom...maybe next time) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/65c2a3c9-64e9-43bf-8911-89cf21301286_600x338.png) **[A trip to the (virtual) mall](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TmjD2mLXJAqGnblB%5FlMOWVtdvddxsxyw52pnt0Kt2hQ/edit?ref=howardgray.net#gid=0)** The retail industry is hurting. Shopping malls are in particular pain. Yup, maybe we could try building a full VR experience to replicate the local Westfield... or we could do what this plucky eCommerce startup did, and build a mall using Google Sheets. **[\> Shop](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TmjD2mLXJAqGnblB%5FlMOWVtdvddxsxyw52pnt0Kt2hQ/edit?ref=howardgray.net#gid=0)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/6afbff81-51b7-400c-815d-ccc3573cf24e_482x456.png) **[Your Life Stats](https://neal.fun/life-stats/?ref=howardgray.net)** Clare Boothe Luce once said *'the height of sophistication is simplicity'.* This little tool uses a few open data sources and icon packs to deliver an experience that's simultaneously fun, life-affirming, and grounding. Not a bad thing to have right now. **[\> Play](https://neal.fun/life-stats/?ref=howardgray.net)** \> An obstacle course for marbles has **[raised nearly $2m on Kickstarter](https://kicks.to/fx2kYD1?ref=howardgray.net)**. Yep. Seriously though, it looks great - and an excellent example of how to run a Kickstarter campaign \> **[Netflix with group chat](https://www.netflixparty.com/?ref=howardgray.net)**. This has become very popular, but I'm not sure it's for me. I just don't have the patience for my '*Gomorrah*' re-watching to be interrupted. #### // ENTREPRENEURSHIP ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/41c7de4f-e576-4e9a-bab2-fe6ee846fba4_671x356.png) **[The Dollar Bill & The Golf Ball](https://howardgray.net/2020/03/26/the-dollar-bill-and-the-golf-ball/?ref=howardgray.net)** A tale of vanquished dreams, price gouging, and a lesson for entrepreneurs on how to make things easy and shareable. **[\> Read more](https://howardgray.net/2020/03/26/the-dollar-bill-and-the-golf-ball/?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: **[Why all the Warby Parker clones are now imploding](https://marker.medium.com/why-all-the-warby-parker-clones-are-now-imploding-44bfcc70a00c?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/f5b94c79-f5ba-44fd-9f4a-b1bb6b5d2cf5_604x340.png) ### **[Rüfüs Du Sol - live at Joshua Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy4KtD98S2c&ref=howardgray.net)** Remember those halcyon days of being outside, with other humans...with music?! Here's Aussie trio Rüfüs Du Sol performing in the great outdoors at dusk. **[\> Listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy4KtD98S2c&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Building out the **[Fondo braintrust](https://fondo-ghost.herokuapp.com/your-career-braintrust/?ref=howardgray.net)**: advice, guidance, and connection for navigating your career. More news on that in next month's edition. (and a big shout out to JRL as always). \- Rediscovering the **[Best (Worst) of Malcolm Tucker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKHPv7b3fQ&ref=howardgray.net)** from *'The Thick of It'* (for US readers: it's the UK version of *'Veep' -* just with more lurid swearing) \- Thinking about ditching Mailchimp to send this digest (hope they're not reading this). Next month's may come to you from Substack...let's see. \> Spread the word: Who are 2 smart and curious people you know who would find this email interesting? I'd be delighted if you could forward it on to them. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/6383c5d8-d4ea-48e4-9109-acb68d86e8a7_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I help people who want to make a difference get where they want to go. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### Back to The Tension URL: https://www.howardgray.net/back-to-the-tension/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:04:35.000Z In the embers of last year’s summer, I started a new podcast. Unlike my first podcast series, [Tickets](https://howardgray.net/2018/10/29/introducing-season-2-of-the-tickets-podcast/?ref=howardgray.net), it was bitesize, one-way, and a little oblique and esoteric. I called this new podcast series [The Tension](https://howardgray.net/2019/09/09/a-new-podcast-the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net). Although the idea ostensibly came about from my work with others, it was just as much the summation of conversations with myself. The Tension is the resistance, the trade-offs, the contradictions in the work we do. The Tension could be deciding how to best Fit In or Stand Out; figuring out when it’s time to Create or time to Capture; or how to go from Employee to Entrepreneur, and maybe back again. The Tension is there. The Tension is everywhere. I produced around 20 episodes, all sub 5-minutes in length. Most featured a quirky soundbite or sample from pop culture that I liked: from my local Astor Place barbershop, to TV & film inspirations including The Wire, The Prestige, and Heat. The Tension was a creative labour of love, particularly as I greatly underestimated the amount of work needed to get an episode done and published – and not just on grabbing soundbites from vintage Al Pacino movies: despite perhaps sounding like freestyle riffs, I had to first carefully craft each of my own words and sentences in writing to be able to get the message across in audio form. And they almost never got recorded in one take. Combining the workload with the metrics (about 25% of the listenership of the Ticket podcast), I kept my commitment to keep shipping until Thanksgiving but could go no further. The podcast went on pause. The Tension itself won out. And while episodes stopped showing up, the tension itself didn’t. In coaching conversations, workshops, catchup drinks with friends – there was the tension. The Tension is part of normal life. --- But now, life isn’t normal. And we find ourselves in more tension than ever. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Screen-Shot-2020-03-26-at-13.21.34.png) Another little podcast may not relieve the tension, but perhaps it can shine a little bit of light on recognising it, and even finding ways to harness it to keep things moving forwards. Part of me doesn’t want to go there again; it feels too challenging to get the work out there, to avoid it being cloying or trite. It pulls me away from making money, from doing whatever the *real* work is. And what if no one cares? They have far more important things to focus on, and if no one cares then what’s the point? Then again, I can take my own advice. I can heed my own podcast. [No one cares / No one cares.](https://howardgray.net/2019/10/15/the-tension-no-one-cares/?ref=howardgray.net) That’s exactly the reason to do it. No one cares means there’s space to try, and keep trying. Maybe, eventually, someone will care. Maybe it’ll make just the tiniest difference – to help one person see something they didn’t see before. Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know. There’s only one way to find out. Or as the late, great Andrew Weatherall once said; *‘fail we may, sail we must’.* That’s the tension. It’s time to set sail. Look out for some new episodes landing very soon. ### The Dollar Bill and The Golf Ball URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-dollar-bill-and-the-golf-ball/ Last updated: 2021-07-22T13:58:01.000Z My brother came to visit from Amsterdam for a couple of weeks; first a trip to SXSW, before a week in NYC. Two places with plenty in common: teeming with energy; recognised by acronyms; and holding firm at 30 degrees (albeit one in Celsius, the other in Fahrenheit). Plan A was rapidly scuppered. SXSW teetered on the precipice before being exited stage left by the city government on the Friday before doors opened. Plan B remained open – we could still visit Austin. Almost immediately our accommodation canceled. Understandable. We were into Plan C: change the flight to clip the time in Austin back to a few days. Too risky. Sunk cost. Write it off. Plan D. Explore New York State – go up the Hudson River, head upstate; visit Long Island, take in the brisk beach air. You can probably see the pattern. --- Before Plan D, E, F and G came and went (as did he – back to Amsterdam 7 days early), we rented a car. Renting a car in Manhattan is a notorious game. Limited space, high demand, increased scarcity, price gouging, Thursday night arbitrage. Of course, head out to the airport and the price drops by 50%. Venture to the suburbs and you’ll save yourself more than just the train ticket. Airports no-go. A booking in Westchester was quickly abandoned; the slow train from Grand Central into the state’s virus epicentre was not sensible. And so back to Manhattan. A special place with special prices. Location, location, location. Proximity was everything. Enter Enterprise in Greenwich Village. We could get out of dodge. Escape to the woods. Or, we’d have a car to go to the supermarket at least. One saving grace – on a longer-term booking the pro-rata price felt like slightly less of a skewering. Booked. On collection, the Enterprise team were, unsurprisingly, a little nervous. Yet their service was friendly, supportive, and efficient. They even were clear on the insurance options (often another skewering opportunity). The best bit? Inspection. --- Part of the ritual of renting a car is the walk-around: the inspection for defects, chips, scratches, and bumps. Woe betide the hirer who doesn’t spot the little nick above the wheel arch or the bit of glass that’s been pinged out of the windscreen. It’ll cost you. The less scrupulous rental companies don’t make it clear what constitutes damage and what doesn’t. The least scrupulous deliberately rush you, deflect, or blind you with technical jargon in order to score an easy financial win. Instead, Enterprise applied a simple but highly effective method to help make the inspection process less anxiety-inducing. Just look for the dollar bill or the golf ball. Anything smaller, the team at Enterprise doesn’t mind. Forget about it. Wear and tear. That’s on us, not you. It’s just a cost of doing business. We recognise there are costs we can absorb to make things better for our customers. See a scratch that’s wider than a dollar bill or a dent the size of a golf ball, let us know. We’ll help too. When any of us find one, we’ll just tap the diagram on the tablet to highlight it. Done. Just about everyone knows what dollar bills and golf balls look like. It’s pretty easy to make an estimation of their sizes. Of course, it’s not an exact science – but then it doesn’t need to be. It’s easily good enough. No more double-talking, or being taken advantage of. A heuristic that’s accessible and inclusive; so simple that kids could do it. It can even be, just like golf, a game. Hey kids, Mum and Dad will give you a dollar if you can find all the golf balls. The walk-around goes from a gouge to a walk in the park. It’s a positive part of the experience. It’s all part of the game, but we’re not getting gamed. --- What does this seemingly tiny change in thinking do for us as entrepreneurs? We get happier and more relaxed customers. We have employees who can focus on the things that matter. Our business doesn’t need to take the stance of being one that nickels and dimes, second guesses, or places their focus on accentuating the negative. It even gives us and our customer a new lexicon, some shared language. A more inclusive and accessible way of talking about what we do. A way for others to talk about what we do. Which is what I’ve just done in this blog post. Well worth a dollar for any enterprise. ### How to design a workshop slide deck URL: https://www.howardgray.net/how-to-design-a-workshop-slide-deck/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:48:23.000Z We’ve probably all sat through classes, lectures, workshops, and courses where we’ve encountered Death by Powerpoint. Cluttered slides. Cliched stock imagery. No narrative. Monotone delivery. Just the mention of its name can send chills down the spine. Perhaps the colour drains from your face at the prospect of experiencing it. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. And with [workshops](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/13/what-do-you-mean-a-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net), it *definitely* doesn’t have to be this way. When running a workshop, you don’t necessarily *need* slides (especially if it’s a craft-focused session like a workshop on making ceramic pots), but it’s always helpful to know what makes for a good slide deck. Slides, when done well, can be a hugely valuable asset to a workshop, especially when every workshop session (at the time of writing) is running remotely. ### Start bad To help understand what makes for a good slide deck, a good place to start is avoiding what makes one bad. Here are 5 common missteps when creating slide presentation decks for workshops. These all sound simple, but they’re very easy traps to fall into (I have, occasionally still do). However, if we know the trap is there, we probably have a better chance of avoiding it 🙂 *Note: The tips in this guide are particularly focused on workshops, but also apply to just about any slide deck design.* Here we go…. ## 1\. The 2 slide prompt Let’s say we’re setting up the group for an activity. We can explain it verbally, but having a visual aid of some kind is very helpful (especially as we’re inclusive Workshop Creators). We may use handouts for this, or the chat function on video, but most likely we’ll use a slide, especially for a more involved activity. One of the two factors that damage activities most is unclear communication. Unclear communication opens us up for questions, confusion, frustration, wasted time, and serious dips in trust and energy. Bad news. Instructions on two (or more?!) slides is a surefire way of putting us in this uncomfortable position. We end up hopping back and forth, different groups want to see different information, and it’s hard to process and absorb. We absolutely want to keep our instructions to one slide. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/M3-E2-Activity-Design.026.jpeg) We’re going to need a second slide with this one…and even then we’ll probably still encounter questions: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/M3-E2-Activity-Design.027.jpeg) We want to avoid this. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/M3-E2-Activity-Design.028.jpeg) There’s not a lot here, but it works much better. Bonus: Show the group an example of the final result. This is even more important for more complex activities, which is indeed counter-intuitive. We have to make the complex…simple. If we can’t get simple enough, it’s a good indicator we probably need to head back into the lab to revisit our activity and chunk it down. *Want to know more about activity design? [ (opens in a new tab)”>Join one of our workshop creation sessions >](https://creator.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)* --- ## 2\. Disconnected images Another bit of dissonance comes with disconnected images. I love using images on my slides – especially full-bleed, perhaps with a dark tint over the top so they’re not too distracting from the main conversation (as my friend Andre says, we should treat the slides as backing dancers). However, it’s important to think through image selection carefully. There are the obvious things like pixelation, but beyond that are considerations such appropriateness for the audience, cultural references that may not land, and mixing metaphors. At the more serious end of the scale, we can end up humiliated that we’ve offended a group with an image that they may find offensive or taboo in their culture. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/26BRvn49TZO5JRQje/giphy.gif) Possibly offensive in some cultures, definitely confusing for many. Football manager Sam Allardyce Yet even a less serious problem can cost us: I still cringe at trying to explain the meaning behind the use of a GIF featuring a little-known British football manager as a way to convey the importance of thinking for the long haul. It cost time, trust, and energy. --- ## 3\. Overestimating absorption You may have heard of the concept 7±2\. Simply put, the theory behind it is adults can generally only stores 7 pieces of information in their short-term memory at a time, plus or minus 2 (i.e. between 5 and 9). A good example of this is in sports – rugby teams have 15 players but they’re split into groups of forwards and backs so we can easily make sense of the information and formation of the team. We can see how this shows up in slide design through this example: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Module-1-Episode-4_-Learning-Design.013.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Module-1-Episode-4_-Learning-Design.014.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Module-1-Episode-4_-Learning-Design.015.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Module-1-Episode-4_-Learning-Design.017.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Module-1-Episode-4_-Learning-Design.018.jpeg) While we may not always be asking our attendees to parse their phone number through a form of basic hieroglyphics, keeping information bitesize (and with clearly understandable and recognisable patterns) will serve us well: just a few points on a slide; a handful of concepts before switching workshop teaching formats. --- ## 4\. No agenda Even the most adventurous of adult learners will probably want to know what’s coming next. Adults want to know what they’re going to be learning – the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. *Related: here’s a [handy list](https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/803402/pages/lesson-1-needs-of-adult-learners%29?ref=howardgray.net) of thinking about preparing an adult learning session* The simplest and most effective way to help people see what’s expected of them is the small but mighty agenda slide. This need not be complex; two bullet points plus the all-important break time is enough. **Pro tip**: Don’t include exact timings on your agenda – it’s an unnecessary albatross, and no good workshop should run exactly to time 🙂 --- ## 5\. Use Words Sometimes I’ll retreat in tricky situations or when I’m rundown, confused or tired. To pull me out of my hypnosis-esque fugue, my wife will utter the phrase ‘*Use Words’*. I need to say what I need, and say what I mean. In workshops, we don’t our audience to feel tired, rundown or confused. We don’t want them to feel that this is an uncomfortable place to be. We need to use words. We do this primarily through our facilitation skills, but we can also do it through our slides. Of course, a common cause of Death by Powerpoint is through verbosity – long essays slapped onto a slide-shaped postage stamp. We don’t want this. However, text can also really help us out. I’ve seen several wonderfully designed presentations go smoothly and then suddenly, as the presenter moves from one slide to the next there’s…nothing. The primal fear of mind going blank. It’s the other side of the disconnected image problem. *What does this image represent?* *Where in the story does it fit?* *What was the point we were trying to explain?* I’ve seen lots of people try and go minimal, using hardly any text at all and then have to remember the entire deck from scratch. This creates the fear and panic, which is not good for the Workshop Creator. In the words of *The Streets* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/M3-E3-Presentation-Development.033.jpeg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/M3-E3-Presentation-Development.034.jpeg) Don’t mug yourself. Use words. --- That’s a quick 5 on avoiding the traps in workshop slide design. Want to learn more? Join our tribe of [workshop creators ](https://creator.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)– over the coming weeks we’re running free express workshop design sessions, a 6-week design & facilitation cohort, and launching a membership club to help creators from around the world stay connected and build their workshop superpowers. ### The Workshop Stack URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-workshop-stack/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:54:54.000Z Here at [Wavetable](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) we’re very excited about the future of learning. We believe two of the biggest factors in this future are workshops and a new wave of educator-creators. We’ll see enormous growth in interactive workshops sculpted and led by a diverse range of creative educators who want to make a difference. They’ll not just share knowledge, but will increase access, equity, and connection. Our mission is to help make that future happen. We’re doing that by creating workshops and programs in collaboration with brands, through our own proprietary workshops, and by providing a platform and community for this new wave of educator-creators. Our flagship Wavetable workshop is *[Workshop Creator](https://wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)* – a workshop to help people build the [secret skillset](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/06/building-the-10-key-skills-for-2020/?ref=howardgray.net) of workshop creation: including learning design, content creation, facilitation, and presentation skills. We run Workshop Creator both in-person and online (our next edition is now open for [registrations](https://wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)), and for our first fully online edition we decided to offer the entire program free of charge to anyone who donated to one of our team’s chosen nonprofits: - **Build**: Uses the power of entrepreneurship to ignite the potential of youth in under-resourced communities and prepare them for high school, college, and careers - **The Roundhouse**: London’s Roundhouse is a venue and creative hub giving young people the chance to engage with the arts through music, media and performance projects, inspiring them to reach further, dream bigger, and achieve more. - **Streetwise Partners**: Pairs business professionals with mentees who are unemployed or underemployed in order to provide them with the skills, resources, and access to networks they need to secure and maintain employment. - **The Trevor Project**: Provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning young people under 25, as well as offering guidance and resources to parents and educators. - **City Harvest**: Feeds the more than 1.2 million New Yorkers who are food-insecure by rescuing millions of pounds of food and delivering it to hundreds of food pantries, soup kitchens and other community partners across the five boroughs. In line with our mission to help create the future of learning, in this post we’re going behind the scenes and sharing our workshop stack – the tools and technologies we use to make the workshop happen. ## Inside the **Workshop Creator Stack** This edition of Workshop Creator comprised 4 modules, 24 video episodes, 5 live sessions, a couple of hundred posts in the discussion forum, with 33 participants from 3 continents. The stack to run the workshop was made up of 3 main intersecting areas: - **Communications** - **Production** - **Content** Here’s what it looks like. ![The Workshop Creator Stack](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/03/Stack-1-1021x1024.png) Some of these elements are paid for individually, others are packaged with hardware, some are purchased on a one-off basis, and others are completely free. The only premium tools we used were Zoom (for longer call duration) and Vimeo (to create private links and increase weekly storage limits); everything else was either a one-off purchase (mic, tripod) or pre-bundled or available for free online. Notwithstanding the mainframe (a MacBook laptop), the stack itself was inexpensive and relatively simple to set up, integrate, and operate. Of course, the stack isn’t where the work really is. The real work is in the craft: research, collation, design, build, editing, communication, and project management. The craft doesn’t come easy, but it’s worth it 🙂 ### What we’re doing next - A more customized and lightweight discussion forum: Discourse is solid, and a great open-source option, but benefits from customization for better user experience - Better lighting for filming: iPhone camera is surprisingly good, but like 80% of good fitness is diet, 80% of good filming maybe lighting) - More direct to camera video, and fun guerrilla fun scenes: because we don’t want to feel like an 80s public information video - More bitesize episodes: many of our cohort were fine with investing the time, but we want to build for all learning styles and lifestyles - Increasing the length of the program: increasing by a week to allow more time for onboarding and integrating ideas - Accountability partners: Perhaps the smallest change, but arguably the most valuable – we’ll be pairing up participants to support and check-in with one another throughout the experience We’re fascinated by this new future of learning, whether it’s in-person, online, or blended. If you’re interested to learn more about how we’re thinking about this, or want to share what you’re working on in this area – just drop us a line. ### 5 ways to run better remote workshops URL: https://www.howardgray.net/5-ways-to-run-better-remote-workshops/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:30:51.000Z Over the past few years, a new wave of collaboration tools have been a key driver in the growth of remote working. First championed by software companies and digital nomads, organizations of all shapes and sizes are now exploring, if not fully embracing, what’s possible with remote and distributed teams. At the time of writing, the Coronavirus outbreak is drastically accelerating this shift in thinking – not just in individual work, but also in gatherings. This shift in thinking isn’t limited to gatherings of close-knit teams within an organization: it’s making us reconsider company retreats, industry conferences, global festivals, and a whole array of fellowships, accelerator programs, and other community gatherings. As many gatherings move online – whether by choice or by circumstance, the question of ‘how might we…?’ looms large. One of the common threads within all these gatherings is the workshop. After all, the workshop is a place where we can find alignment. It’s where we collaborate with others – where we experiment, fail, improve, succeed, and grow. As workshops and gatherings continue to move online, we need to think about how to best deliver these experiences. The good news is many of the key principles of [in-person workshop creation](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) also apply to remote sessions. However, there are inevitable differences too. Here are 5 quick tips on how to run remote workshops – whether your work is in learning, strategy, innovation, or operations. --- ## **Keep it simple** There are an incredible array of technology-driven tools available to help us run workshops and other gatherings: from designing prototypes, to delegating project plans; video conferencing, to voting on ideas. However, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed with all the various tools, plans, features, and integrations. If you don’t already have a Workshop Stack in place (the subject of the next post in fact!), it’s often best to just pick the simplest set of options and start to use it while being open to changing as you learn. The simplest workshop stack can be distilled down to just three elements. You’ll need tools that enable you to: - Communicate in real-time (e.g. Zoom, Hangouts) - Share and access content (e.g Google Drive, Dropbox) - Keep track of time (e.g. an online timer, or for the more analog-minded…a watch) From there you may want to add tools that allow the ability to: - Communicate asynchronously (e.g. Slack) - Manage resources and plans (e.g. Notion) - Collaborate creatively (e.g. Figma, Mural) But it’s best to keep it simple first 🙂 ## **Check-in (Check-out)** Finding alignment is key with any group – hence icebreakers. They’re used in lots of workshops, although they should be approached with some caution (see note below). When we’re running an online workshop, icebreakers also often risk getting overly complex or confusing There are a good amount of icebreakers that are easy to run online, but as a start point a simple and effective way of getting things going is via a check-in: 2 minutes each in pairs with a couple of prompts. A set of prompts that we’ve been using in our Workshop Creator program is a mirror of workshop success metrics: what have you been learning, and how are you feeling? Getting people to check in with each other builds trust, alignment, and often surfaces some ideas and questions we can cover during the session itself. You can also use a similar method to close the session – yup, a check-out. *Note: Personally I’m not a big fan of icebreakers – they can feel awkward and also risk undermining trust and credibility. I prefer using these activities later in a workshop once we have a better sense of group dynamics and the general vibe.* ## **Divide by 2** A good rule of thumb is to change whatever you’re doing (lecture, group activity, etc.) every 20-30 minutes. For online sessions, divide this by 2\. Time-boxing down to 10-15 minutes as a maximum keeps things flowing and reduces the chances of attendees getting lost or tuning out. It’s a little more work as a facilitator (more time management and switching between tools and content) but keeping things in a 10-15 min loop will improve the experience of the session for the group – and that’s what matters. ## **Space to share** In the [Workshop Creator](https://wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) program we spend quite a bit of time working with the Activity Builder tool. Activities look easy on the surface, but they can have 8 or even 12 elements to them depending on the activity in question. One key component of almost every activity is to allow space for people to share their ideas and insights. Building in sufficient time for this is crucial – especially with larger groups. If in doubt about time, apply the rule of 3: hear from 3 groups to get a good mix of input, before moving on the next part of the session. (Alas, as a Workshop Creator we have to be a Time Pessimist). ## **Enjoy the silence (but not too much)** Ok, I had to get a cheap Depeche Mode reference in there. Good facilitators love silence. We can hold tight for minutes at a time, knowing the silence will eventually yield some valuable sharing from our group. Holding the silence takes practice – it feels horribly awkward at first (it’s still something I struggle with). However, we don’t want to hold the silence too much, especially online. A video call full of silence can feel odd as there’s less context and body language for us to observe and understand. Three ways to mitigate the silence are: - Pre-nominate a group member to share on behalf of the group after an activity - Come prepared with prompts: either by sourcing questions from the group before the session; or opening up a Q&A in your platform for people to post thoughts - Use a collaboration tool so you can see the work the groups have done – it’s then easy to highlight some talking points --- And there we have it – fives ways to run better remote workshops. We have dozens more tools, resources, and methods available for remote and in-person workshops in our Wavetable Workshop Creator program. Find out more at [https://wavetable.net](https://creator.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net) --- *Note: this article assumes you’re running fully remote rather than a split session with some people in one location and others distributed. Most of these principles also apply to split sessions, but you should pay even more attention to flow and group dynamics. For more on that – check out our [other resources.](https://medium.com/wavetable?ref=howardgray.net)* ### Adventures #39: Fame and the Metagame URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-39-fame-and-the-metagame/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:20.000Z **An email digest from the desk of me - Howard.** Hello Over the last 6 weeks I’ve been running the first cohort of the **[Workshop Creator](http://creator.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)** program. Yes, it’s a workshop on how to create workshops. Very meta. Doing something meta inevitably comes with some discomfort. It can be hard to explain, tough to distill, and easy to get lost in the infinite loop. And of course, leading a program on how to do that exact same thing means imposter syndrome looms (extra) large. However, the metagame might be how we become truly skilled at something: especially as metagames can only really be played if we've already mastered the basics of the domain. Although we can feel out of our depth or just plain overwhelmed to go out and explore the metagame, perhaps it’s one of the best routes to enable us to unlock success. And metagames are everywhere - in finance and business; music and marketing; within games themselves. To paraphrase the ambitions of The Wire’s Stringer Bell; *there are games beyond the game.* There's one caveat here: becoming successful at the metagame means we may face some degree of fame. I’ll leave it to the recently departed Andrew Weatherall to share his thoughts on the fame game; scroll to the bottom of this email to see what I mean. Thanks for reading, and always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Howard PS. I’ll be at SXSW next week - if you’re there, let me know. #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7dee0039-b044-406b-bf14-147463900250_800x533.jpeg) **[Create your own workshop](https://creator.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)** Our next online cohort is now open for enrolment: you'll level up your skills in design, content creation, facilitation, and public speaking - along with a peer group and coaching team supporting you every step of the way. **[\> Register... now!](https://creator.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/36810389-b566-49ee-89ac-2f04bc328d2b_600x497.jpeg) **[Looking for 1000 True Fans? Try 100](https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/?ref=howardgray.net)** The concept of 1000 true fans still largely holds true, but what about 100? a16z’s increasingly impressive content team tell us why dropping a digit opens up new opportunities for creators. **[\> Read more](https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: Inspiration for the metagame from the Commonplace blog by **[Cedric Chin](https://commoncog.com/blog/to-get-good-go-after-the-metagame/?ref=howardgray.net)** (it's also worth checking out his **[book summaries](https://commoncog.com/blog/tag/books/?ref=howardgray.net)**) #### // MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/10865981-10e9-40ba-8efa-808a7d584141_900x900.jpeg) **[Behind the scenes with Baby Yoda](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145671/mandalorian-sets-stagecraft-epic-games-ilm-fortnite-baby-yoda-digital?ref=howardgray.net)** I saw the recent Star Wars movie and... well, I fell asleep twice. However, The Mandalorian was much more on-point: fast-paced, funny, and original. The production itself was also a step-change; the video linked here covers it well, and for a deeper dive go for **[this article from American Cinematographer magazine](https://ascmag.com/articles/the-mandalorian?ref=howardgray.net)**. Two thoughts from me: I’d love to see more behind the scenes content like this; and I want to borrow some of that tech for building learning experiences… **[\> Watch](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/20/21145671/mandalorian-sets-stagecraft-epic-games-ilm-fortnite-baby-yoda-digital?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: **[The woes of being a Hollywood assistant](https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/anonymous-in-hollywood-assistants-share-stories-of-mistreatment.html?ref=howardgray.net)**. Yup, it's as brutal as you think. #### // CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/1e64ff74-dece-40a1-be05-5494e7ac3613_1200x900.png) **[Interviewing your parents](https://medium.com/@amitt/interviewing-your-parents-1af195b7ac93?ref=howardgray.net)** I meant to do this with my parents when I saw them last month, but frankly we were too busy eating wonderful Spanish food. I really like this idea though, especially using voice recordings. **[\> Read more](https://medium.com/@amitt/interviewing-your-parents-1af195b7ac93?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/1c6e0370-49f3-4389-a050-e84a3e94056a_700x525.png) **[The Hollywood Con Queen](https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a30992762/hollywood-con-queen-nicoletta-kotsianas-investigator-fbi/?ref=howardgray.net)** There’s a first time for everything - eating frogs legs, sharing a Marie Claire article… getting conned by an Indonesian man posing as a female Hollywood exec. This is one of those wild stranger-than-fiction tales - and I reckon it’s only going to happen more. And speaking of meta - this should surely become a movie. **[\> Read more](https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a30992762/hollywood-con-queen-nicoletta-kotsianas-investigator-fbi/?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: Continuing the sub-theme of fame in this month’s digest, ever wondered what it’s like to have an oblique, personal view into the world of celebrity? **[Here's how it feels to see you ex-boyfriend hook up with Lady Gaga](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/opinion/lady-gaga-boyfriend.html?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // INNOVATION ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a96a7750-b399-40af-b7be-bd8600d3e12f_700x467.jpeg) **[All the coffee you can drink](https://www.businessinsider.com/panera-unlimited-coffee-subscription-cost-how-to-sign-up-2020-2?ref=howardgray.net)** I’m a coffee snob - strictly flat whites (although I do hit my office's caffeine vat), so I won’t be getting into this deal with Panera, but it’s smart: recurring revenue around a regular habit. The best innovations are often the simplest. **[\> Read more](https://www.businessinsider.com/panera-unlimited-coffee-subscription-cost-how-to-sign-up-2020-2?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: the UK Met Office **[has just bought a new computer](https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/17/uk-weather-supercomputer-most-powerful-yet?ref=howardgray.net)**... for $1.6bn. It can forecast weather within a range of less than half a mile. #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7ce7e967-3c26-4060-b3eb-95304eb57a35_770x770.jpeg) ### **[Andrew Weatherall - Music is not for everyone](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6lXiGGsrisdctSfnALipd6?si=rALJ6FfcTiOSm-KXBETy4Q&ref=howardgray.net)** This is the second consecutive month the jukebox has featured a recently passed musician. However, rather than being macabre, this 2000+ song treasure trove from iconoclastic DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall is cause for celebration. Also, his take on deciding to avoid climbing the greasy pole of fame is too good to omit: **‘The view’s pretty good. But it’s very greasy and there are a lot of bottoms up there that I might have to brush my lips against. So, maybe I’ll give it a miss’.** **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6lXiGGsrisdctSfnALipd6?si=rALJ6FfcTiOSm-KXBETy4Q&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Working on some exciting new **[Fondo](http://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** features, including the ability to build your own braintrust. \- Producing more video content in the last 3 weeks than the previous 36 years. \- Stitching together a few bits for standup open mic. I have commitment issues. \> Spread the word: Who are 2 smart and curious people you know who would find this email interesting? I'd be delighted if you could forward it on to them. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/da0ace82-1149-4caa-9ebf-f013419bcd72_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I help people who want to make a difference get where they want to go. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### The Joy of 6 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-joy-of-6/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:53:02.000Z There’s much to learn from musical educators, and educational musicians. The first pilot episode of [Schoolhouse Rock](https://schoolhouserock.fandom.com/wiki/Three%5Fis%5Fa%5FMagic%5FNumber?ref=howardgray.net) talked about 3 – its magical powers of indivisibility, and multiplication. Just over 15 years later, De La Soul sampled the schoolhouse because they too knew 3 was the magic number: > *Without my 1 and 2 where would there be* > *My 3* > *Mase Pos and Me* > *And that’s the Magic Number* 3 is magic. Hat tricks, 3 pointers. Triangles, tripods, rule of thirds. The third person. The third place. The third dimension. However, for a workshop, while the magic number isn’t three, it’s just one multiplication away. For a workshop, six is the magic number. --- Here’s why. The cabaret-style table layout is the best one for workshops, and a cabaret table best seats six. Need to choose someone from the table for an activity? Each table gets a dice (six-sided of course), and each person gets a number. Just roll the dice. Pure chance, no bias *(keep rolling sixes? Maybe it’s magic*…) Six is the magic number because it divides into pairs, and into the original magic number of three. - 2 is pair discussion, checking in. - 2 is remixing and iterating on their ideas. - 2 is quiet retrospection, being a sounding board. - 3 is multiple perspectives, trio ideation. - 3 is a role-play scenario. 3 lets one wear the judging hat. - 3 is two teams in friendly competition. 3 times 2, or 2 times 3, and six… is the magic number. What if you need to do something in groups of four? Six has you covered. Bring two tables together – now you’ve got three quartets. And six is also the magic number because it’s even better together. ### **6 x 6.** Multiply it by itself and you have the optimum larger group size. 36. Trailblazing teacher Marc Lewis builds his School of Communication Art curriculum around a group of 36\. \[*You can learn more about Marc and his amazing school on* [*my Tickets podcast*\].](https://howardgray.net/2019/01/28/tickets-podcast-marc-lewis-on-running-the-worlds-most-awarded-advertising-school/?ref=howardgray.net) Marc uses 36 because it divides so magically. - 2 teams of 18\. - 3 groups of 12\. - 4 squads of 9\. - 6 tables of 6\. - 9 posses of 4\. - 12 trios of 3. - 18 duets of 2. 6 x 6: 36\. The magic, flexible, workshop number. --- My lucky number has always been 7, but maybe I can have a magic number too. Why? Three magic reasons. First, I’m 6’6”. Second, I’m writing this at the age of 36. And third, my birthday marks the next number. It turns out that day is both lucky and magic: 7/6. Six. Six is the magic number. ### Adventures #38: All the pieces matter URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-38-all-the-pieces-matter/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:19.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b45a01a4-45a3-4df7-9e9e-3808a1a6a763_400x475.png) Saturdays in the record store, circa 1999. On a cold Monday evening in early January, I was in my kitchen idly stirring a risotto. To pass the time, I idly scrolled through my Twitter feed. Suddenly, something stopped me in my tracks. I had to read it three times before it made sense. It felt incongruous, an error, some kind of awful meme. Somebody I knew had passed away, far too young. We hadn’t spoken for years, but over the following couple of days it really hit me. My mind went back there again and again; nearly 20 years in the past to the record store where we worked together. I’d always recognised that chapter as part of my origin story, but it was only now I saw the missing pieces… the missing people. Without him and his rare blend of enthusiasm, humour, generosity, and patience, it’s unlikely I would have built the confidence to go out and follow the path I did. The path that led me to diving into new musical discoveries, to entrepreneurship, to like minds in music and beyond. The path that even led me to my wife: the one asking me what’s wrong as the risotto burns in the pan and I stare into the middle distance, suddenly realising it was something to be thankful for, and that I now cannot ever thank him. All this is to say: sometimes the pieces that matter most are those we may not even realise are pieces in the first place. All the pieces matter. Thanks for reading, and always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a858cba5-047a-44d3-b8f5-d0e5bda35d80_600x399.jpeg) **[The new alumni](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/15/the-new-alumni/?ref=howardgray.net)** I always railed against traditional education - long lectures, campus cliques, and storied alumni. Today there are some new flavours of alumni, and they're leveling the playing field too. **[\> Read more](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/15/the-new-alumni/?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/45e748d5-acdd-4aa0-9c37-5328bd0512a8_512x384.jpeg) **[How to get rich without getting lucky](https://nav.al/rich?ref=howardgray.net)** Here's the full version of Naval Ravikant's popular Twitter thread and podcast series on how to get rich without getting lucky. **[\> Read more](https://nav.al/rich?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: \> **[Here's a snapshot of me riffing on Hidden Networks](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6630521156971700224/?ref=howardgray.net)** at Comcast HQ in Philadelphia. Drop me a note if you want the full deck. \> **[Opening Credits](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/10/opening-credits/?ref=howardgray.net)**: figuring out how to position ourselves in and around our work. **[\> The 4 Workshop Mindsets](https://howardgray.net/2020/02/03/4-workshop-mindsets/?ref=howardgray.net)**: how to set yourself up for workshop success. #### // MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/0167f14f-f0bd-4eb5-b63c-4438a0cb53aa_600x600.jpeg) **[The man spending $1bn to own every pop song](https://marker.medium.com/the-man-whos-spending-1-billion-to-own-every-pop-song-75df0024155b?ref=howardgray.net)** I ran a music publishing company for a bit - it's a fascinating business but still has a lot of opacity issues and a steep learning curve for the uninitiated. As well as betting on writers, part of Merck Mercuriadis' move is to reframe the business as 'song management'. Smart rebranding can go a long way. **[\> Read more](https://marker.medium.com/the-man-whos-spending-1-billion-to-own-every-pop-song-75df0024155b?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/21a39bcc-56e7-4129-8d84-6ad296c5c8cd_624x468.jpeg) **[5 ways music changed in the 2010s](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51061099?ref=howardgray.net)** Shorter songs, the resurgence of the Denbow rhythm, the anti-chorus, and more. I reckon the authors are spot-on about their prediction for this decade - we'll see more attempts to forge closer connections via the spoken word. **[\> Read more](https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51061099?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: As Disney officially takes over 20th Century Fox, **[here's the story of Fox's founder](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1218362598309212160.html?ref=howardgray.net)**. Perhaps they should make it into a movie... #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/ac630eea-0334-431e-bd5a-e30af8712561_500x494.png) ### **[Cause4Concern - White Widow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is1kazyt1-o&ref=howardgray.net)** The person I wrote about at the top of this edition was called Edd Holmes, and he was a very accomplished music producer. Here's my favourite bit from him and his drum&bass production crew C4C: a slice of underground future funk called White Widow. Turn it up, and watch that bassline. **[\> Listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is1kazyt1-o&ref=howardgray.net)** \> Spread the word: Who are 2 smart and curious people you know who would find this email interesting? I'd be delighted if you could forward it on to them. #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Kicking off the **[Workshop Creator](http://www.wavetable.net/?ref=howardgray.net)** cohort: We have people across 3 continents leveling up their skills in content design, facilitation and presentation skills, and all supporting a bunch of nonprofits while they're at it. I've learnt a ton already. \- Spending some time in Madrid & Seville (I miss you, Europe!), and **[making a new friend ](https://www.instagram.com/tomwilltell/?ref=howardgray.net)**on the way back to Madrid airport. \- Doing our tax returns. Nuff said. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/510014c0-fec6-4b88-9350-d1e664760b95_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### 4 Workshop Mindsets URL: https://www.howardgray.net/4-workshop-mindsets/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:53:15.000Z Imagine you get asked to run a workshop. How would you tackle it? Perhaps you’re feeling really confident in your abilities, or you believe the group will instinctively be able to get where they need to go. You can just show up with a loose agenda and a few slides. That may work out just fine. Although it may not. You could pour several days or a couple of weeks into crafting incredible content that’s going to impress and delight your audience. But there’s no guarantee this will work either. You could play it safe and deliver a lecture – tried and trusted. You should be able to provide your audience with some learning, but there won’t be too much in the way of interaction or connection – so it’s possible this approach also won’t hit the spot. For a lot of people, the process of designing and delivering a workshop is something that’s either vastly over or underestimated. We can get overconfident and underdeliver. We can feel overwhelmed at all the possible options, at what could go wrong, and at how much is out of our control. Instead, we can prime ourselves for success by simply taking on the mindsets of a workshop creator to guide us through the process: **Thinking**, **Designing**, **Developing**, and **Delivering**. --- ## Thinking ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/02/Module-1-Episode-1_-How-we-got-to-now.001.jpeg) The author and futurist Alvin Toffler famously said: > *The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.* This is something many of us underestimate, including those of us creating learning experiences: we also need to unlearn. Unlearning often means letting go of beliefs or replacing flawed mental models just as much as it is correcting factual errors. To think like a workshop creator we probably need to let go of some of what we’ve brought with us so far: our views on traditional education (whether good or bad); how we feel about being a student; the variance in learning styles between different people; what success actually looks like. A few aspects of Thinking like a workshop creator include: - Understanding key fundamentals of how people think and learn - Acknowledging the wicked problem we face in much of education and learning, and that no solution is ever going to be perfect - Being open to unlearning, relearning, and failing - Thinking like an apprentice: that doing can be the first step to learning - Embracing the power of peer groups - Measuring success on how the audience feels (through the experience they’re having) as well as what they learn When we’re thinking like a workshop creator, all the aspects of design, development and delivery become more intuitive. --- ## Designing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/02/Module-1-Episode-3_-Workshop-Fundamentals.001.jpeg) Designing like a Workshop Creator may feel like it’s about creating beautiful presentation decks, but this mindset is focused on understanding humans and being able to create the right structures for them to thrive in. When we’re designing like a workshop creator, we spend time deeply considering the audience we’re serving – we know who they are, what their motivations are, what they need, and how we can design something valuable for them. We ask ourselves questions to help sculpt learning outcomes and build supporting pillars underneath them. We can also take a leaf from the book of a movie producer to create structure and arrangement that’s robust and clear, yet also flexible and can allow magic to happen. When we’re designing like a workshop creator we’re open to using different formats, materials, resources, and blending them in ways that will resonate with our audience. And last but not least, our designer mindset encourages us to assess whether something is working, and think about how we can adjust a design to meet our audience’s needs. ## Developing ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/02/photo-1559757296-c68c34d39551-1024x576.jpeg) The Designing mindset provides us with a strong yet flexible structure, like a skeleton. The mindset of Developing like a Workshop Creator is where we add organs, muscles, features and attributes. To extend the metaphor, when thinking about our audience, this mindset is all about senses. **What do our audience hear?** **What do they see?** **What are they going to say?** **What are they going to do?** And depending on our workshop we may also want to think about what we want them to touch, or smell, or taste. Using our developing mindset we’ll be creating presentation content, building out activities, and developing narrative and story. And we’ll be working towards integration: bringing everything together into a whole body that can come to life. ## Delivering ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2020/02/photo-1554167725-89bf8ab26514-1024x683.jpeg) Last but by no means least, the final mindset is that of delivering like a workshop creator. As with all the other mindsets, this one is human-focused. We’re concentrating on what the audience learns, but also how they feel. When we’re delivering like a workshop creator, we take an active approach – whether we’re explaining, listening, discussing, or even pausing. With our delivery mindset we’re comfortable with space, and allowing the audience to find their own answers. We’re also looking out for appropriate places to weave in story, excitement, tension and energy. With this mindset we’re reading the room and adjusting accordingly to ensure we deliver learning, experience, and a learning experience. When we take on the mindset of delivering like a workshop creator we know that not everything is going to work, and we may need to improvise. We also know that our other three mindsets are always at hand to help us, and the work we’ve already done using them means our delivery mindset is best applied when it’s natural and authentic. Finally, the mindset of delivering like a workshop creator is akin to the spotlight operator. Sometimes we may shine it on ourselves, but more often we’ll light up individuals, groups, or ideas. And our mindset also lets us know when we don’t need the spotlight at all, and the natural light in the room is plenty. --- Want to learn more about these 4 mindsets and how you can develop them? The Workshop Creator live workshop is running throughout 2020\. (opens in a new tab)” href=”http://www.wavetable.net” target=”\_blank”>Get notified on the next cohort > ### The new alumni URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-new-alumni/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:06:35.000Z Alumni: > *a graduate or former student of a specific school, college, or university.* For a very long time I didn’t understand what this word meant. When I was at university I heard it mentioned in passing, and then after I finished \[1\] it kept cropping up on various marketing propaganda that was persistently posted to me. *Alumni.* Just looking at the word made me think of something dusty and dated: blazers and ties; boorish in-jokes at a private club I didn’t want to be a member of…even if they’d have me ([cheers, Groucho](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/45/48/bf454886c82e31cb1303497f87b7f20e.jpg?ref=howardgray.net)). In fact, for much of history, the word ‘alumni’ was used solely to describe those who were part of exclusive institutions. What’s more, this exclusive air permeated far deeper into society: an alumni could only be male. Things had moved on somewhat since then, but for me there was no connection, no group to which I subscribed, no secret society. I wasn’t alumni. And then, 15 years after my first brush with the term, I realised it didn’t need to be this way. Being involved in different programs and fellowships as both a facilitator and a participant allowed me to truly see why alumni matters, and why alumni could be about so much more than just the elite university or the corporate company. It was all down to a mindset shift, a reframe. Alumni are simply those who have been part of a *shared experience*. It’s this experience that’s what really matters – way above the brand, the credentials, the signaling. Becoming alumni through this new lens is not by virtue of tenure or privilege, but through simply being part of the experience: of feeling the ups and downs, of seeing others’ experience, and sharing your own. In our AMP NYC accelerator program here in New York we’re proud to have over 60 media & entertainment founders as alumni. What’s more, many of our [mentors](https://howardgray.net/2018/03/22/advisor-mentor-coach-counsel-whats-in-a-name/?ref=howardgray.net) – those who guide, and support, and challenge our participants – are alumni. We’ve found the best program experience comes from a mentor group consisting of both alumni and those holding other vantage points – whether as founders, independent practitioners, or operating in larger organizations. These diverse vantage points are crucial, but the program wouldn’t be what it is without the mentors who are alumni. Here’s the thing about alumni in the traditional sense. At such scale, it’s rare for the experience to genuinely be a shared one. There are just too many variables at play: subjects, courses, buildings; professors, assistants, students; long chapters where the world has shifted from one group to the next. Within the new wave of experiences – workshops, programs, interest-based communities – it’s different. These are smaller, more focused. More carefully curated and cared for. They operate in shorter bursts, offering something more intense and vivid. And although everyone within them comes from different and diverse places, we’re all heading the same way. We see, notice, and understand each other. We’re closer-knit. And as these groups continue to be curated and guided and grown, the alumni appear. They can share knowledge and wisdom that’s relevant, timely, and resonates. They’re not on a pedestal, they stand on the same ground. And they’re truly connected: not because of the stamp of approval from a faceless institution; but because they’ve been through it, felt it, and very often have become part of the fabric of it. It’s why the new alumni are worth paying attention to, and worth joining. I am alumni. I hope you can be too. --- \[1\] I don’t use the word ‘graduate’ as it’s not technically correct; I refused to go to the graduation ceremony. ### “What do you mean, ‘a workshop’?” URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-do-you-mean-a-workshop/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:53:44.000Z For centuries the word ‘workshop’ simply referred to a place where goods were manufactured or repaired. To begin with, these workshops were solely singular rooms, but increasingly they became buildings or complexes where many makers would share resources and collaborate. Alongside these workshops, in today’s connected world we now have two new additions to the dictionary definition: > meetings in *which a group of people engage in intensive discussion and activity on a particular subject or project;* > *intensive educational programs that focuses especially on techniques and skills in a particular field* And so a workshop can be a place for manufacturing, a place to meet, a program to learn, or perhaps even a place for performance. To make things a little more confusing, there are a few different [flavors](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/26/3-flavours-of-workshop/?ref=howardgray.net) of workshop. - The **educator** talks about a workshop as a hands-on learning experience. - The **strategist** talks about a workshop as a chance to get to an insight. - The **operator** talks about a workshop as an opportunity for a group to find alignment. Although for these groups the goods being produced are probably more knowledge-based in their nature than those in the traditional workshops, some core concepts still remain across every flavor. There’s an onus on experimenting, testing, adjusting, iterating; focusing on techniques and skills to make the work better. And workshops remain very much about sharing resources and collaborating. They’re about connecting with others, talking things through, comparing notes, and seeing another way of doing things. Workshops are about bringing something to the table – something to work on, something to work with. They encourage us to experience something for ourselves, alongside others who want to head in the same direction. Workshops are about thinking, creating, communicating, producing. To help get whoever’s in the room from here… to there. --- A workshop could be focused on a craft like playing the trombone or writing Chinese calligraphy. Or building a skill, like using Instagram as a marketing tool. Its goal could be to help a team find alignment on a challenging topic. A workshop could be created to help a company uncover new ideas and discoveries. Whatever the focus, an effective workshop needs thoughtful design, generous facilitation, and compelling content. This may sound simple, but it’s not easy. The good news is, these are skills we can learn. We can design and lead workshops that inspire and engage the audience. That help get them to go from here… to there. ### Opening Credits URL: https://www.howardgray.net/opening-credits/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:23:33.000Z January signals the peak of Hollywood’s awards season. It’s the time for recognition and credit: for the work itself, and for the talent both above and below the line making the work happen. Of course, credit also comes from the credits themselves. First, it’s worth being aware that some just don’t make the cut. The offshore sub-contractors cranking out edits and tweaks for the overstretched VFX studio; the substitute chef covering for the caterer when they’re out sick. Then there are the dozens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of names that appear in the small print of the long end credits, deep into the movie’s closing piece of music. Many may only get their moment just before it’s made clear no animals were harmed in the making of this production – when the audience has already left the auditorium, and the streaming viewer is onto the next one. Others may make it onto the promotional poster, or maybe even the billboard. The select member of the supporting cast, the rising associate producer. There are the main scene players, the casting director, the music supervisor. Opening credits as the story begins. And there are those presented right up front, before the title. Main attraction, bona fide lead. The project is the vehicle, and everyone else is the chauffeur tasked with taking the star exactly where they wanna go. On the flip side, maybe you’re told you can’t be included: the script doctor who has to stay behind the scenes to avoid embarrassing the screenwriter, or the disgruntled lighting director who got the boot. Last of all, you choose to opt out, disown the project. You become [Alan Smithee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan%5FSmithee?ref=howardgray.net). --- The decisions and the dancing that comes from being credited aren’t just for Hollywood cast and crew. They’re a challenge in all kinds of work – whether we’re founders, team members, solopreneurs, independent consultants or freelancers. Music, art, technology, advertising campaigns. Credit becomes even more challenging when we are the principal: when we’re creating our own work, our own projects. There’s a fundamental question: > How do we position ourselves in and around the work? Is the work a vehicle for us? Is it something for us to stand on to move ourselves ahead? Maybe it doesn’t matter if no one engages with it – we just need our face on the billboard to get us the awareness and leverage for the next one. Or are we making it more about the project? We’re there to shepherd it through, talk about it in the marketing rounds we know we have to make. We’ll add it to our portfolio, but we’re not the face, nor should we be. Is it about building our production company? The outfit connected to us by association, but not our personal brand. Or is it something else? There’s tension here. Can the work speak for itself? Do we need to speak for it? How do we feel about doing so? If we speak, how do we do it best? Where do we place ourselves in our own credits? And is this the kind of credit we even seek? ### Connecting with Art URL: https://www.howardgray.net/connecting-with-art/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:28:44.000Z There’s something about those few days before Christmas. The city has a softer haze, time slows and moments are savoured more than the preceding 50 weeks of the year. For many it can be a strange time of year. Mixed feelings. Transition. You may find yourself away from what you know or those you love: the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘family’ may feel untethered, far away, or even lost. A quiet melancholy. There’s something about those few days before Christmas. Early on the 23rd I felt a little low as I made the walk to the cafe on 21st Street. Cold, grey, alone, walking into the wind. I was meeting with a good friend who’s also become a coaching client. The cold feeling lingered, yet as soon as I took those first few moments to allow myself to be present, everything changed. As we talked, a couple of big ‘aha’ moments appeared. I was rapidly sketching out imagery and metaphors to help frame ideas and next steps – ideas free-formed, space emerged. Success. Walking down 2nd Avenue I had a spring in my step; my creativity was activated, the sun was shining, the streets were spacious. The wind was at my back. I’ve come to learn these creative times can be fleeting, fragile. And so instead of going home, I made a beeline to Third Rail. Third Rail is my local coffee shop, on the corner of 10th St and 2nd Avenue in New York’s East Village. It’s one of a few places that feel so visceral for me in NYC – those that have sculpted my experience and remind me of high times and low ebbs. Third Rail was the spot in the early days when I had no work permit, few connections, and was trying to make sense of it all. It’s where I went to conjure up connections, communicate my ideas in writing, speak to the family. Morning session, home for lunch, back for an afternoon push. Propped up against the cold glass of the front window. Wondering when it would all start to come together. Here at Christmas time 2 years later I felt light and lithe. I ordered a flat white and a muffin. Carefully crafted by the barista wearing the Mets cap. As I went to set up shop and unpack my post-its, notepad, headphones, and laptop I noticed the book. Without thinking I blurted out a question to its owner. He laughed – I was the second person that morning to ask him about the book. An hour and a half later and we were both still there, taking a pause as if to take in the expanse of conversation we’d had: from the gentrification of Lower Manhattan to the virtues of Scandinavia; ancient meditation to the new iPhone; the signs of a talented jazz trombone player to how best to build confidence as a student; going on the road with musical legends, to growing older, learning, unlearning, and relearning. It was maybe the kind of conversation you can have in the East Village. What struck me most was perhaps the amount of eye contact we had. We looked each other in the eye, sat side by side. Two strangers, with 30 years age difference, sat up close next to each other sharing thoughts, opinions and feelings with little to no filter. In a public place. It felt awkward, strange, unnatural. But of course, it’s the opposite. Surely it’s the most natural thing in the world. Surely it’s what coffee shops, coffee houses, are for. Connection, stories, wonder, laughs, perspective, shared experience. Afterwards I went to another of those memorable NYC places – the Strand bookstore with its 18 miles of books. Unlike the coffee shop, it was packed, with books disappearing off the shelves at a rate of knots. But there it was, third table in from the door, just as he told me. One copy left. Two days later I finished it. It was my last book of the decade. It was also the most apt and meaningful. It’s a book on humans, society, anxiety, depression, and our need for connection: why connecting with values, work, nature, humans, and art can provide solutions to so many of the problems we face today. I’m so grateful I made the human connection with Art. --- *The book is [Lost Connections](https://thelostconnections.com/?ref=howardgray.net) by Johann Hari.* ### Adventures #37: Finding the Lost Connections URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-37-finding-the-lost-connections/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:18.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/91aea4ae-20f0-4464-a182-2c76af56aecd_600x338.jpeg) Third Rail Coffee, East Village, NYC Hi Two days before Christmas, I walked into my local coffee shop. It was strangely deserted. The lone customer was a man sat in the corner reading a book. On impulse, I mentioned to him that I recognised the title. What followed over the next hour and a half was the type of conversation that can maybe only ever happen in New York’s East Village: covering global politics to local history; late-night bodegas to gentrification; jazz ensembles to the birth of punk rock; wild tales of touring... and growing older. When we said our farewells I headed to another NYC institution, Strand Books. On the third table from the door was the book. Exactly as he'd said. And there was just one copy left. It was my last book of the decade, and quite possibly the most important. Moving into a new year, if any words from the past 12 months have truly rung in my ears it’s these: we are all seeking. We’re all seeking connection: with work; with nature; and most of all, with others. I’ve seen it in my work running accelerator programs; being a coach and sounding board for entrepreneurs; running workshops with executives at big companies. I've felt myself yearning for connection when the path is unclear, or I just can't seem to get out of my own way. So, what better time than the first month of a fresh decade for us to seek, find, and remake some of those **[lost connections](https://thelostconnections.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** ? Thank you for reading, and always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/97eeb9ea-7ff3-4e99-a0fa-78dfe8291012_700x700.jpeg) **[Become a workshop creator](https://www.notion.so/howardgray/Become-a-Workshop-Creator-1f074b978ccc46b3a60ce09691060664?ref=howardgray.net)** I'm really excited (and a little nervous) about this: a new way to help you share your expertise, convey your ideas, and connect with others. Here's the kicker: donate to one of our nonprofit partners and you'll get access to the whole thing completely free of charge (it's usually $695) This special edition starts in Feburary and you can register....now! **[\> Get started](https://www.notion.so/howardgray/Become-a-Workshop-Creator-1f074b978ccc46b3a60ce09691060664?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/90fe14d8-6b06-4590-b6f4-792eb535fb33_1120x1076.png) **[The Ladders of Wealth Creation](https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/?ref=howardgray.net)** Using four ladders to move from working hourly to building products, and putting forward the argument that making money is, in fact, a skill - like playing the drums or piano - that you can get better at over time. **[\> Read more](https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: **[How to operate and communicate as a Founder CEO](https://www.sametab.com/blog/operations-and-internal-communication-strategies-for-effective-ceos?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // TECHNOLOGY x CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7180d187-b504-4cda-b08e-273e70622201_600x492.png) **[The NBA in 3D](https://nba3d.peterbeshai.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** This project takes player and team data from the 1950s until today and layers in a bunch of tidy 3D data visualisations. While this kind of stuff still feels largely like toys for geeks, my bet is it'll show up in all sorts of places as more use cases and better storytelling emerge. **[\> Check it out](https://nba3d.peterbeshai.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** Also: **[The new influencer paradigm](https://a16z.com/2019/12/19/making-a-living-off-likes/?ref=howardgray.net)** \- it'll be interesting to see if and how these huge Chinese trends translate elsewhere in the world #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/406096d8-0111-4a9e-9e94-467e09bd25fa_502x516.png) ### **[Watchmen: Volume 3](https://open.spotify.com/album/3vY7azmIs5SG8O47L97VXM?si=C6UQuODGTJmduxKy7HJ5Pw&ref=howardgray.net)** Ok, I haven't seen the show yet. But the music is good, and this is the *Jukebox* section after all. I'm sensing soundtracks and the sub-culture around them are on the cusp of becoming a much bigger thing: there are lots of interesting areas to explore here, and when it comes to the creation side Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross are two of the very best around. **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/album/3vY7azmIs5SG8O47L97VXM?si=C6UQuODGTJmduxKy7HJ5Pw&ref=howardgray.net)** \> Spread the word: Who are 2 smart and curious people you know who would find this email interesting? I'd be delighted if you could forward it on to them. #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Running 'Hidden Networks' workshops for NBC Universal’s Lift Labs in **[NYC](https://nymediacenter.com/events/event/?id=4F65D899-D091-4E6A-8823387FF9790032&slugid=lift-your-story-network-thinking-how-to-access-and-activate-your-hidden-networks&ref=howardgray.net)** and **[Philllllly](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lift-your-story-network-thinking-tickets-79555200747?ref=howardgray.net)**. I'll share some snippets in next month's edition. \- Enjoying Ricky Gervais’ **[Golden Globes monologue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCNdTLHZAeo&ref=howardgray.net)**. Tough crowd. \- **[Getting back into improv](https://howardgray.net/2020/01/06/unlearnings-from-the-improv-class/?ref=howardgray.net)**. Tough gig. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/aee121c1-47c9-4975-8cf4-a19421a132d2_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### Co-Founder Conflict: NFI? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/co-founder-conflict-nfi/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:43:14.000Z I met up with my friend [Gillian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davisgillian?ref=howardgray.net) yesterday. Like me, she’s perhaps a frustrated introvert – very comfortable being out there in front of a room, but less keen on being the in-your-face face of a brand. As we chatted about the shift from [contractor/freelancer to entrepreneur](https://howardgray.net/2019/05/15/freelancer-to-entrepreneur-the-forest-the-mountains-and-the-water/?ref=howardgray.net), and being front of house vs. behind the scenes, she suggested this little thought experiment which she’s used when working with co-founding teams. > “If Time (or whichever magazine is most prominent/prestigious in your world) called and said they wanted your co-founder on the cover, but not you, how would you feel?” It’s worth asking this one twice. > “How would you *really* feel?” Or how about this: you’re at an awards ceremony. It’s top of the tree; the Oscars for your industry (perhaps it *is* the Oscars; ’tis the season, after all). Your company is being honoured with a top award. However, again they just want your co-founder. You have to sit on your own at the back of the room. Maybe you’re even [NFI](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=N.F.I%27d&ref=howardgray.net). --- How would you feel? How would you *really* feel? How would hope you co-founder would act? And how do you think they would *really* act? How would they act when you’re not in the room? When you’re NFI? ### Building the 10 key skills for 2020 URL: https://www.howardgray.net/building-the-10-key-skills-for-2020/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:54:02.000Z We all know the world is changing quickly, and that we all need to build and develop new skills to stay relevant and on top of what’s coming around the corner. The [World Economic Forum](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/?ref=howardgray.net) earmarked the following 10 skills as the most valuable ones to have in 2020: - **Judgment and decision making** - **Emotional intelligence** - **Service orientation** - **Negotiation** - **Cognitive flexibility** - **Complex problem solving** - **Critical thinking** - **Creativity** - **Co-ordinating with others** - **People management** Easy enough to list out, but how we do go out and actually build these skills? Sure, there are bootcamps and training programs to level up on a particular skill, particularly those rooted in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. But they’re usually anchored in one particular programming language or discipline. There are leadership programs and MBAs. They tend to focus on theory ahead of hands-on work, and are all too often the preserve of those with sufficient money, access or status. There are MOOCs, but they’re done in isolation, without others around us to guide, support, challenge, and celebrate. How else could we develop this range of 10 skills? --- What if there was a place we could do this that was affordable and accessible? Where learning was experiential, peer-based, and supported? Where making mistakes was ok, where we could ask for help but not be judged or looked down upon? Where it wasn’t about raising status or building skills for one specific type of work, but leveling up a suite of skills that could be transferred into many areas? Where we could walk away with something tangible we could use right away? Where we’re in an environment where we could see and feel ourselves get better? We believe we’ve created that place. It’s an interactive workshop where you’ll build these 10 key skills, and many more besides. You’ll level up key competencies in areas like cognitive flexibility, working with others, and serving an audience. You’ll build the 3 skills that the WEF sees as being most crucial for 2020: complex problem solving, creativity, and using emotional intelligence. You’ll do it all through the lens of designing high-impact workshops. Because workshops are the future of learning, and being able to design and lead workshops is a [secret skill set](https://medium.com/@HowardGray/the-skills-to-pay-the-bills-9a892fdd6f0d?ref=howardgray.net) that everyone should have access to. After a month with us, you’ll be able to design and lead engaging and inspiring workshops you can use in all kinds of areas of your work – whether in your company, for a client, for your passion project, or to build your own business. You’ll go away with ideas, tools, resources, and connections to group of a like-minded people. The best bit? This next edition of the workshop is a very special one. We’re supporting a group of non-profits who are seeking to make a difference in the world. Every seat in this next edition of the workshop is reserved for anyone and everyone who makes a donation to one of those non-profit organizations. Registrations are open now. [ (opens in a new tab)”>Join us >](http://workshopcreator.crd.co/?ref=howardgray.net) ### Unlearnings from the improv class URL: https://www.howardgray.net/unlearnings-from-the-improv-class/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:31:49.000Z This weekend I went to my first improv class in a little while. Improv has been one of those things the younger me would have been initially shocked at; realised made a lot of sense; then finally saw the tension: Telling stories, trying new ideas, setting up random situations: yes! Introvert, prefer control over surroundings, happiest in mind over body: no way. And so, as expected, the class was fun but tough. In fact, it was much tougher than I expected. I went in feeling good and confident, and left remembering that as with many things in life, the more we learn, the more we realise we still have to learn. During my 3 hours in that rehearsal room at New York’s Simple Studios, a few things – a few learnings, a few *un*learnings – jumped out. ## Thinking, not thinking I felt rusty having not been to a class for a few months, but the lack of practice wasn’t the biggest blocker. The biggest blocker was thinking. Just like learning how much there is still to learn, the best way to approach an improv class is by acknowledging the open space, but not thinking about it. It feels counter-intuitive because to learn, respond, communicate, we have to learn. Yet *thinking* we have a clear mind is not at all the same as actually *having* a clear mind. That’s why the class warmup games are designed to ‘get you out of your head’. ## Asking questions ‘Yes, and…’ is probably rule number 1 in improv. Following in the peloton, and very much on the same team, is asking questions. This was my first class since finishing my coaching certification, and I’ve spent a lot of time honing my ability to ask probing questions. This skill can be helpful in improv, but more often it puts too much onto a scene partner. As part of my learning, I had to unlearn going for a question. Here are the opening lines from one of our scenes: Partner 1: ‘Oh look, I’m drinking soda again…’ Partner 2: ‘How did you end up doing that?’ Partner 1 has to come up with a situation on the fly. They have open space to work with, but Partner 2 could have made life easier for them. Instead: Partner 1: ‘Oh look, I’m drinking soda again…’ Partner 2: ‘From my perspective as your lawyer, I’m not sure that’s going to play well in our court appearance tomorrow’ I’m their lawyer, we have a court appearance tomorrow, and drinking soda is not a good idea. That gives us some structure, but not too much. Whether this is a perfect response I don’t know, but it definitely feels better and more supportive than asking a question. ## Observing / Unfolding There can be a strange dynamic in improvising being strangely constrained; where the teacher provides a suggestion and participants work off of it. What follows is freestyle, but your partner’s choices then also constrain your options. This led to a strange tension for me – wanting more freedom, but also wanting to be able to observe. The session reconfirmed one of my strengths is observing. I like to observe real-world situations, notice something, and respond. It comes much more easily to me (it’s also probably why I like observational comedy). Having the story unfold randomly within a constrained structure or scenario I couldn’t choose was far more challenging – there wasn’t much to observe; few tropes or human habits to riff off. Instead, letting it unfold required something different: that ability to think, but not *think*; being able to step out of being me, into another version of me. ## Embrace the ephemeral Per my interest in observing and noticing, I like to collect. I write notes all the time. In the improv class there’s no time for that – there’s no record of any sort. There’s just the people, the room, the moment. And then it’s gone. The nature of the improv class is to be ephemeral. A little like a dream, the sketches, scenes, and bits quickly fade away. By the time the door is opened to signal the end of the class they’re almost translucent, and the morning after they’ve almost all disappeared. Part of me wanted to record them, memorise them, use them. But something told me it was right to leave them just where they were – in the room, in a moment in time. No need to hoard them, just let them be part of the practice, deliberately invisible. Because that’s even more reason to continue. ### Thinking in Bits URL: https://www.howardgray.net/thinking-in-bits/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T17:00:39.000Z What’s a bit? A small amount of something, right? Or perhaps your mind goes to technology. Bits and bytes. Binary, all those zeroes and ones. What about when we think in bits? We’re probably thinking like engineers: honing down the software so it runs at its most efficient; calculating the Kilo, Mega, Giga and Tera bits and bytes required. Our thinking is precise, incisive, focused, logical. Or if we’re thinking in bits, maybe our minds are scattered. Our thinking *is in* bits. Thoughts come in unwieldy pieces. They’re not cohesive, flowing, or fully formed. Two ways of thinking in bits. Two very different feelings. Another way of thinking in bits takes a little bit (ahem) from both these postures. It’s the way of the performer. The artist, the curator, the improviser. As just as computer bits have become a ubiquitous part of the underpinnings of technologies we take for granted, these bits are the foundational part of the content and experiences that move us forward. In standup comedy vernacular, a bit is simply a small section of a performance. It’s a few bite (see what I did there?) size ideas, jokes, stories, and observations, packaged up. Usually they’ll link together around a particular topic. Bits are short, memorable, easy to recite and remember. They can be quick as a flash, or roll in and out like a wave. Sometimes they can be conjured in an instant, other times they’ll be sculpted over days, weeks, months, years. And just about every good bit needs a set up, some tension and suspense, cultural relevance, and a release – the pay-off, the takeaway, the breakthrough moment. A bit can trigger a thought, a smile, a chuckle, a bout of uncontrollable emotion. They can make us think about something in the world in a completely different way. They can show us a view into something we’d never even considered before. A bit can be the starter, the cornerstone content, the sidebar, the closer. It can be interlaced with other bits, or re-referenced, called back. A bit can evolve into the whole set. It can underpin the whole tour. It can even become the schtick, the signature. On occasion the bit makes an entire career. But more often than not, the bit has its time in the sun before it moves aside. It loses its lustre; it may need a modern-day remix to stay relevant and fresh; or what’s been built on top now renders it redundant. It’s lived its life. It may die a quiet, dignified death, or be celebrated and enshrined by others. Here’s the thing: these bits aren’t just for the standup comedians of the world. They’re not just for performers and entertainers, those in the world of show business. If we want to better communicate, connect, persuade, educate, and empower – bits are the building blocks for us to use. It’s worth us thinking in bits. ### Undertaking an Annual Life Review (Guide & Template) URL: https://www.howardgray.net/undertaking-a-2019-annual-life-review-guide-template/ Last updated: 2023-11-25T02:06:48.000Z *Note: This is an updated version of this post for 2019\. Head this way for the [original 2018 post](https://howardgray.net/2018/12/28/undertaking-an-annual-life-review-a-guide-template/?ref=howardgray.net)* (opens in a new tab)” href=”https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ais6wP0HxoFfvHR9JVkf2sw2ft\_EUBtb42JYOr6ObGo/edit?usp=sharing” target=”\_blank”>Get the template > --- At the end of 2018, my friend Steve Schlafman published this [Medium post](https://medium.com/@schlaf/how-to-conduct-an-annual-life-review-that-will-catapult-you-into-the-new-year-d5aaffebac1f?ref=howardgray.net) on undertaking an annual life review. I’ve tried reviews like this before but the process always felt either overly complicated and heavy, or too ethereal. Steve’s method strikes a really good balance. As I was working through it, I realized I was straddling two Google docs (one Sheet and one Doc). Some stuff was duplicated and it generally felt a bit unwieldy, so I merged them into one and added some simple formatting to make it easier to navigate. I was tempted to dive in on adding some more functionality but found that for this kind of project, less is more. I’ve used elements of this template throughout my coaching work this year and have found it to be a hugely valuable resource – especially as the year starts to come to a close. For this 2019 edition I’ve made a couple of small improvements to the original template. Below are links to Steve’s original post, and the template I created. Enjoy! [Original post >](https://medium.com/@schlaf/how-to-conduct-an-annual-life-review-that-will-catapult-you-into-the-new-year-d5aaffebac1f?ref=howardgray.net) [Template >](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ais6wP0HxoFfvHR9JVkf2sw2ft%5FEUBtb42JYOr6ObGo/edit?usp=sharing&ref=howardgray.net) ### Serious Fun URL: https://www.howardgray.net/serious-fun/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:31:06.000Z 10 years ago [The End ](https://djmag.com/longreads/end-club-changed-london?ref=howardgray.net)nightclub in London closed its doors for the final time. It’s hard to overstate the impact The End (along with close neighbour [fabric](http://www.fabriclondon.com/?ref=howardgray.net)) had on the electronic music landscape in the late 90s and early 2000s. Over the venue’s 14 years, the crew led by Layo Paskin and Mr. C hosted many of the world’s most vital electronic music artists, pioneered live streaming \[1\], opened a restaurant space, and started an eponymous record label. One of the releases on the End Recordings label was a mix compilation put together by Mr. C, taking its name from the in-house team’s flagship event *Subterrain*. At the end of his introduction in the album’s sleeve notes \[2\], Mr. C mentioned one of the key values that had made the party a sustained success. **Serious Fun**. There’s a lot in these two little words. *We take what we do seriously, and we have fun while we do it.* *We make sure we have a lot of fun…serious fun.* *This stuff is fun by default, but we care enough that we take it seriously….often very seriously.* *We’re dedicated to this work because it’s serious, and because it’s fun.* --- Serious Fun isn’t limited to nightclubs: in fact, Serious Fun is likely at the foundations of every successful creative endeavour. Serious Fun helps bring diverse groups together. Serious Fun cuts through the tension. Serious Fun lowers the barriers. Serious Fun brings liveliness and energy to what was previously mundane or routine. Serious Fun professionalises what may have been seen as trivial or frivolous. Serious Fun presents new opportunities. Serious Fun creates jobs, companies, and even industries. Of course, there’s [tension](https://howardgray.net/2019/09/09/a-new-podcast-the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net) here. We don’t want to be po-faced about fun, nor trivialise what’s serious. Yet there are so many more places that can benefit from Serious Fun: education; finance; construction; sustainability – you name it, there’s serious fun to be had. We can take what’s fun and build it into something more serious. We can take what’s serious and make it fun. We can bring in the Serious Fun from other places and apply it to our field of interest. Or we could create something brand new that’s Serious Fun – just because we can. --- \[1\] Ah, the days of waiting for RealPlayer buffer the audio through my 28.8k modem 🙂 \[2\] Sleeve/liner notes are one of the aspects I miss the most about CDs. ### Adventures #36: Go back to go forward URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-36-go-back-to-go-forward/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:18.000Z # Hi This is the month the calendar seems to matter most: holiday parties; deadlines; gatherings; dreams. The calendar also holds some secrets. For Jerry Seinfeld, the calendar held the secret to success: each day he wrote new material the calendar on his wall would get marked with a fat red “X”. The aim of the game? Never break the chain; keep on producing. We can also use the calendar to uncover some other secrets: where the dips appeared; or where we went off track. Yesterday I looked at my writing calendar and saw I’ve written 159 blog posts so far this year. In February alone there were 39. But in November there were zero. None at all. Looking back, February was the month when I felt particularly down and depressed. It seems I worked through this by writing. A lot. The November dearth came after I’d slowed on writing the previous month. I knew why: the muscles had gone slack; the autumnal blubber began to accrue. Inertia arrived. If success eventually boils down to making forward progress, never breaking the chain, sometimes the best thing we can do to go forward... is to go back. As we move forward into a new year and decade, it feels only right this month's dispatch goes back. Thank you for reading, and always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8bbd460c-2b83-431d-b433-aa8cbe295229_618x410.jpeg) **[The Annual Life Review](https://howardgray.net/2018/12/28/undertaking-an-annual-life-review-a-guide-template/?ref=howardgray.net)** I’ve found this to be a very helpful and centering exercise for looking back and propelling forward. My pal Steve originally put this together, and I created a Google Doc template to help make it easier to take on. **[\> Get started](https://howardgray.net/2018/12/28/undertaking-an-annual-life-review-a-guide-template/?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/9d72292b-a5d8-443c-a8e7-512e4c04cd27_600x450.jpeg) **[Life's a Pitch... but for who?](https://howardgray.net/2019/11/26/lifes-a-pitch-but-for-who/?ref=howardgray.net)** The one and only November blog post. Luckily, it’s among the best I’ve written this year. Pitching, storytelling, finding the others, and knowing who it’s really for. **[\> Check it out](https://howardgray.net/2019/11/26/lifes-a-pitch-but-for-who/?ref=howardgray.net)** \> **[Battle Scars](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/28/battle-scars/?ref=howardgray.net)**. I'm still surprised I published this, but pleased I did (and it's the final post from that bleak month of February). \> From the archive: **[One of my favourite episodes of my Tickets podcast](https://howardgray.net/2019/02/11/tickets-podcast-david-lavin-on-representing-some-of-the-worlds-leading-intellectual-talent/?ref=howardgray.net)** \- featuring speaking agent extraordinaire David Lavin. \> **[How to find a career that actually fits you](https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html?ref=howardgray.net)**: arguably the best post ever written on this topic. #### // CULTURE One piece each on two of London’s most important music spaces. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/45658414-fd6e-46ae-8a0c-9be58b010aa3_256x256.jpeg) **[Back to The End](https://djmag.com/longreads/end-club-changed-london?ref=howardgray.net)** I first went here in 2000\. It was incredible, and so, so loud: after that first night I couldn’t hear properly for a week. Here’s the story of an amazing place with serious bass. **[\> Read more](https://djmag.com/longreads/end-club-changed-london?ref=howardgray.net)** (Fun fact - somehow I had the privilege to DJ at The End a dozen or so times) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7b7a493f-b8a8-432b-97fe-78cdde93a092_600x600.jpeg) **[The Art of DJing - Craig Richards](https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3532?ref=howardgray.net)** Much of this interview with the long-time Fabric resident is applicable to other fields: collaboration with the aligned and adjacent; the value of collecting and connecting; and preparing incredibly well while knowing everything will probably change regardless **[\> Read more](https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3532?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8ed86e07-9043-4cc9-a0e8-c7ac12314c0f_700x700.jpeg) ### **[Calibre - Planet Hearth](https://open.spotify.com/album/35WGtiXgUzM8ZANghXQxl3?si=ZcUdVYf6QsaMpfoo9Pxqow&ref=howardgray.net)** Continuing this month's sub-theme of music inspirations, from his very first release in 2000 this producer created material on another level. His raw talent, like so many of the very best, was creating something magical from just the smallest selection of ingredients. Written in the wilds of Ireland after the passing of a friend, this new ambient album by Dominic Martin aka Calibre is a real treat. **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/album/35WGtiXgUzM8ZANghXQxl3?si=Dog1A2EVR8iDAmdo0du1JQ&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Finishing up the third cohort of the **[AMP NYC](http://www.nyc.gov/ampnyc?ref=howardgray.net)** accelerator program. Over 70 companies have now been through it and we just got news on the return on city (and taxpayer) investment...can't share the details yet but it's very positive :) \- One of my biggest learnings this year has been realising the value in being part of a tribe of like minds, so I'm creating a new workshop series for people who want to take the next step in their work. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/5518a5db-483d-49aa-9e8b-5f42a4ee326c_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### Life’s a Pitch...but for who? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lifes-a-pitch-but-for-who/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T13:52:34.000Z Over the last few months, I’ve been working with nearly two dozen founders from across the spectrum of New York’s media & entertainment industry. It’s the third cohort of New York City’s AMP NYC accelerator program, a first of its kind initiative helping small business owners in the city develop themselves and their businesses in today’s rapidly changing world. Being involved as a partner in the program has been a real privilege, and has also played a significant part in shaping my understanding of the city, its culture, the entrepreneurial landscape, and where I fit into it all. This cohort’s companies cover ground as diverse as science film festivals, eSports streaming technology, storytelling for progressive political campaigns, and touring burlesque shows. Over the 10 week program, each founder goes through three content modules, works with a mentor, and gets access to office hours support, as well as a bunch of supporting resources and private networking events. As the program reaches its conclusion, the focus shifts to three final elements. There’s the opportunity to share their work with prospects, associates, and broader industry at the program’s Demo Night, but before that comes a two-part presentation session to their mentors, program team, and cohort peers. In this session, each member of the cohort shares their personal learnings from the program, as well as the revised company pitch they’ve crafted after going through the program’s three modules. It’s this pitch that’s often met with the most trepidation. There are only 3 minutes to tell the story; to influence the audience; to put their best foot forward – to bring it all together. The other feeling alongside this trepidation is a different kind of uncertainty: specifically, figuring out who it’s for. Because the pitch is delivered in a safe space of program partners and peers rather than clients, customers or investors, I’m often asked by founders how exactly they should talk about the thing they do. *How do we make it land when those people – the people we serve – aren’t in the room?* The way I look at it is through the lens of what happens afterwards – of what happens when they’re not there to tell the story. Sure, the pitch they’ve crafted is something we hope they’ll use in client and prospect conversations, but far more than that it’s a way to spread the word. It’s a way to get others to tell the others. ## Telling the Others At first, this feels convoluted – *a way to tell the others?* – but once connected with network thinking (and the power of the 9% factor we explore in our workshop sessions) it all starts to make sense. The desired effect of the pitch to me is not to compel me to buy. After all, I’m very unlikely to be your target market. It’s to plant that seed in my mind. It’s to plant it so deeply and so specifically that the next day, the next week, the next month (hey, even the next year), when I meet that one of the others – that one who needs you, who’s seeking you out, who’s urgently got to get that job done – I instinctively know it’s you they need. And I can tell them. No hesitation. No confusion. I know why you’re the one to call, and I also know why you do the thing you do. I know the story, and why it matters. I know the proof and the connections. So your pitch isn’t really for me – at least not in the way we usually think about it. It’s for me to tell the others. > *What do you want me to see, feel, think, and remember?* > *What do you want me to tell the others?* And here’s the most interesting thing to think about. When someone comes into contact with you, your story, your work, your people – **who** are the others you want them to tell? And who will **they** tell? Because that choice matters most of all. You probably think you know, but if your pitch doesn’t work then plenty of others can tell lots of others…but they may not be the others you were really looking for in the first place. And so the pitch isn’t really just about what, or how or why. It’s who. So we can tell the others. ### Adventures #35: Is this the new normal? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/3880649_dispatch-nov-2019/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:17.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8e89fda6-da24-4568-9af0-5efa291ffb12_800x400.jpeg) Careers are no longer linear paths...so we're building a **[new way to navigate them](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray%5Fnewsletter%5Fnov19)**. Hi That first winter still feels like yesterday, yet somehow it's now the start of year 3 for me in NYC. I was told the first 12 months in a place like this is a fun yet disorienting blur; in year 2 there’s a semblance of finding rhythm, people, and place; then suddenly in the third year there’s the first genuine recognition of: ‘*Ohhh. We *live* here.*’ There's a moment where it’s just... normal. The new normal. Yes, New York is one of a kind, but these days almost every definition we have of 'normal' is being tested. And especially because we tell ourselves so many stories to post-rationalise our choices, it’s worth us taking the time to properly acknowledge the new normal, what's changed, and what may be coming next. Speaking of which, this month's dispatch includes a few things help you get to what's next. Thanks for reading, and always I'd love to hear what's got your attention right now. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/98bdae46-ef1f-407a-a33b-65c3dff26b2c_400x328.jpeg) **[Say hello to Fondo](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray%5Fnewsletter%5Fnov19)** This has been in development for a while: a new way of career pathfinding, wherever you're at. We've just released our public beta, and I'd love to get your feedback. **[\> Get started](https://www.itsfondo.com/?ref=howardgray%5Fnewsletter%5Fnov19)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/6d438b76-a7a5-475a-9bbb-45b7b5e4cbfe_400x400.png) **[The Tension: Talent agents, chaos, and Thai restaurants](https://www.anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** Here are 4 more episodes of my bitesize podcast: short, sharp, and actionable riffs on the tension in the work we do, and how we can get where we want to go. This month: the value of bonus content, managing the chaos, and why no cares about your project. **[\> Check it out](https://www.anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** **[\> Also: Why the future of learning is in the middle](https://howardgray.net/2019/10/16/why-the-future-of-learning-is-in-the-middle/?ref=howardgray.net)** Hello - me again. In case you didn't know, I’m a **[certified professional coach](https://www.howardgray.net/coaching)**. Recently I’ve been working with executives at companies like LinkedIn and Stella McCartney, as well as entrepreneurs building companies in music, media, and tech. I've helped them win new clients, become compelling public speakers, expand their teams, and transition careers. Want to get unblocked, access new ways of thinking, or be more productive? Hit reply and we can have a chat. #### // INNOVATION ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8f43e0bd-9494-4604-980f-824a0c9177b9_420x370.jpeg) **[Inside Copenhagen's race to be the first carbon-neutral city](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/11/inside-copenhagens-race-to-be-the-first-carbon-neutral-city?ref=howardgray.net)** The Danes certainly know how to do things great. The thing is, so much of this feels like common sense (which, of course, is rarely common). And if only every city embraced the idea of '*hedonistic sustainability*'... **[\> Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/11/inside-copenhagens-race-to-be-the-first-carbon-neutral-city?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d4c32441-656c-48f2-8f44-7c43ff6b8950_600x384.jpeg) **[Manhattan on the move](https://manpopex.us/?ref=howardgray.net)** I do love a good data visualisation. Here’s Manhattan block-by-block, hour-by-hour. Unsurprisingly, my little pocket of the East Village peaks at 9pm on a Friday. **[\> Visualise it](https://manpopex.us/?ref=howardgray.net)** \> Also: my good pals Tom & Brian have started a studio called Little Futures; why think 10 years ahead when there's already plenty to explore? **[Check it out >](https://littlefutures.club/?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/809ea705-e549-4a17-98ef-060c1ad93023_643x392.jpeg) **[The secret of Sriracha](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=%5FW02CtHuyE8&ref=howardgray.net)** How David Tran built Huy Fong Foods into a hot sauce empire...without spending a cent on advertising. **[\> Watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=%5FW02CtHuyE8&ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/c5e07ae7-7838-4d5c-9cd4-ca87d93e5e79_720x405.jpeg) **[America’s tipping system makes no sense](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/american-tipping-system-makes-no-sense/600865/?ref=howardgray.net)** Derek Thompson is one of my favourite writers. Here’s his take on why one aspect of American culture is a cover for inequality. **[\> Read more](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/american-tipping-system-makes-no-sense/600865/?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/bf7581c1-9047-49c8-9a2a-db7ec363bef0_700x700.jpeg) ### **[Steve Hauschildt](https://open.spotify.com/artist/2L00vHmYcwC9OlsEv6M5UO?si=VV1fCjflROC6OQ-Ojnjy9A&ref=howardgray.net)** He's been around for a while, but a recent discovery for me: Steve Hauschildt creates trippy, airy, new-wave influenced music on labels including NYC/Ann Arbor label Ghostly (which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year). *(note: lots of electronica has appeared here of late; I need more punk rock in my life)* **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/artist/2L00vHmYcwC9OlsEv6M5UO?si=VV1fCjflROC6OQ-Ojnjy9A&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Hitting the road with workshops in Boston, North Carolina, Missouri, New Jersey & NYC \- Moving apartment. Then not. Then *definitely* moving. Then maybe... not. Then... oh, but it's got high ceilings! extending the current lease for another year. Standard. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8e8e3605-80c1-4f15-a735-9f8247a59382_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### The Tension: Chaos / Order URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-tension-chaos-order/ Last updated: 2021-07-27T20:17:13.000Z What we can learn from the world of talent agencies, and why invisible order can power our infinite loop. #### **Listen now: [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6LMEdgYVPEaG5V8to6FXx0?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tension/id1478890616?ref=howardgray.net) | [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=461284&refid=stpr&ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9kZDZjNzJjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz&ref=howardgray.net) | [PocketCasts](https://pca.st/ufxha7kj?ref=howardgray.net) | [Breaker](https://www.breaker.audio/the-tension-1?ref=howardgray.net) | [Overcast](https://overcast.fm/itunes1478890616/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** --- We're usually focused on one or the other. Some of us work chaotically, frantically, excitedly. Papers scatter and loose ends stay loose. Some of us thrive on the order of things. Keeping matters tightly controlled, in check, and aligned. Chaos and Order may not show up in the same place or at the same time, but we’ve got to be aware of their existence. One line of work where Chaos and Order is on full display is the world of talent agencies. Agents typically operate in chaos - pulling together ideas; going out and meeting buyers, artists, and managers; throwing dates in and out of calendars; shifting and shunting and balancing options. As a deal, or a number of deals, begin to solidify, order has to kick in. An agent with their own roster doing decent enough business will have an assistant - the more successful agents will have an office full of them. The assistant brings order to the chaos. Pouring the chaos through a funnel to create something clear and controllable. The order doesn’t just apply to deals. It applies to managing schedules, fending off unwanted noise, But here’s the thing. Too much chaos and it all falls apart. The deal doesn’t happen, a zero gets missed off the fee, or the clients lose trust. Too much order and there’s no flex, no room for movement, no ability to respond to changing circumstances. The answer would seem to be to find a place where order starts and chaos ends. It’s nearly right, but not quite. It’s an infinite loop, not a dashed line. The momentum has to continue. The chaos has to be allowed to do its thing. The order has to slip in and out, pulling out and shaping exactly what’s needed. And it needs to be able to keep happening And because it’s a loop not a line, The Tension is in how we can turn chaos into order - and back again - without losing the magic or momentum. ### The Tension: Time / Energy URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-tension-time-energy/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:42:40.000Z On this episode of The Tension: Untangling two of our most valuable resources. #### **Listen now: [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6LMEdgYVPEaG5V8to6FXx0?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tension/id1478890616?ref=howardgray.net) | [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=461284&refid=stpr&ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9kZDZjNzJjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz&ref=howardgray.net) | [PocketCasts](https://pca.st/ufxha7kj?ref=howardgray.net) | [Breaker](https://www.breaker.audio/the-tension-1?ref=howardgray.net) | [Overcast](https://overcast.fm/itunes1478890616/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** --- ### Why the future of learning is in the middle URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-the-future-of-learning-is-in-the-middle/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T13:52:55.000Z *Become a workshop creator and magical things can happen* The view was spectacular and the light poured in. In a top-floor conference room located in one of Manhattan’s most noteworthy skyscrapers, it was time to close the door, ignore the rest of the world, lean up against the window, and take a precious few moments of private time before cleaning up. One of Roman Roy’s moments of misbehavior in HBO’s ‘*Succession*’*?* Fortunately not. It was the end of a training day for two groups of senior executives at one of the world’s most well-known financial services companies, and my co-lead and I had just bid our last attendee farewell. As well as navigating the groups through various technical concepts and exercises, we’d had to answer some challenging questions on a variety of topics: from privacy and ethics; to the best programming language for a specific type of data analysis. Taking a look at the feedback forms, we’d nailed it – both sessions were a big success. My partner turned to me with a look of exhausted satisfaction at a job well done, and with questions on her mind. You wouldn’t have realised, but she was fairly new to this kind of work. > *“Today went really well, but it’s a lot! I’ve done a good amount of public speaking before, but this…this is…different. And it’s not really just teaching – one of the guys at the office comes from a teaching background, and he said the same. It’s kinda hard to describe”* Yup. It kinda is. It’s hard to describe, hard to define, hard to label. Is what we do here teaching? Is it Training? Speaking? Presenting? Facilitating? Or something else? These labels and their various connotations show up a lot in my work, especially as education and learning undergo huge change and reimagining. One way I’ve been thinking about the type of experiential learning work I do is through a simple triangle. ## **The 3 elements** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Triangle1-1.jpg) At one angle there’s Teaching. Teachers need to know curriculum, concepts, connections, learning styles, and learners. Teaching tends to be instructive, content-driven, and pretty rigorous, with a focus on attainment and absorption. Learning is the goal. But teachers don’t necessarily need to be experts (as [Adam Grant has pointed out](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/opinion/sunday/college-professors-experts-advice.html?ref=howardgray.net)), nor do they have to have direct industry experience in the area they teach: a practitioner does not necessarily make a good teacher (and visa versa, of course). Second, there’s facilitation. A facilitator is there to guide a group towards particular goals, but facilitation is far less instructive than teaching, with less (or sometimes zero) content to communicate. A facilitated environment is often highly collaborative, and needs plenty of room-reading skills, plus the ability to fluidity course correct, navigate, and mediate. Because of its more open and free-flowing nature the facilitated space is very different every time, so as a facilitator you never really know what you’re going to get. This, of course, can be a blessing and a curse. Third, there’s public speaking. Notwithstanding any Q&A sections, it’s usually one-way communication, and the content tends to change little from one gig to the next. A high-quality public speaker possesses the ability to inspire, communicate, delight, and amaze, along with clearly demonstrating their expertise and credibility in the domain of which they are speaking. However, they have little responsibility for the outcomes: their role is not to guide discussion as a facilitator would, or take on the teacher’s role of ensuring no one is left behind. The cynic may even think speakers are sometimes like a panda: just eats shoots and leaves (and then sends an invoice). The best speakers, though, are able to go beyond and deliver something more than just a pre-set talk – as we’ll see below. --- So with a brief descriptor added for each, here’s how our triangle shapes up: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Triangle2.png) ## **Moving to the middle** For those seeking to help people and organizations get where they want to go, I believe the sweet spot is right in the middle of this triangle. As in the past, success can still be found by focusing on just one or two of the angles of the triangle, but the changing world we live in demands more: increased mobility and adaptability; the ability to connect dots; to hold attention; and to explain topics and concepts simply and crisply. To get here means moving to the middle. Without it, we encounter the public speaker who can’t read a room and anticipate an audience’s needs. The facilitator unable to deconstruct and translate a challenging brief into something clear and actionable. The teacher who lacks the ability to spark their students’ imaginations and aspirations. Moving to the middle you can teach, instruct, and explain complex concepts. You’re able to engage and inspire with compelling stories, along with thought-provoking and actionable real-world experience. You empower participants, ask open questions, and believe in their ability to discover interesting answers to tricky problems. You go beyond the textbook and design [obstacle courses](https://postindustrialdesign.school/background/?ref=howardgray.net) to encourage curiosity, learning, and resilience. Not every role necessarily *needs* to move to the middle, but almost everyone can benefit from spending some time there. And it’s possible to get there in a few ways – either by dipping into the middle for inspiration, or shifting from one angle of the triangle to another: from instructive to narrative; open format to outcome-focused; or going from selecting stories to suggesting spaces to explore. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Triangle-Arrows.png) Here are a few ideas of where a few roles could start to shift and evolve as they spend some in the middle: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Triangle-Roles.png) And it’s not just roles that have facilitation, keynote speaking, or teaching at their core – more and more people will benefit from going to the middle: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/10/Triangle-Main-1.png) ## From labels to workshops Going back to labels, what do we call this place? This middle has many names, yet it also has none. Perhaps it doesn’t need one at all: some of the best teachers, trainers, coaches, and facilitators already work in this way, so why throw in more labels that may create barriers and confusion? However, something that gets to the crux of what the middle represents are [workshops](https://www.howardgray.net/workshop-creator-email-course/). There are a few[ flavours of workshop](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/02/26/3-flavours-of-workshop/), each with different features – yet no matter the flavour, they all share a few common traits. Workshops aren’t about sitting still obediently, listening to an expert who’s put up on a pedestal. They’re not one-way, and they’re not hierarchical. Workshops are about doing the work, getting hands-on, being inspired. They’re about connecting with others, experimenting, and testing out something new. They’re about getting stuck, making breakthroughs, seeing another way of doing things, and another way to think. Workshops may just be the future of learning. ## **Hybrid talent, hybrid learning** The people best positioned to imagine, produce, and deliver the future of learning are those in the middle – the hybrids. They’re hard to label and difficult to pin down, but the best of them are becoming valuable assets in many contexts and industries. Some are even becoming [Educators in Residence](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/08/01/the-educator-in-residence/). Right now they’re underrated, rare, and valuable, and their skills are scarce. To become a part of this future, many more of us will need to build these hybrid skills. We’ll build them through practicing visual design, undertaking coaching programs, applying the lens of the Feynman technique, understanding nonviolent communication, exploring behavioral psychology, fostering intersectional ideas, and much more. And we’ll utilize the people already in the middle to help us do this. The best news of all is that leveling up has become easier, more effective and more enjoyable than ever before. Technology enables us to create globally-connected cohorts, to share ideas in an instant, and to inject content and concepts with our own unique signature style. Tomorrow’s most impactful growth, transformation, and breakthroughs will come from applying the principles of workshops, aided by technology, in environments carefully designed and curated by the humans with hybrid skills. This approach will work for individuals, it’ll work for teams, and it’ll work for organizations. In fact, it’s already doing so. As I’ve seen in my work designing workshops for emerging entrepreneurs, senior executives, and future leaders, these are places where magical things can happen. To get there, we just need to start moving to the middle. --- Want to learn more? Try out my [free workshop design course](https://howardgray.net/workshop-creator-email-course/?ref=howardgray.net), or [get in touch](https://howardgray.net/about-me/?ref=howardgray.net)to talk about what’s possible for you in the middle. *thanks to Tom Critchlow and Murray Gray for their feedback on drafts of this article.* ### The Tension: No One Cares URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-tension-no-one-cares/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:42:50.000Z On this episode of The Tension: A birthday lunch, some home truths, and the feeling of freedom from knowing that no one cares. #### **Listen now: [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6LMEdgYVPEaG5V8to6FXx0?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tension/id1478890616?ref=howardgray.net) | [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=461284&refid=stpr&ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9kZDZjNzJjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz&ref=howardgray.net) | [PocketCasts](https://pca.st/ufxha7kj?ref=howardgray.net) | [Breaker](https://www.breaker.audio/the-tension-1?ref=howardgray.net) | [Overcast](https://overcast.fm/itunes1478890616/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** --- ### Adventures #34: Getting the word out URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-34-getting-the-word-out/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:16.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/411006eb-f754-4c6f-aa21-fc20195edb15_900x506.jpeg) Inspiration at the Bronx Creative & Tech Career Pathways group meeting hosted by the good folks at **[Dreamyard](https://www.dreamyard.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** Hi There are times when we need to get the word out: launching a project; finding a job; seeking like minds. But it’s not just about the message or the medium. It’s also about the pipes: how we gain and build distribution. While there are a hundred ways to think about this, perhaps it boils down to two things: (1) Keep producing: showing up with the work again and again...and again (2) Make it easy for people to tell others who care Consistently doing (1) means the work will get better. When the work gets better, (2) starts to happen. And (2) eventually leads to us becoming irresistible to the partners, advocates, and gatekeepers who can amplify our messages even more. Taking this road is long and bumpy, and success is not guaranteed. But it’s almost definitely the best way to go. Trying to take my own advice, I’m showing up with this email on the first Thursday, a **[podcast every Tuesday](http://www.anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)**, and now back on **[Instagram](http://www.instagram.com/howard%5Fgray?ref=howardgray.net)** with little snippets of career fuel. Perhaps you'll tell the others. And more importantly: what can I tell the others about you? Thanks for reading. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/ad93fc0c-d2d8-410c-b08b-f245bd5c774a_700x525.jpeg) **[The Tension: barbershops, magpies, and magic](https://www.anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** My new weekly podcast continues: short, sharp, and actionable riffs on the tension in the work we do, and how we can get where we want to go. **[\> Check it out](https://www.anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** \> **[The exercise regime of a chess grandmaster](https://www.espn.com/espn/story/%5F/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess?ref=howardgray.net)** \> So you want to be a coach? **[Advice for those starting the journey](https://medium.com/reboot-leadership-resiliency/so-you-want-to-be-a-coach-a-letter-to-those-who-are-starting-out-on-their-path-to-becoming-a-coach-5b42f5bf31bc?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/07eef72b-2949-499b-8bbd-db81adbb50ef_700x525.png) **[How to use TikTok](https://medium.com/@mattprd/how-tiktok-is-changing-the-world-and-youre-missing-it-fa283338649a?ref=howardgray.net)** As if I needed a further reminder I'm not 25 anymore, another social network takes off and leaves me feeling like a conservative octogenarian who's been teleported into a Sunday morning at Berghain. Luckily, this breakdown of TikTok makes things a little easier to understand. **[\> Read more](https://medium.com/@mattprd/how-tiktok-is-changing-the-world-and-youre-missing-it-fa283338649a?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/6abe1e65-4588-4c57-a77f-8f0c78d20f2e_1010x672.png) **[The business of Disney](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFrXy2%5FUYAEiIsu?format=jpg&name=4096x4096&ref=howardgray.net)** I do love a good infographic. Here's one mapping out the full extent of Waystar Royco Disney's global assets. **[\> Read more](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFrXy2%5FUYAEiIsu?format=jpg&name=4096x4096&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // INNOVATION ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/c81768f1-a4f5-4652-a7a9-c7547e9d8046_1024x725.png) **[WeWTF](https://medium.com/@henry.hawksberry/is-we-work-a-fraud-5b78987d3e61?ref=howardgray.net)** WeWork have taken a pasting in the last few weeks. Alongside **[Scott Galloway's highly acerbic zingers](https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf-part-deux?ref=howardgray.net)**, this piece by (probably) a writer under pseudonym gets right into it. Watch out for the book and movie adaptations coming soon. **[\> Read more](https://medium.com/@henry.hawksberry/is-we-work-a-fraud-5b78987d3e61?ref=howardgray.net)** \> Also: **[The graveyard of failure: 155 corporate innovations gone bad](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/corporate-innovation-product-fails/?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/4a47cc9d-51ce-46d6-acd1-fbca8ac47688_960x640.jpeg) **[No AC to DC](https://howardgray.net/2019/09/11/no-ac-to-dc/?ref=howardgray.net)** A short tale of a trip to Washington DC via the greasy bowels of New York's Penn Station. **[\> Read more](https://howardgray.net/2019/09/11/no-ac-to-dc/?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/0a862df1-834a-4589-aea2-d739f606ef13_320x320.jpeg) ### **[Barker: Utility](https://open.spotify.com/album/5F3YJdIjGHhnUVuD96G1mz?si=3OSmBvSbRx-67EhV36vLPA&ref=howardgray.net)** Berlin-based record label Ostgut Ton is often associated with sparse, subterranean Teutonic techno, but they also put out a steady stream of more fluid material that dares to soar and dream - like this lovely new album from Sam Barker. (thanks to MFG for putting this under my nose) **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/album/5F3YJdIjGHhnUVuD96G1mz?si=3OSmBvSbRx-67EhV36vLPA&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Starting Launching a startup (want the link? Let me know!) \- Kicking off the third edition of the 3 month AMP NYC program with 23 founders of media & entertainment businesses here in NYC \- Watching season 2 of '**[Succession](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/succession?ref=howardgray.net)**' and trying to figure out all the filming locations ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/86390a33-b1c2-4e48-9cbf-e61181d4de95_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### The Tension: Natural / Rounded URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-tension-microscope-telescope-2/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:04:53.000Z Lessons from a New York institution: Astor Place Hairstylists. #### **Listen now: [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6LMEdgYVPEaG5V8to6FXx0?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tension/id1478890616?ref=howardgray.net) | [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=461284&refid=stpr&ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9kZDZjNzJjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz&ref=howardgray.net) | [PocketCasts](https://pca.st/ufxha7kj?ref=howardgray.net) | [Breaker](https://www.breaker.audio/the-tension-1?ref=howardgray.net) | [Overcast](https://overcast.fm/itunes1478890616/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** --- Thanks to Karen Gehres for kindly providing permission to use audio from her film ‘[Astor Barber All-Stars](https://www.amazon.com/Astor-Barber-All-Stars-Enrico-Vezza/dp/B07FZQ17GT?ref=howardgray.net)‘ in this episode. ### The Question: 'So, what do you do?' URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-question-so-what-do-you-do/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:18:22.000Z A Thursday afternoon as the summer blinked into view. The two of us pulled up a pair of high seats at the bar. Prohibition throwback, well-worn menu, metropolitan pricing. After an introduction from a mutual connection, we’d emerged unscathed from the obligatory tennis match of email-based scheduling – the clay court attrition through the month of May. This was the first time we’d met in person, and besides some light background reading we really didn’t know too much about the other. As our respective hind parts hit the hided leather bar stools, two glasses of fizzing water slid into view, over-iced effervescence. *‘So. What are you up to?’* he asked. It was definitely a better version of *the question,* but underneath *the question* still lurked*.* The question in question? The scourge of [hybrids and shapeshifters](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/02/20/career-fuel-be-like-bowie/) everywhere, of course. *‘What do you do?’* This time I didn’t need it. This time around I’d had some luck. --- *‘What are you up to?’* is a better question than *the question*. It allows us to tell stories of current projects and escapades that illustrate our why, what and how in a far more meaningful and compelling way than just [labels](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/05/15/labels-in-labels-out/). It brings those labels, connotations, and pre-conceptions into the present, with something that’s much more tangible, visceral, and fully formed. Of course, we don’t usually get the better question. We usually get the question that expects the label. That question that expects the flat response; the answer that leaves us frustrated that we couldn’t offer more. Even with *the question* we have a solution, though. We can combat it with some jiu-jitsu. And we don’t need to be an expert to apply it. It’s blue belt, not black. We simply flip *‘what do you do?’* so we can generously, honestly and compellingly respond with the answer to *‘what are you up to?’* . It’s just about doing the reps, building up the muscle memory, and increasing our confidence so we can apply that jiu jitsu leverage and flip the question. We can answer with clarity, skill, timeliness and emotion. Life, not labels. It ends up serving us, and them, better. ### The Tension: Microscope / Telescope URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-tension-microscope-telescope/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:41:24.000Z We all need to be able to deftly utilize the microscope and the telescope. One probably won’t be enough. #### **Listen now: [Anchor](https://anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net) | [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6LMEdgYVPEaG5V8to6FXx0?ref=howardgray.net) | [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tension/id1478890616?ref=howardgray.net) | [Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=461284&refid=stpr&ref=howardgray.net) | [Google Podcasts](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9kZDZjNzJjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz&ref=howardgray.net) | [PocketCasts](https://pca.st/ufxha7kj?ref=howardgray.net) | [Breaker](https://www.breaker.audio/the-tension-1?ref=howardgray.net) | [Overcast](https://overcast.fm/itunes1478890616/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)** --- ![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/912fNIUO%2BnL.jpg) Footnote: The introduction for this week’s episode comes from [‘Through Galileo’s Telescope’ (1933)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwY00aykjC4&ref=howardgray.net) and was inspired by my friend [Tom Critchlow](http://www.tomcritchlow.com/?ref=howardgray.net), who kindly gifted me this wonderful little book a few months ago. ### No AC to DC URL: https://www.howardgray.net/no-ac-to-dc/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:24:24.000Z It’s that time. I’m off to Penn Station. I’m taking the B line to what is, kindly, the B list of train terminals. And then my subway mysteriously skips my exit point, Herald Square. It doesn’t really even skip it. It just chugs, almost apologetically, except with no apologies forthcoming. The train stops, jolts, then hits number 42, Bryant Park. Mixing mathematics and geography I try to way find. Taxi, Lyft, risk the reserve subway journey, walk? Why not make the best of it? A brisk walk through the park will still get me to the church on time. It’s 2:36pm. Plenty. However, 9 blocks and 2 avenues in 85 degrees with 2 bags is not wise. The route is thick with foot traffic and the huge growls of New Jersey trucks slumping around corners like punchdrunk old heavyweights rolling into the 11th round. The heat starts to close in, the famous New York late summer humidity taking me under its all-encompassing cloak. The only consolation to the inevitable is my black attire. Hitting 35th and the air around Penn Station shifts from New York’s usual mix of trash, heat, and grilled food with a side of oxygen to a majority percentage of pungent nostril-flaring skunk weed. The crowd gets more renegade, the intensity levels crank. Gasping into the station’s greasy bowels with 3 minutes until departure, I’ve in fact timed it just perfectly. Straight on, sweet seat, tuck myself in for a dreamy ride through the eastern states before pulling up at the capital capitol. Except Acela train 2164 is delayed. No track announcement. Standby. Zero ID. Crowds of shirt sleeves and AirPods stand motionless as they engross themselves in jabbing out one line *business* emails. I take refuge at what is likely the best outpost Penn has to offer: Starbucks. The service is friendly, but as expected they slowly confect a boiling coffee-like drink that’s most definitely not what I ordered. Kicking my heels as I await the tapered cylinder of joy, the track is announced. I sense the murmuring stampede occurring 100 feet away. My sunk costs are just over $5\. I’m caught between coffee and early boarding. Loss aversion kicks in. I wait for the coffee. And wait. Rasping oversized beverage finally arrives. To the 9W platform I go, striding manfully. Primed with my business class ticket, I skirt around the crush of passengers to the priority boarding lane. ‘I’m business’ I say, a mix of pride and cringe. ‘The whole train is business. This *is* a *business class* **train**’ says she. ‘But I thought I was…business’ I wimper. Reality bites. Business-class on a standard train clearly beats standard class in business. I have fallen, crestfallen, face-first into the Amtrak trap. And by now I’ve lost my place in line and board just about dead last. Onwards. Down to the platform, quick decision: get to the back of the train, the area where others dare not tread. But it is full. Completely full, save for 1 space, reserved for disabled passengers. Like a confused cornered animal, my head jolts side to side as I assess my options. Take the disabled spot? That’s asking for upset. It’s Larry David. Must not. Be the better man. Find another spot. Or not? No. As I turn to contemplate one last time, the seat has been filled. I’m left standing, literally and figuratively, in the place between, the concertina between cars, next to the coffee machine and a stern, bull-necked Amtrak official named Gerhard. By now I’m really feeling the Manhattan humidity do its work. The real effects only hit when the cool AC blows. I’m perspiring uncontrollably, weekend bag weighing down with steadfast commitment at my shoulder and neck muscles. And so I do what any self-respecting self-absorbed person would. Get on the WiFi and disappear into the inner-outer world. But remember, this is Amtrak. Like the de facto leaders of more than one English speaking nation, it just sputters, throws me off, lies to me, sputters, lies again, and then disappears with zero regard for what I signed up for – let alone my ongoing wellbeing. After what seems like an age of grimacing with my back against the (toilet) wall, the conductor arrives. ‘Tickets’, he states matter of factly. ‘Seats?’, I quip, with a schoolboy tilt of the head to my fellow standing traveler who’s nudged up alongside unflinching Gerhard. An unnecessary and flippant comment. I know I must control the sardonic tone. I should have learned by now. But learn I will not. Conscience finally arrives. Knowing this is nothing to do with the conductor, and seeing he has a kindly look in his eyes, I meekly apologise, and he leads me to a gap in the next car. A bank of four: the ones with the puny table in the middle which has less grip than a well-oiled waterslide. ‘Anything with a two? I’ve got really long legs. I don’t really fit in the fours.’ ‘I guess you could stand’ replies the conductor. ‘Fair point’. I slope towards my new home, at least thankful I have somewhere to rest my hind parts for the next few hours. A disgruntled middle-aged ‘business’ chap with a sharp triangular nose and thick, round glasses huffs as I stand over him like a hipsterised Oliver Twist, eyes expectant and deferential. He continues his phone call without making any eye contact or other recognition of my presence. Sensing his simmering annoyance and impatience I continue my scene as the scolded child, grabbing what I can from my bag before being stuck in the naughty corner. I drag my limb-driven carcass into the window seat, clanking my knees against the table leg and my other new tete-a-tete partner in front of me. Phone guy gets back into position, doing his upmost to keep at least a foot away from my panting, perspiring torso. I hunch down over my laptop, feel the back of my neck tug and stab, slurp down the rest of my treacly coffee-esque beverage, and get down to work. On what I now not know. But there’s time. So I write this up, and at the third time of asking Amtrak’s WiFi lurches into action and publishes it live, like the octogenerian magician on his final cruise ship tour, arthritic hands pulling that rabbit out of the hat out one last time. DC here we come. ### A new podcast: The Tension URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-new-podcast-the-tension/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:41:14.000Z *A short-form podcast series on noticing, embracing, and harnessing the tension that shows up in the work we do, so we can get where we want to go.* [Listen on Anchor](https://anchor.fm/the-tension?ref=howardgray.net)| [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/6LMEdgYVPEaG5V8to6FXx0?si=QLYX-mYOSJexFNF8FbXNQg&ref=howardgray.net)| [Listen on Stitcher](https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=461284&refid=stpr&ref=howardgray.net) In September 2017 I moved from London to New York. Whilst I arrived with a whole load of luck, love, and privilege on my side, the journey has still had more than a few bumps in the road. Two years on from pretty much starting over in a new city, country, and culture I find myself looking back at what’s happened, what I’ve noticed and what I’ve learned: From dissolving pre-conceptions, making missteps, learning things the hard way, getting lost in the idea maze, making unbalanced comparisons, telling myself stories, feeling the dark clouds loom, getting that sense of pushing towards the edge. Of seeking…something. Of finding new tribes, seeing completely new ways forward, broadening horizons, and surfacing undiscovered, hidden, and maybe some previously silenced pieces of myself. Of seeing things in others I just didn’t see before. The thing I’ve noticed the most is *the tension*. --- As a coach, teacher, and guide helping people to get where they want to go, a lot of what I see happening in the work many of us do boils down to working through the tension: the resistance, contradictions, trade-offs, and opportunity costs we all have to tussle with. I’ve seen it in my work with senior executives at some of the world’s most prominent companies; with creative entrepreneurs seeking to grow their businesses; with professionals entering career transitions; with young people taking their first steps out into the wider world. The Tension could be deciding how to best Fit In or Stand Out; figuring out when it’s time to Create or time to Capture; or how to go from Employee to Entrepreneur, and maybe back again. In fact, whatever we’re doing, the tension will eventually show up. Sometimes we know when to expect it; other times we have no idea when it will appear, or how it will manifest. When we think about tension it’s usually in an uncomfortable or negative way. It can get in our way or hold us up. It tells us we can’t do it, that this won’t work. It’s weird, they’ll hate it, we’ll fail. What’s the point. Why bother. But it can also hold us up and support us, and can even drive us forward. We just need to recognise the tension, and find ways to utilise it. --- So this is a podcast series on noticing, embracing, and harnessing the tension that shows up in the work we do, so we can get where we want to go. The episodes are deliberately short. There are no guests, no glitz, no gimmicks. It’s just an exploration on the tension we feel and what we may be able to do with it, so we can get out of our own way and go and do the work we want to do. This is here to provide some career fuel for your journey, whichever way you’re going. Hope to see you on board. --- ### Adventures #33: Local / Global URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-33-local-global/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:05:15.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/77f88290-2f68-4be5-8217-cc4fb4bc9c80_1200x525.jpeg) My Mum and Dad in a canoe on Lac du Sable, Quebec This past weekend I headed a few hours north of the US/Canadian border and into the wilds of Quebec. Alongside the incredible nature in that part of the world, something that struck me was the power of both local and global. Globalisation was marked by the top-end Dyson hand dryers installed in the most remote of roadside cafes. Meanwhile, there were the highly specific local jobs and valuable tacit knowledge that so often remain underexposed - or even completely ignored - by the urbanites. As the world of work undeniably changes (regardless of our geography or status), perhaps we can benefit from taking a moment to notice both the local and the global. After all, innovation and inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. I hope you enjoy this month's dispatch. and as always I'd love to hear where you're spending your time right now. Just hit reply. Thanks for reading. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/6dc34a28-48ed-4bd9-8cf1-5232c1eb638d_700x700.png) **[I've launched a new podcast](https://howardgray.net/portfolio/the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net)** While **[Tickets](http://www.ticketspodcast.com/?ref=howardgray.net)** takes a pause, *The Tension* begins. This is a podcast all about how we can notice, embrace, and harness the tension that shows up in the work we do, so we can get where we want to go. Each episode is simple, bitesize, and ready for your ears every Tuesday. The first 5 episodes are available... now! **[\> Check it out](https://www.howardgray.net/portfolio/the-tension)** \> Quartz's 'Obsession' series is a great way of leveling up on all sorts of topics. **[Here's a recent one on Alzheimer's](https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1700802/?ref=howardgray.net)**. The 'career fuel'? Growth in care and support for older people. #### // MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b5bb76b6-2545-4aa7-8cd1-9d2158a93d53_1200x675.jpeg) **[Nightcrawler](https://www.scriptdoctor.be/assets/nightcrawler.pdf?ref=howardgray.net)** A reignited interest of mine is reading TV and movie scripts. I came across the 'Nightcrawler' one last week (having watched the movie a while ago) and it's so incredibly written I had to share it here. **[\> Read more](https://www.scriptdoctor.be/assets/nightcrawler.pdf?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d9ccc1e8-a4f7-4f5b-b78c-10bcf12fa8fc_500x283.png) **[Howard Gray Stern is being ripped off](https://medium.com/@awilkinson/howard-stern-is-getting-ripped-off-1b721cc2f3f2?ref=howardgray.net)** The rise of paid subscription podcasts, how Spotify would pitch Joe Rogan (with his 11m listeners), and another new entrant into the podcasting industry. **[\> Read more](https://medium.com/@awilkinson/howard-stern-is-getting-ripped-off-1b721cc2f3f2?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // INNOVATION ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/b51a54df-654c-4a14-b2ea-0d066d46c6b2_600x380.jpeg) **[Starbucks is your new bank](http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2019/08/starbucks-monetary-superpower.html?ref=howardgray.net)** They have \~$1.6 billion in 'stored value card liabilities' (aka the Starbucks card). This simultaneously acts as a loan from customers to the company. Loyalty never tasted so good (shame the coffee still doesn't). **[\> Read more](http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2019/08/starbucks-monetary-superpower.html?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/d959986f-47b4-40c0-9329-c198be35e738_700x423.jpeg) **[NYC's first skateboarding superstar](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/29/magazine/tyshawn-jones.html?ref=howardgray.net)** On the 20th anniversary of the release of Tony Hawk's eponymous video game that catapulted him to stardom, here's another riveting skate story told in style. **[\> Read more](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/29/magazine/tyshawn-jones.html?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/f78ba7f1-e7e1-4d94-8661-8e02fce684d8_436x430.png) ### **[LUZoSCURA](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3DyKnsgSZbCRMS0W4lAi18?si=5iVsC-E%5FQ8CkEFkMU04SZw&ref=howardgray.net)** A regularly updated selection of music from house & techno icon Sasha. Going across the spectrum of ambient, electronica, classical, and alternative, many of the tracks here have led me into all sorts of wonderful musical rabbit holes... **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3DyKnsgSZbCRMS0W4lAi18?si=5iVsC-E%5FQ8CkEFkMU04SZw&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Starting a startup (yup...more on that in next month's edition) \- Joining the advisory board of SXSW 2020 \- Chickening out of sending you the first few pages of a screenplay I've been working on \- Preparing for the third cohort of the AMP NYC accelerator program. Applications close next week. **[Apply here >](http://nyc.gov/ampnyc?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/5d4a4962-9b58-4a0e-a841-c4038482ac22_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### Overwhelm, Skateboards, and a new podcast URL: https://www.howardgray.net/overwhelm-skateboards-and-a-new-podcast/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:40:58.000Z When we see a top performer in action they can seem to be floating on air. They’re able to effortlessly riff, duck, and weave. The waves they ride just keep on waving. We wonder: how do they manage this to keep this going seamlessly for 30 minutes, an hour, a day, a week? Month after month, year after year? Take standup comedy, for example. The standards for stand up comedians usually start at a 5-minute set. Doesn’t sound like much, but try it out and it’ll feel like an age. From there a standup can work up to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe 30\. The aim is to get to [the hour](https://howardgray.net/2019/03/07/la-story-get-to-the-hour/?ref=howardgray.net). The problem we face is we look at the hours, days, or months first. Even though we aspire to become the star performers, the reality is they can intimidate us. They don’t push towards doing the work: they inadvertently push us away. We ask ourselves: > How could we ever freestyle a whole track? > > Teach a complete semester? > > Play the entire season? > > Complete a full routine? This overwhelm, this fear, creates resistance and pushes us away from [the flame](https://howardgray.net/2019/08/22/stories-around-the-fire/?ref=howardgray.net). Perhaps we need to think about skateboards – or, as Henrik Kniberg puts it when thinking about building products – opting for a skateboard ahead of a chassis. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/wordpress/2019/08/Making-sense-of-MVP-.png) source: [https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp](https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp?ref=howardgray.net) We often look at the gleaming Bentley or Aston Martin, and dream of taking it for a spin, but even if we do believe we can get there, the steps on the way can feel too much to tackle. And so to get started we may focus in on creating a tyre, a gearstick, or an exhaust pipe. There’s value in the design and engineering of doing this work, but we may miss the question of what and who these efforts are for. And we risk falling into the trap of perfectionism, of the pieces never leaving the assembly line. Never even leaving the drafting page. Instead, we can make a skateboard. A skateboard doesn’t go especially fast, or travel particularly smoothly. We’ll probably fall off a few times. The thing may even snap in half. But if we’re aiming to get to the Ferrari, or just the second-hand sedan, it’s really the only way to get where we want to go. All of this is to say, our marvelling at the sleekest vehicles can leave us spinning our wheels. Instead of worrying about what we don’t have, about our lack of poise and polish, perhaps we can go the other way. Hack together a skateboard. Slap a sticker or two on it. Make it ours. Maybe it’ll be an ugly duckling, ignored by the rest, and only for us. Chances are everyone else is still looking at the Bentleys, riding the Harleys, or checking out the freshest new skateboard in the store. But a few people may gravitate to what we’re doing, be inspired to build one of their own, or show us a neat move we could try ourselves. Instead of trying to race a Lamborghini, sell out Madison Square Garden, hold a 4-day seminar, or riff a seamless 30-minute monologue, perhaps we can just build our skateboard. In fact, when the world is marveling at the high production value of Teslas, music festivals, or the newest apparel company, we may even be better off going this way. Our lack of resources, polish, experience, and expertise gives us space to just make it *ours*. And the good news is the internet makes it easier than ever for us to do this, if we’re willing to try. --- Here’s my latest skateboard rolling out of the garage \[1\]. It’s a short-form podcast called *The Tension*. The Tension is a podcast series on noticing, embracing, and harnessing the tension that shows up in the work we do. No guests, no glitz, no gimmicks. Just some observations on the tension we feel and what we may be able to do with it, so we can go out and do better work and get out of our own way. Click to get notified when the first batch of episodes go live. > [The Tension](https://howardgray.net/portfolio/the-tension/?ref=howardgray.net) \[1\] Maybe it’s not even a skateboard – it’s a scooter. Especially as I can’t skateboard. ### The Secret URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-secret/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:46:39.000Z Tony Gilroy is one of the world’s most revered screenwriters. He’s written movies as successful, and as diverse, as *Armageddon*, *The Bourne Identity*, and *Michael Clayton*. When describing the process he applies to his work, Gilroy often talks about The Secret. He’ll take a walk around New York City until he knows he has The Secret in his possession. The Secret is the key to unlocking the work. It’s the magic that enables him to bring a whole world to life. The Secret gives him the strength to go and do the work – to write the script, to design a movie, to create a world. The Secret often isn’t anything particularly groundbreaking or revolutionary – it’s just something others haven’t yet spotted. A secret hiding in plain sight. The entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel also talks about the value of secrets, starting with the contrarian question ‘[*what important truth do very few people agree with you on?*](https://genius.com/Peter-thiel-zero-to-one-chapter-8-secrets-annotated?ref=howardgray.net#note-4400842) ‘ Secrets are powerful, but only when we find a way to share them in creative and valuable ways. Otherwise they can become dulled, redundant, or emanate a kind of bitterness and toxicity. And here is the contradiction: a secret should be shared. Another draft of this post contained my secret, but if I publish it then I guess it’s not a secret anymore. I know I must share it, but the work is in finding the right way to bring it to life. What’s your secret? ### Stories around the fire URL: https://www.howardgray.net/stories-around-the-fire/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:46:18.000Z There’s a flame, a fire, in the corner of our eye. It comes in and out of view. We want to look. We want to fuel it. We yearn for its primal energy – for what it can do for us, and what we can do with it. If we move closer to the flame, our fight or flight response eventually kicks in. It’s too bright, too hot, too wild, too dangerous. So we shy away. Yet we don’t extinguish it. We keep it there, in the corner of our view. It gives us comfort to imagine the warmth and security it provides; we feel excitement at its light and colour cutting a path through the darkness; and exhilaration at its heat and energy providing fuel for others. But we’re not really there with the flame. We’re just imagining it. Sometimes this is enough for us, but it’s more likely the flame in the corner will drive us to distraction; allow us to tell a convenient yet mythical story to ourselves about why were right to shy away; or just fizzle out from deprivation of fuel, heat, and air. If we take a few moments longer to stay near the flame, we may notice it’s not an untameable fire after all. It’s a torch. It still feels risky to gingerly reach out and grasp it, but grasp it we must. And once we grasp it, something happens. We may never carry the torch all the ways to new lands, unexplored terrain, or the top of the mountain, but once we take a hold of it something shifts. What’s really worth noting here is when we’re old and grey, perhaps what will frustrate us most is not that we didn’t reach out and grab the torch: it may be that we convinced ourselves we had done so, when in fact we’d just imagined it all along. Perhaps that’s why we love stories around the fire. ### SXSW 2020: The Remix URL: https://www.howardgray.net/sxsw-2020-the-remix/ Last updated: 2021-07-03T16:39:16.000Z A blog post I keep coming back to is [The Rise of the Remixer](https://howardgray.net/2016/06/22/the-rise-of-the-remixer/?ref=howardgray.net). I wrote this quite a while ago, and didn’t think much of it at the time – or rather, I sensed there was something interesting to explore further but wasn’t sure exactly what that something was. As my journey has led me towards open source, accessibility, and exploration – particularly in the world of career development – I’ve become more bullish on the next phase of business taking in some of these themes. With that in mind, I thought I’d aim to share these ideas further through the SXSW platform. [Here’s my submission](https://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/100952/?ref=howardgray.net) for a talk at their 2020 edition. Feel free to give it an upvote. ### On Stage URL: https://www.howardgray.net/on-stage/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:05:02.000Z They’re here because a promise was made. You’re up there alone. Exposed. You have 90 seconds to get their attention. If not, you’re done for. Connect to them with something every 30 seconds and you’ll fare far better. You’ve been working towards [The Hour](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/03/07/la-story-get-to-the-hour/). Is this the work of the Teacher, the Stand Up, or both? ### Adventures #32: The Tension, The Educators, The DJs URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-32-the-tension-the-educators-the-djs/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T10:04:40.000Z It's holiday time. Switch off, take stock, or perhaps get ahead while the rest are lounging. Whatever we're doing, the tension will eventually show: Work or Play; Creating vs Capturing; Employee to Entrepreneur; Fitting In or Standing Out. A lot of my recent notes, observations, and decisions boil down to working through the tension: the trade-offs, contradictions, and opportunity costs we all have to tussle with. The tension can drive us forward as well as hold us back. It's fascinating - and I'm doing a project around it. As for what the project is; you'll have to wait until next time. After all, I don't want to lessen the tension. I hope you enjoy this month's dispatch. and as always I'd love to hear where you're spending your time right now. Just hit reply. Thanks for reading. Howard **[www.howardgray.net](https://www.howardgray.net/)** | **[@howardgray](http://www.twitter.com/howardgray?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // CAREER FUEL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/983002c4-70ff-4506-b606-2030e284b99b_700x338.jpeg) **[The Educator in Residence](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/08/01/the-educator-in-residence/)** Emerging forms of education are a smart company's new secret weapon. With some Hollywood inspiration, here's how they can activate it. **[\> Read more](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/08/01/the-educator-in-residence/)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/a6f8ed70-302c-4bee-b268-99d9bb7926ef_800x514.jpeg) **[Workshop Creator Course](https://www.howardgray.net/workshop-creator-email-course/)** It turns out Adventures... subscribers can't sign up for the Workshop Creator course I shared last time out *(thanks for the irony, Mailchimp).* If you want to access it, reply here and I'll add you! **[\> Technology Fail](https://www.howardgray.net/workshop-creator-email-course/)** \*Extra Career Fuel\*: I've opened up two spaces for new coaching clients. Interested? Want to tell a friend? Curious what this is all about? **[Head over here to learn more >>](https://www.howardgray.net/coaching)** Also: **[\> Why you should Generalise, not Specialise](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/12/generalise-dont-specialise-why-focusing-too-narrowly-is-bad-for-us?ref=howardgray.net)** **[\> Coaching: going inside the 3 agendas](https://howardgray.net/2019/07/31/coaching-three-agendas-for-exploration/?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/13aba01e-209b-45f3-a9d5-8720c3b48123_600x400.jpeg) **[Inside Eric Prydz's new stage show](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/7/9/20683461/dj-eric-prydz-epic-6-0-holosphere-tomorrowland?ref=howardgray.net)** 5 tons of lasers, domes, LEDs and other electronic delights. I'd love to see more articles like this, especially with interactive elements where us regular folk can have a play around. **[\> Read more](https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/7/9/20683461/dj-eric-prydz-epic-6-0-holosphere-tomorrowland?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/65827c53-9055-46b2-b890-0a34fc75e573_700x388.png) **[How music festivals respond to the climate crisis](https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3461?ref=howardgray.net)** It's good to see this issue being featured more prominently in niche media. Next month's digest will be going further into this and sustainability more broadly. **[\> Watch](https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3461?ref=howardgray.net)** *Note: the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed The Tension between the two articles above. The 5-ton festival structure ain't good for the climate. Wicked problems indeed.* #### // CULTURE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/ad77995b-a38c-46a8-9bad-63aee5bb1a8a_900x600.jpeg) **[The dark side of the gig economy](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/nyregion/doordash-ubereats-food-app-delivery-bike.html?ref=howardgray.net)** An inconvenient truth. I'm not sure how prevalent these services are globally but for a lot of NYC residents they're ubiquitous to the point of being staples. Here's what happens under the visor. **[\> Read more](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/nyregion/doordash-ubereats-food-app-delivery-bike.html?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/7d18a9a8-9339-4ccc-a891-48a447dbc1bc_600x450.jpeg) **[The consequences of Berlin's rapid gentrification](https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-causes-and-consequences-of-berlins-rapid-gentrification?ref=howardgray.net)** There's a lot in here - inequality, displacement, culture, digitisation, history. It's still an issue I find tricky to untangle, and again, there's a lot of tension. **[\> Read more](https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-causes-and-consequences-of-berlins-rapid-gentrification?ref=howardgray.net)** #### // JUKEBOX ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/8db916d6-99a1-453f-b985-3a654ac7a794_320x320.jpeg) ### **[Parquet Courts](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO1aqeAn?si=%5F-OIMLuLR1O%5F3TF3oMqjUA&ref=howardgray.net)** This month I've spent quite a bit of time working from and wandering the sparse, arid, arty climes that are Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood. What better time and place than to load up a dose of Parquet Courts' low-slung post-punk sounds... **[\> Listen](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO1aqeAn?si=%5F-OIMLuLR1O%5F3TF3oMqjUA&ref=howardgray.net)** #### // FOOTNOTES Other things I've been up to this month: \- Podcast planning. My dulcet tones will soon be returning to a digital device near you. \- Hiding this down here as it's a little weird - will anyone will read it. **[On Tour Again.](https://howardgray.net/2019/07/30/orbiting-the-orbit-on-tour-again/?ref=howardgray.net)** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d8/1a/d81abdb4-b001-4d5e-9a22-7d2a3d72df17/content/images/public/images/3ce6f664-5dab-4e6a-9cc5-3aa541935596_300x300.png) This is an email digest from me - **[Howard](https://www.howardgray.net/)**. I'm an educator, coach and project builder based in NYC. This monthly dispatch collates a few of the things I've found interesting across education, entrepreneurship, and entertainment. ### The Educator in Residence URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-educator-in-residence/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T02:19:39.000Z *Why a different type of EIR could be your firm’s new secret weapon* In 1989, the Hollywood talent agency CAA moved into its new $25m offices designed by star architect I.M Pei. In a little over a decade the company had grown from a $21,000 bank loan and no employees to brokering billion-dollar corporate deals and representing stars including Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, and Robert de Niro. How? They’d gone beyond and beneath what looked to be their core business. As CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz describes in his memoir ‘*Who is Michael Ovitz*?’: ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/18-michael-ovitz-steven-spielberg.w570.h712.jpg) Ovitz & Spielberg > *‘We were ultra-competitive and we were in a service business but my thesis was that we weren’t selling a product.* > > *We were selling and putting together people’s dreams .’* > > Michael Ovitz, CAA To become the dream partners of choice, CAA began providing a growing suite of additional services to create and deliver more value and more abundance for the people they served. Fast forward to today and we live in a world of even greater abundance than the time of CAA’s growth surge. Organizations of all types are investing in new ideas and ventures, and they’re doing so across an unprecedented range of sectors and geographies. However, for many companies seeking to invest in what’s next, this abundant environment has led to increased competition and an urgent need to seek new points of differentiation. A hint towards a solution can again be found in Ovitz’s book: > *“Nobody wants to be treated as just what they are.* > > *Everyone wants to feel encouraged to become even more than they are—to become the best version of themselves.”* > > Michael Ovitz One area where there’s enormous scope for companies to offer this – to become the partner in peoples’ dreams – is through education, and more specifically by looking at the convergence point of two existing roles. ## **The emergence of the EIR** Back in the mid-90s, a number of Venture Capital firms started creating roles for successful entrepreneurs to support the firm’s team on strategy, scouting and vetting. These relatively informal and often temporary positions were called ‘Entrepreneurs in Residence’ (EIRs). In a world where incumbent organizations are now having to work harder than ever to stay ahead of the game, the EIR role has expanded into closely related areas such as startup accelerators and corporate venture arms, but also to advertising agencies, government departments, and business schools. Meanwhile, a further shift has taken place in the venture capital firms where EIRs first emerged. ![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_DCB04Hoj3Ub6U_bu-331rzkObYQ36lLatqFYuMs-Q7VwJQ6Cl4DRhgyMTy7aFTRLN9LPaqM2htMBpYwIqb0bJlDWItwM4CSjGUyoUQJ0HGR4i7kZbyfJdoQnEd4YSKYpFuFC5tY) The Platform Teams created primarily to build networks and communities for the firm and its portfolio may be evolving towards what Nic Brisbourne, founder of London based firm Forward Partners, calls ‘[Applied VC](http://www.theequitykicker.com/2019/07/08/applied-venture-and-the-inexorable-rise-of-value-add-vc/?ref=howardgray.net)’, where portfolio companies are provided with pretty much anything they don’t have on payroll: whether data science, HR, or growth marketing. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/artworks-000410895417-j5aalo-t500x500.jpg) Michael Ovitz with Ben Horowitz, a16z co-founder The leaders of the shift to this model are arguably Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which adopted many of the strategies and tactics used by Ovitz and CAA; being on hand to offer almost any service a client could ever need, day or night. Following the expansion of EIRs from VC firms into other sectors, there’s huge potential for the Applied model to also permeate into new areas. Within this range of services on offer, there’s a fundamental and often overlooked area that’s ripe for growth and evolution: the realm of education and learning. ## **Experts & Educators** In a world that can feel it has more [VUCA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility,%5Funcertainty,%5Fcomplexity%5Fand%5Fambiguity?ref=howardgray.net) (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) than ever, most businesses now recognise the value of education for their teams and partners – whether hard skills such as data science, soft skills like non violent communication and storytelling, or tactical guidance on topics like marketing or hiring. As you’d expect, much of this activity is delivered by subject matter experts. However, as Wharton professor Adam Grant suggests, [experts don’t necessarily make the best teachers.](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/opinion/sunday/college-professors-experts-advice.html?ref=howardgray.net) Grant’s opinion is counter to received wisdom, but there’s surely a connection here with the student debt crisis and an ongoing unbundling of the traditional education system. Opportunity therefore knocks not just for organizations to increase the educational opportunities they offer, but to make its design and delivery – in fact the whole learning environment – something Michael Ovitz and his tribe of Hollywood connectors and creators would be proud of. Teams of professionals taking responsibility for learning in the workplace is nothing new, but approaches to design and delivery are ripe for a refresh. To better understand where we came from and we’re going, it’s worth looking at the history of the function of Learning & Development. ## **L&D: from perk to priority** In the wider business world, the area of education and learning was long the preserve of HR teams. Over time, Learning & Development (L&D) roles began to emerge in larger companies as a subset of HR. The primary focus of L&D was to align both group and individual goals and performance with an organization’s overall vision and objectives. This manifested through initiatives such as working with teams to help them adapt to change, creating education programs to tackle specific skill gaps, and bringing in executive coaches to work with high-potential employees. In today’s VUCA world, as businesses of all shapes and sizes have had to respond to changes in employee mindsets and expectations – along with the democratization of access to online learning tools and resources – learning and development roles have become far more prevalent in small and medium-sized enterprises. Yet despite working to help a company thrive in these environments, one of the challenges L&D teams often face is not being seen as business partners. This perception issue has a number of consequences: from a lack of resources, which leads to a limit on their impact; to initiatives being pushed down a company’s priority list, and buy-in and commitment becoming difficult. Perhaps the biggest challenge for L&D is simply a lingering perception as an employee perk rather than what it could be: a massive competitive advantage for an organization; something they just couldn’t operate without. This shift in perception is certainly starting to happen in some quarters, but one way it could be expedited with increased impact is through the emergence of a new hybrid role. It brings the core essence of an Entrepreneur in Residence, looks through the lens of learning and education, and takes a holistic and future-facing view of an organization and its stakeholders. It’s also an EIR: the Educator in Residence. --- ## **Introducing the Educator in Residence** ![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/eceGCXP2n6RUYKTRQ57aPVS1MVMEr_joECCzCcy1jUSVqa_6KlIIXNH-U0ezRo19aE6wkEKzBB_dwdLpQs6hThSXXeoIPMe4PtrZVuNIbh-k7tLJS6xaDtVm8swzPMZkLaQte6lg) The Educator in Residence’s core mission is to help an organization learn and evolve as a whole. In tomorrow’s world ‘whole’ means everyone and everything an organization comes into contact with: senior executives to entry-level apprentices; its partners, suppliers, and clients; through to local communities and government. \[1\] The Educator in Residence is connected across all these touchpoints: working internally with individuals teams; adding value for partners and customers; and creating new initiatives for the business to better connect with the wider world. This flavor of EIR may have less execution focus than a traditional Entrepreneur in Residence, but they’re still more than happy to get stuck in on marketing, strategy, code, or operations. And while they possess undoubted skills as a facilitator, teacher or learning designer, they’re equally comfortable in a business-facing role as they are an internal educator. The Educator in Residence is seen as a commercially-aware coach and connector who can seamlessly operate across the spectrum of a business: from making company-wide organizational improvements; to working with specific individuals to upskill them; or playing a key role in launching new commercial projects. For companies with existing L&D departments, the EIR augments them. For those without, the EIR can sit alongside product or innovation teams, or act as a bridge towards a more formal L&D offering being designed over time. ### **Where do they come from?** The Educator in Residence could be: - **An Entrepreneurial Educator**: an educator with an entrepreneurial mindset, who creates their own learning programs, has run their own business, and/or has experience working in and with startup teams; - **An Educating Entrepreneur**: an entrepreneur with the ability to educate and teach through compelling storytelling and practical and applicable concepts; - **An Educator of Entrepreneurs**: bringing experience as a teacher or mentor in accelerator programs; supporting the growth of non-profit organizations; or providing coaching to founders The Educator in Residence may have a traditional academic or L&D background, but is equally likely to come from product management, consulting, or user experience roles, amongst others. Their superpowers include being able to synthesize and articulate diverse concepts, design and personalize content and experiences, and see entrepreneurial opportunities for utilizing education and learning in new ways. ### **What does the Educator in Residence do?** - Operates both internally and externally; leading initiatives with in-house teams as well as being a value creator and revenue generator with external audiences and partners - Acts as a curator, identifying key needs in the organization and sourcing high-quality education partners - Thoughtfully designs learning environments and programs - Teaches and facilitates engaging workshops and classes - Coaches teams and individuals on leadership, personal development, presentation skills, and team dynamics - Unpacks complex terminology and concepts and acts as a translator, stress-tester, and conduit across teams, departments, and companies - Identifies, trains and nurtures new teachers and ambassadors within a company Some of the projects they may get involved in include: - Creation of educational content to power a new product marketing effort - Building commercially-available learning programs and resources using company IP and talent (every forward-thinking organization could have their own *Masterclass)* - Supporting senior leadership and partners in developing coaching and facilitation skills - Design and facilitation of off-site and retreats - Performance coaching programs to help individuals become better storytellers and presenters - Identifying, training, and developing new EIRs ### **Who needs an Educator in Residence?** An Educator in Residence isn’t for every company. It’s for organizations that aren’t afraid to open up to better connect with employees, partners, and audiences. They’re willing to bet education and learning (particularly in alternative and emerging forms) is a secret weapon in their quest for ongoing success. They want to do more in the area of L&D; either to augment their existing team or to sow the first seeds of a new offering. Companies benefitting most from an Educator in Residence include: - **Portfolio-focused firms**: venture capital, private equity, talent agencies, and corporate venture divisions - **Spaces & Places**: coworking companies, cultural institutions, and real estate owners - **IP & Media Owners**: Businesses with legacy assets and tacit knowledge that can be unlocked, remixed, and reimagined ### **Where can you find them?** ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/image01-3-1024x720.png) These hybrid talents may not seem easy to spot, but they’re often hiding in plain sight. You may find them creating accelerator programs, volunteering with after-school coding clubs, or facilitating workshops. They may be graduating from a coaching program, operating as an L&D specialist, or finishing up a stint as an adjunct professor while hacking away on a side project. They’ll be building [lowercase skills](https://www.howardgray.net/2018/12/11/lowercase-skills/). They’re a small but growing tribe, and they’re going to be an increasingly valuable resource for tomorrow’s successful organizations. If you’re one of them, or want to learn more, I’d love to hear from you. --- *Thanks to Andre Plaut, Josh Upton, and Murray Gray for reading drafts of this article.* \[1\] As organizations become more aware of their social impact and sustainability, I believe we’ll see more companies move towards this new ‘whole’ where their stakeholder map becomes far broader. ### Coaching: Three agendas for exploration URL: https://www.howardgray.net/coaching-three-agendas-for-exploration/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:51:53.000Z *This is part of a series of articles derived from my coaching certification assessment.* There are numerous coaching models used in certification programs: this particular one focuses on three agendas; presenting, deeper, and transformational. Here’s a brief breakdown of each of those three agendas, along with an example from a client session. ## **Presenting** The presenting agenda appears at the beginning of a coaching session. As a coach, we ask what our clients want coaching on for the session. Doing this allows them to consider, reflect on and speak about what they want. It puts the onus on the client to make the choice, rather than us as the coach choosing for them or projecting our own thoughts or opinions. The presenting agenda offered by the client may include a goal for the session, or the coach may need to ask one or two clarifying questions to support the client in defining the goal for the session. The presenting agenda is often hiding something far deeper or transformational underneath. Often the presenting agenda will be about something the client wants to *do*, rather than who they want to *be*. ## **Deeper** The deeper agenda is hidden underneath the presenting agenda. It’s more likely to reflect who the client wants to be as well as what they want to do – the *being* as well as the *doing*. As the deeper agenda emerges, the client is likely to become more self-aware and able to tap into their emotions, intuition, and imagination, although they may not be fully aware of this happening to begin with. The deeper agenda may also offer the coach some clues towards a transformational agenda, and also what’s beginning to emerge in the client and what else may be possible for them. ## **Transformational** Another dimension of the client’s agenda is the transformational agenda. By the coach using transformational listening, the transformational agenda can begin to emerge. The transformational agenda tends to reveal a core need of the client. The transformational agenda may not just relate to the presenting and deeper agendas, but to something far more vital that applies to other aspects of the client’s life. The transformational agenda allows new opportunities and insights to emerge for the client. As a coach, we may point out the transformational agenda to the client, or quietly observe it during the session. To help notice and surface the transformational agenda, it can help for us to be in the moment and use our intuition as a coach, ahead of logic or rational thinking. Sometimes we can get also clues as to a client’s transformational agenda within their discovery session or first coaching session. ## **An example** in practice **\[Presenting\]** I asked my client MR what he wanted coaching on. He said he felt under time pressure with work projects and wanted to get better at time management. I asked him where he would like to get out of the session and he said he wanted to have more clarity on what he was currently spending his time on. **\[Deeper\]** I asked MR what was most important to him about time management. He said it enabled him to focus on the work he needed to do, and also the work he wanted to do. I then asked what having better time management would do for him, and responded by saying he would be able to complete the work he needed to do more efficiently, and also have space to really invest himself into the work he wanted to do – work that he didn’t feel he had given much attention to recently. **\[Transformational\]** I asked MR what was driving that desire to invest himself into the work he really wanted to do. He said it came from a place of wanting to make real change in the world, particularly supporting entrepreneurs who are building impactful businesses. I asked him what was really mattered to him about being able to make real change, and he responded by telling me about how he had seen so much wastefulness in his previous career and that it made him deeply upset. He realized that there were so many who didn’t care, and those who did care needed more support to get their message out into the world. I observed I could sense his body language shift as he was talking, which he acknowledged and said he could feel heat within himself. I then asked who he becomes when he does this work, and he told me he becomes an agent of change, using a lever to help others do even more than they thought possible. We then spent some time with this imagery – the agent of change with quiet strength, bringing others up onto a big green springboard! ### When you see… URL: https://www.howardgray.net/when-you-see/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:07:08.000Z There are some things that once you see, you just can’t un-see. Your view of the world changes. However, you can’t just *see* these things. You have to be personally exposed to them through more than just seeing before you can *really* see them. And it’s important to acknowledge that while you may now really see them, you almost certainly still don’t fully understand them. You’re probably just at the start – whether you see these things in the world, in others, or in yourself. Here are a few of mine: - Privilege - Entitlement - Our capacity for growth - Flailing inside idea maze - Where I go when I’m unhealthy ([envy and contempt](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/07/24/fear-envy-contempt/)) - The challenge that is the mid 30s bulge What have you seen, and can now never un-see? ### Orbiting the Orbit: On Tour Again URL: https://www.howardgray.net/orbiting-the-orbit-on-tour-again/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:07:17.000Z Still one of my favourite tripped out deep house tracks, and a game-changer for the 17-year-old me. The Second-Hand Satellites. A couple of months ago the Webster Hall music venue reopened in New York City. As a relatively new arrival to the city, I’m not an expert on the city’s nightlife history, but I know although it’s not in the same category as the likes of CBGBs, Webster Hall is still up there when it comes to New York’s most revered places to hear live music. On a warm Spring night in 2013, I went to Webster Hall in its previous incarnation. That particular night it was host to a crazed dubstep party, but it wasn’t the gnashing synth lines that grabbed me; it was the colourful, weird and magical little pocket of the city that I’d never visited before. Fast forward 5 years and I find myself living directly opposite the place. It’s a warm day today and I’m writing this from the terrace of my building as the sun tips behind the new hotel being built opposite. Outside Webster Hall I can see a bunch of Broken Social Scene fans already lining up outside the venue for the final edition of the band’s three-night stay. And outside the 24 hour market on the corner of 11th St and 3rd Avenue is a space reserved for the headline band’s tour bus. Every night or two it switches over to whoever’s on the road and coming into town, complete with their cornucopia of backing musicians, guitar techs, tour managers, agents, managers, and whoever else may be part of the crew. All this is to say, Webster Hall has got me thinking about being on tour again. ### On the Road I spent nearly 10 years of my life in and around the world of touring. Most of the time I was behind the scenes, yet in the orbit – making the deals, routing the tour stops, ensuring the tickets went on sale, the artwork was on point, and the stage time made sense. Sometimes I’d be on tour – very occasionally as a DJ myself, and most often as the agent for the artists I represented. I left that world 4 years ago this month. Sometimes I’m wistful, and every so often I feel those pangs of regret. - *Did I leave too soon?* - *Why didn’t I travel more?* - *What if I didn’t lose touch with so many people in that world?* - *Knowing what I know now (a lot, lot more), what would I have done differently?* - *Who would I have become?* - *What would my life look like now?* Now I’m perhaps in the orbit of the orbit. Still connected, tethered by a couple of lines that are almost invisible to the naked eye. Out of the game, yet inside the outer galaxy. Every so often I’ll look out and see the stars align. I’ll find myself back there again, carried into the magnetic pull of the night lights, taking a trip around, before the constellation flickers and rotates out of view again as daylight comes. And as soon as it starts, back I go to normality – whatever that means. There’s something about being on tour: Getting there just in time, against the odds. The few seconds before the stage lights come up. The tense energy of the tidal wave that’s an expectant crowd. The magic moment of *that* song playing. Being there to see it all come together. --- But it’s more about the people and the places. The knitted connection of the traveling humans in transit. A glimpse into the lives of others and the fabric of their lives: from Serbia to Sao Paulo, Barcelona to Beirut An insight into cultures through music, food, gathering, celebration, commerce, tension The stop, start, pause, wait, go again. Grueling and grim, yet strangely satisfying and special. For all its downsides, discombobulation, and hidden costs, I want to go back out on tour again. I’m out of the game, out of the orbit, but there’s a strange pull, a strange yearning, that’s hard to ignore. This time I’m orbiting around the orbit – a second-hand satellite, some rust accruing and navigation systems a year or two out of date, but with miles on the clock and time in the rotation. I know it’ll never be the same, and it always looks different from the other side of the glass, but there’s something tugging at my feet and my heart. Going up into orbit again. On tour again. ### Talking to Humans: Go anonymous URL: https://www.howardgray.net/talking-to-humans-go-anonymous/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:52:11.000Z > “praise by name, criticize by category.” > > Warren Buffett Or to put it another way: Praise Specifically, Criticize Generally > Praise specifically, criticize generally. Don't respond to negativity. Say it as if to their face. Be original. Do not debate. > > — Naval (@naval) [August 17, 2016](https://twitter.com/naval/status/765751824850702336?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=howardgray.net) When it comes to telling our personal stories to a group we’re working with, there are some situations where we can use this same principle to build rapport and decrease the distance. **A success story**: Anonymise it **A tale of struggle or failure**: Make it about us ### Talking to Humans: No intro, no get-go URL: https://www.howardgray.net/talking-to-humans-no-intro-no-get-go/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:54:34.000Z *The value of the introduction when you’re running workshops, leading a class, or doing most types of speaking to an audience* Skip your introduction and something happens. At least some of your audience will sense something’s out of kilter. Perhaps you have a name tag, or said hello to some of them at the door. Maybe they saw you on the marketing materials. You could assume they already know who you are. Even if they do, the intro still matters. It sets the scene, reminds them, says there’s another human at the front of the room. Do the intro. It doesn’t need to be long. In fact it usually shouldn’t. Just stick to the essentials: who you are; why this matters; why you’re the person to be guiding them on this journey. Don’t worry about the icebreakers, the interactions, the long and winding stories. It’s not they don’t matter, but throw them out there without the intro and they’re almost worthless. Do your intro. They need to know you. ### I don’t do name tags URL: https://www.howardgray.net/i-dont-do-name-tags/ Last updated: 2021-07-22T14:33:50.000Z The other night I went to an information event for a program I’d registered interest in. It was held in a conference room at a sleek building in Midtown Manhattan; the type of place where the gunmetal elevator zooms you straight up to the 40th floor in the blink of an eye and a squeeze of the eardrums. On arrival, there were nuts and falafels and sodas and wine, and a welcoming committee who instructed me to wear my name tag. After all, that’s a part of what we do here. By now, I know what happens. I don’t do name tags. I don’t try them, write them out fresh, or tuck them out of sight. They’re just not for me. Is it my iconoclastic attitude? A disinterest in ceremony, a contempt for convention. I don’t trust easily. I’m guarded, introverted. I hide away at the back of the class. You can’t find out my name from the tag. But here’s the thing. Ask me and I’ll tell. I just don’t want to give it away unless I have the space to tell the whole story. And of course, this isn’t just about names. ### Fear, Envy, and Contempt URL: https://www.howardgray.net/fear-envy-contempt/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:07:33.000Z These are three powerful feelings. They show up in many areas of our lives. Here are a few examples. #### **Finding a job** Fear of being an imposter. Envy at the ones already getting hired. Contempt for having to grind through a job selection process. #### Aiming for a promotion Fear of it not being what you hope. Envy at the [Peter Principle](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp?ref=howardgray.net) in practice. Contempt for those who don’t play fair, and get more than they deserve. #### Starting a company Fear of it failing. Envy at those who are doing it successfully already, with it all seemingly figured out. Contempt for the reasons why you feel you’re starting at a disadvantage, on a harder path. #### Going freelance Fear of no one hiring you. Envy at those doing the work you really want to do. Contempt for having to go out and sell yourself. #### A change in circumstances Fear of not being settling in, of being accepted. Envy at those who got a helping hand. Contempt for all those parts of the new systems that don’t work as they should. --- Just one of these feelings can have huge effects on us. Fear alone can cripple our creativity, progress, and potential. The mix of elements together, though, is [alchemy](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/06/24/alchemy-before-chemistry/). And the resulting chemical reactions can be overwhelmingly strong and long-lasting. The good news is once we know the elements, we can take steps to acknowledge, manage, reframe, and even harness them. --- *\* The place my Enneagram type (5) goes when particularly unhealthy is a mix of envy and contempt. Once I learned this, a lot of other things made more sense. There are some things that once you see, you can’t unseen.* ### Group Dynamics: Sitting in Circle URL: https://www.howardgray.net/group-dynamics-sitting-in-circle/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:52:01.000Z If you’ve spent any time in coaching, meditation, education, mediation, or consulting you may have heard the phrase or performed the activity of *sitting in circle*. At its simplest, a group comes together to share ideas and experiences on a particular topic. And they do so sitting in a circle. By sitting in circle we are inferring this is a safe space. Somewhere we can feel open and comfortable. A place where everyone’s voices can be heard. But we’ve got to get the environment right to make it work. This starts with the circle itself – more specifically, its size. Just as the potential connections in a network increase exponentially as more nodes are added, the dynamics of the circle look and feel completely different depending on its size. Add in the variable and unpredictable nature of humans and their group dynamics and the circle can become unwieldy, ineffective, or even volatile. Some people will feel hugely overstimulated facing and being viewed by 10, 20 or 30 people. Others may want to pull the attention towards themselves. One or two can feel compelled to provoke, push, or pull at the container that’s been created. A few may nervously hide away, only re-emerging when they feel it safe to do so. And some might contemptuously opt out of proceedings completely. Sitting in Circle can be a hugely powerful way to bring a group of people together. But group dynamics are a crucial part of designing an experience or environment. If we fail to pay attention to why, how and what we’re building, our intention to better connect a group of humans can backfire spectacularly. And, like it or not, size matters. ### What was it like? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/what-was-it-like/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:51:50.000Z When someone describes an experience, we may hear ourselves asking ‘*What was it like?*’. We’re being curious, taking an interest. Asking to find out more. Or at least trying to be polite. What if it wasn’t *like* anything? What if you get put on the spot and can’t find the wonderful metaphor? This question is often unhelpful, especially when you’re in a scenario where you’re nervous or it’s new. You know we’re being curious, interested, or at least civil. But sometimes it doesn’t matter. There’s no *like.* And if there is, the *like* doesn’t do it justice. The question becomes a lazy dud. An easy analogy. Maybe it even leads to a completely dead end. Conversation over. Opportunity missed. Perhaps we can ease the tension and discover more by trying another question. Something specific. Something outside the realms of what we know. Something about your personal experience, a hidden detail, the inspiration behind your choice, what else you noticed, or how that moment shows up for you now. Something thoughtful that considers the moment, the dynamic, the situation, the feeling. We could probably all do with asking better questions and searching for something new, ahead of resorting to just wanting to find out what it was like. ### The important thing before on-boarding URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-important-thing-before-on-boarding/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:07:25.000Z It’s not just about what happens once they’re on board and the vessel is setting sail. It’s not just about the on-boarding rituals that occur once they’ve arrived at the place of departure and they’re beginning to assimilate into the culture of how we do things here. It’s also about what goes on before all of that: the pre-boarding. Pre-boarding lets us know who they are, why they’re enrolled, what matters most, where they are now, where they want to get to, and how we can help them get there. Environments lacking in pre-boarding tend to hamper themselves. They don’t set themselves up for success. They put themselves on the back foot. They’re forced to re-evaluate and make awkward shunts midway through the experience people have invested into to be a part of. In an era where personalisation is key, pre-boarding grows in importance. When we design experiences and environments where we are asking for investment and enrolment, we should ask the people we’re seeking to reach some important questions: - Who are you? - Who are you? \* - Why are you here? - What matters most? - How can we serve you best? - What’s currently missing for you? - What have you not yet voiced that we need to hear? - Which assumptions have we made about you? - Which assumptions have you made about us? - Where and when do you show up best? The experience or environment may be around discovery, learning, entertainment, amusement, or escapism. Our level of pre-boarding should change in line with the type of environment we’re designing, but without it we’re setting ourselves up to let down the people we want to inspire, delight and change. And that’s not fair on anyone. *\* Much like the question ‘How are you?’ it’s often worth asking this question twice.* ### Adventures #31: The ways we behave and the signals we send URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-31-the-ways-we-behave-and-the-signals-we-send/ Last updated: 2021-07-09T18:58:14.000Z _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Learnings from the other side of an accelerator program URL: https://www.howardgray.net/learnings-from-the-other-side-of-an-accelerator-program/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:32:01.000Z In the Spring of 2018, I was approached about collaborating on a new project being presented by New York City’s Department of Small Business Services and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. The project came about from the City looking to further their support to creative businesses. Media & Entertainment in New York contributes an estimated $9.1 billion to the city’s local economy and employs over 385,000 jobs. Following a collaborative research process with business owners and industry experts in the media & entertainment community across New York City, the project proposed by the City was to design an accelerator program for a cohort of media & entertainment companies working across live events, marketing & advertising, and media tech. Stepping into my first meeting with the team working on the program’s pilot edition, I learned it was to be titled the **Accelerator for Media Pros – AMP NYC.** ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/D-AzHQvXoAElNNc-768x1024.jpg) ## Fast Forward It’s June 2019, and our second cohort have just finished their 10 week journeys in the program, culminating in a 2-part graduation day at the Made in NY Media Center: pitch presentations to their peers, mentors, and the program team, followed by a demo night showcase to industry, partners, alumni, friends, and family. It was a wonderful end to what’s been a challenging, exciting and emotional journey for many of our group: new products have launched, pivots been taken, missteps made, courses corrected, partnerships put together, and firm friendships forged. This program isn’t like a regular course though; sure, we spend time exploring Blue Ocean Strategies and Competitive Positioning frameworks, but AMP NYC has been designed to serve the cohort as leaders and humans as well as entrepreneurs. The journey of running a business can be emotional, and we recognise and embrace that. You may not step all the way out of your comfort zone, but you’ll definitely stretch it. During the past 12 months as the curriculum and facilitation lead for AMP NYC I’ve spent time with 40 company founders from across the spectrum of New York’s media & entertainment landscape. Over the 2 cohorts so far I’ve designed and facilitated over 50 hours of in-class curriculum, run 25 office hours sessions, reviewed over 100 assignments, recorded a bunch of video and podcast walk-throughs, fed back on 60+ pitch decks, created more than 700 slides of content, and drunk more than a few cups of coffee. Here are just a few of the things I’ve learned. --- ## Frame the commitment As well as the obvious time and attention commitment for classes, mentor sessions and other touch points, a program like this requires participants to be open, active, driven, reflective, and vulnerable. This doesn’t always come easy. Framing the commitment in advance (ideally during the first round of an application process) helps participants start to get a sense of what they will need to invest in terms of time, but also in energy and emotion. ## Build connection early For cohort 2, we added an additional Meet and Greet event before the kick off day. By keeping this light and fun with just a few quick round-robin sessions, the group got to spend time getting to know us and each other without feeling the pressure of having to absorb too much information or ‘perform’. At first glance an event like this may feel superfluous, but even a brief in-person interaction in the right environment can create surprisingly strong and rapid bonds. ## Pre-work matters Once the participants had been selected, we set them quite a lot of pre-work. For busy founders without much context of what they’re getting into this can feel like a bit of a drag at first, but the pre-work is there to frame what’s ahead and regular refer back to later down the line. It also hugely helps us as a program team when it comes to tailoring and personalising content, and building a better understanding of the individuals who will be joining us. Pre-work ranges from exercises on industry trends to searching questions on participants’ self-assessment of their businesses strengths and weaknesses, as well as sharing their observations on their personal reactive behaviours and triggers when things aren’t going so well. I invested significant time into reviewing each participants’ responses, and despite the limitations from what was in essence just text on a spreadsheet, I gained a much better understanding of the commonalities and also the differences across the participants about to join us for the next 10 weeks. ## Humans first Day 1 of this program touches on a number of topics relating to the sector, small businesses, and participants’ own companies, but the more important overarching goal is simply to allow humans to show up. Sometimes the humans in question are customers and clients, but more often it’s us humans in the room together. For some people, the first event was more than enough to get them feeling connected and engaged. For others, it takes a while longer. There are a number of powerful exercises we run on day 1 which encourage vulnerability, connection and more than a few ‘aha’ moments. These set the tone for how all of us show up during the rest of the program. But more important than content and exercises is environment. ## Design the environment Environment is everything. The way we welcome people, the room we’re in, the seating plan, the temperature (we even ask about preferences here in the pre-work) – all this relates to the environment we create. The environment is important for so many reasons – whether it’s to support those with particular needs (visual or hearing impairments for example), to ensure the right mix of personalities and learning styles in a smaller group, or simply to be able to make everyone feel seen, heard, comfortable, and involved. There are a hundred ways of designing an environment and this of course changes depending on the particular factors at hand, but some of my basic preferences for in-person environments include: - Set a room in small clusters rather than a U or circle - Avoid theatre seating except when in a pitch/presentation setting - Encourage participants to switch seats at least once during a full day session - Don’t run any session longer than 90 minutes without a coffee / bathroom break No longer than 30 minutes without either a hands-on exercise or (small) group discussion - Encourage diversity in small groups; whether age, gender, company type, experience level, etc. - Have snacks on hand at all times (or ask participants to bring their own) ## Get present – have a chat Showing up to a full day classroom thing when you’re busy and may have had a rough commute isn’t always hugely appealing. A simple exercise to get people on the same page was simply to ask them to chat in pairs for 5 minutes about whatever was on their mind. As Seth Godin says, he uses his blog partly just to get rid of ideas. Having a chat can be a great way of getting rid of whatever’s flying around our brains, and bringing us back to where we are. ## Use silence… wisely It’s weird how phobic most of us are to silence. It’s actually a pretty good negotiating tactic – if you stay silent the other person will probably just start talking eventually. In our sessions, silence could often feel uncomfortable, but used well it could be very effective. One silent exercise is reflection. We’d do short reflection sessions at the start and end of each class, usually through journaling. The silence can feel a bit weird at first, but it often enables good stuff to come out. This doesn’t work for everyone, so I don’t encourage long reflection – 3 minutes is usually enough. The uncomfortable nature of silence can be agitating for people, so where there are other periods of silence (for example, providing end of session feedback) where it’s not explicit that silence is the point, I’ll play music. Pro Tip: Pick your music carefully; I once blasted some hi-NRG disco stuff and it definitely didn’t fit the environment for that day. It got a few awkward laughs at least. ## Embrace the unexpected space A big takeaway from the program has been where the unexpected can suddenly surface. Finishing up a short bit of lecture content on networks, someone brought up the challenge of network building for introverts. What followed was a 20 minute discussion across the cohort on best practices, where introverts can succeed, and whether there really is such a thing as introverts anyway. My learning design had not accounted for this to happen – perhaps I could have predicted some discourse around the broader topic, but not on this particular piece of content, and not to this depth. It warranted discussion though, especially as we heard from some of the quieter members of the group. These unexpected moments are important, and a good reminder to a designer and facilitator as to the value in allowing space. Sometimes we’d rather know in advance where they show up, but the value of the conversation nearly always outweighs our need to make a few small trims and edits elsewhere. ## Multiple touchpoints This program involves deep-dive class sessions every 2-3 weeks, so keeping the ‘glue’ in place is important, especially with a cohort of busy business owners. Having something every week as a strongly encouraged connection point is a great way to bring people together, share ideas and learnings, and to monitor progress. There are many ways you can implement this; we found networking breakfasts and office hours to be very effective (although doing 10 office hours sessions back to back was a lot!). The key is ensuring there are multiple touchpoints – they can be online, offline, or both. There needs to be an open flow of information and connectivity so everyone is in the loop and seen and heard, but so much than any party feels overwhelmed. Again, this all comes back to designing an experience and an environment. The environment is everything. --- There’s so much more I could cover here, but in the interests of keeping this post under 2000 words (my current self-imposed post limit), we’ll pause here for now. I’ll be back shortly with a follow up with more learnings from accelerator program design. To get notified when that goes live, click here. For more on program design and facilitation: ### [How to facilitate your first workshop >>](https://howardgray.net/2018/10/04/how-to-facilitate-your-first-class-workshop-or-training-session/?ref=howardgray.net) ### [My free workshop design email course >> ](https://www.howardgray.net/workshop-creator-email-course/) And a few words I shared at the start of the [ (opens in a new tab)”>final presentation session >](https://howardgray.net/2019/06/27/great-unexpectations/?ref=howardgray.net) Finally, applications are now open for the [next cohort of AMP NYC](http://www.nyc.gov/ampnyc?ref=howardgray.net): if you or someone you know is working on an emerging media & entertainment company in New York we’d love to hear from you. ### Great (Un)Expectations URL: https://www.howardgray.net/great-unexpectations/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:50:39.000Z Below is a very lightly edited version of a brief introduction I gave at the final presentation day for the second cohort of the [AMP NYC](http://www.nyc.gov/ampnyc?ref=howardgray.net) media & entertainment accelerator program in New York. I’d had a busy few days and showed up at the venue with nothing prepared at all. An hour before the session started I got going on my [Morning Pages](https://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/?ref=howardgray.net) to riff a few ideas. The morning pages started with: *AMP NYC intro speech.* *Hmm. Not going well so far. I can improv it but better to have something down.* *Let’s just go with writing it. No. Resistance kicking in.* After a few minutes of absolutely nothing, and then a few rapidly aborted first lines, I remembered some conversations I’d had on expectations for groups. A quick search for Great Expectations brought up the juicy fact that the date coincided. The rest then came together in a few minutes. Phew. Thanks, Charles. --- 157 years ago this week, Charles Dickens published his 13th novel. It told the story of someone going one from place to another, of daring to dream. While, like the novel, this program has some clear expectations (and some of them could be considered great expectations), I think about the inverse: the unclear, the unexpected. A little under 2 years ago I was living a fairly stable life in a pocket of East London. Now I unexpectedly find myself here in New York City, with the privilege of being able to go out and do this work with people like you, in the place I now call home. Designing this program we’ve learned to expect the unexpected; to be able to pivot and switch and respond when things inevitably change. Perhaps your experience during the last 10 weeks ago has been unexpected; did any of you expect to spend the first morning of the program telling 20 strangers about your greatest fears as a entrepreneurs? And in building a business, stepping out as founders and doing the work, the unexpected is always to be expected. So while we should rightly place some expectations on ourselves and each other, we all need to expect the unexpected on our respective journeys. Everything we’ve created for this program is designed for you to take with you on the journey; whether it’s resources, tools, my bad jokes, or the connections and community you’ve now become a part of. Today marks the end, but only of this chapter. Tomorrow the next one starts, and the journey continues. Onwards. ### The Educator’s End Credits URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-new-educators-end-credits/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:27:12.000Z They don’t exist right now. Of course, there’s the bibliography for a book or research paper, but as the ways we learn become more fluid, episodic and interactive, and the range of sources and contributors become more eclectic, we should start thinking about education content the way Hollywood studios think about movies. Trailer. Opening credits. Presenting producer. Introducing, Featuring, Special Guest. Cameo appearance. Cliffhanger moment. Fade to black. End credits. Out takes. End. There’s an opportunity to be the go-to creative studio producing this for the new educators. And perhaps there’s space for a new kind of IMDb too. ### Alchemy before Chemistry URL: https://www.howardgray.net/alchemy-before-chemistry/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T14:05:34.000Z You’ve probably heard people talk about chemistry: in work, in life, in love. You may hear about it far more in these contexts than in its more traditional setting – as a science. As a science, chemistry is clear, with specific elements and results. Then there’s alchemy. It feels the same very similar to chemistry, but it’s not really science. Alchemy is more about culture, philosophy, psychology, magic. Alchemy can lead to chemistry – more specifically, chemical reactions. These reactions may be explosive or subtle, gentle or potent. The chemical reaction is more likely to be strong when the alchemy isn’t right. When we’re observing people and their behaviour, we often talk about chemistry. But we may want to consider the alchemy first. The alchemist seeks purity in elements, especially those relating to mind, body, soul and spirit. Alchemy could include creating environments and experiences, seeking values, choosing a group, building a structure. The chemistry happens when we add others into the mix. It’s worth us asking ourselves what our projects need most: alchemy or chemistry. ### No Reply = No Interest? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/no-reply-no-interest/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:49:11.000Z Next week marks the 31st edition of my monthly email newsletter which I started in late 2015. As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t really kept up my end of the bargain. In the early days I sometimes let two, three or even four months pass without a newsletter leaving the premises. Now, the practice is in place – the last 15 editions have been published on a regular monthly basis. This doesn’t mean the resistance disappears. Growth is slow, interaction and feedback loops hard to find. My inbox is dominated by out of office responses ahead of human replies. Sometimes it feels futile. Is anybody out there? But just because we use one medium to communicate it doesn’t mean we should expect others to respond in kind. This week I got a chance to facilitate a 2 day course with someone I haven’t seen for a few months. As we settled in to chat through the content for the next days’ sessions, he mentioned a few of my recent projects and his curiosity about them. At first I assumed he’d seen something Twitter or LinkedIn, before realising some of these projects had only been shared with my email list – and a couple of them several months earlier. More so, I’d forgotten he’d even subscribed to receive my monthly email. 20 minutes later, as we finished up chatting about the projects he’d expressed interest in and why they mattered to him, my mind went to my (now formerly) sole metric: email responses. Just because he hadn’t emailed it didn’t mean there wasn’t something of value for him in what I’d produced. And my desire for responses in my inbox made the whole effort of the email newsletter more about me than the audience – even if I told myself a story that asking for interaction was something to serve them better. It’s easy to assume that not receiving an immediate, in kind response to our work means no one is listening. Maybe we’re just looking in the wrong places. Or we shouldn’t even worry about looking at all. ### Work labels: word salad and connotations URL: https://www.howardgray.net/work-labels-word-salad-and-connotations/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:48:53.000Z A couple of weeks ago I had a drink with someone who’s done some great work in their field. As we chatted about our respective projects and areas of interest, he asked me what I called what I did. This has long been a bone of contention and frustration for me, and I did my best to conceal my wince as I threw out some labels. Teaching. Educating. Coaching. Facilitating. Laughing, he remarked how I’d managed to saddle myself with some of the most maligned and misunderstood terms available. What else I call this is still to be decided, but I know have a lens through which to look at the world. The point here is that, like it or not, the labels matter and first impressions count. We can pick & mix a word salad, mix in a new ingredient or two, choose one from the pre-packed aisle, or go out and do something completely off-piste. The good news is, if the labels don’t fit, we can change them. And if we don’t like salad, we change that too. We just may need a new set of lenses to do it. ### Switching to Annual View URL: https://www.howardgray.net/switching-to-annual-view/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:51:25.000Z Whether we’re coming fresh out of a salaried role or have spent years out on the road as an independent, it’s easy to default to the monthly view. Just like a calendar, the month is the most easily understood timeframe. No time differences to manage, or weeks starting on a Sunday vs a Monday. Monthly makes sense – after all, it’s when our outbound payment obligations usually land. Mapping monthly keeps us buttoned up and on top; we can pretty accurately make the plans for our spending and the spending of our time. Monthly lets us see the regular cadence of revenue we need to cover our bases (hopefully with a little extra saving up or splashing out). But for all its well-meaning design and manageable mathematics, as independent professionals the monthly view can do us a disservice. In fact it plays a trick on us. It narrows our view, distorts our focus. Instead, we can take our internal calendar view and switch to annual. We lose the specificity and the safety blanket that monthly gives us, but we gain the optionality to go after something more, something better – both for ourselves and the people we’re serving with the work we do. The annual view frees us up to think strategically, to invest time into the things we really want to build. Our mindset starts to shift, our horizons begin to open, and our periscope tilts positively upward. Sure, we need to switch back to monthly view every now and then – if we’re not meeting our obligations and keeping enough resources at hand then we cause ourselves stress, anxiety and pain. No one benefits when that happens. Monthly view is always there to check when we need to, and check it we should. But when we default to annual view, something happens. ### Lucky Number 7 - and a 40-degree day URL: https://www.howardgray.net/lucky-number-7-and-a-40-degree-day/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:48:34.000Z Many of us are captivated by the number seven. It’s supposedly lucky (more on the reasons behind this were discussed on [this NPR episode](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11803762&ref=howardgray.net)) But what happens when we ditch it? Look at a survey with respondents asked to rate a product or service on a scale of 1-10. When someone rates what we’ve done as a 7, it’s good. Not great. Not bad. It’s good. Above satisfactory. Solid. Decent. Do we want our work to get a 7? Maybe, but is it more valuable to us to receive a 4? Is the 7 in fact a 40 degree day, as described by Idris Elba’s Stringer Bell? As the late Alexander McQueen said; he’d rather you felt *something* about his work rather than nothing – even if that something was hating it. When 7 disappears, something happens. Maybe we can get more lucky without it. ### Two types of role model URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-types-of-role-model/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:32:34.000Z When we think about role models, the person or persona we aspire to emulate, our minds will usually go to one of two places: the stand out success; or the person already in our life. The one close by is relatable and real. We can see the path they’ve trodden, empathise with their emotions. The stand out success is inspirational for the global impact they’ve made. Perhaps we admire their determination, their ability to scale a company, or abundant creativity. Why do we tend to focus on one of these? Why not both? Education opportunities are increasingly reflecting this: we have products like Masterclass offering new insight into world beaters’ process; and [peer groups](https://www.howardgray.net/coaching/) and [accelerator programs](https://www.howardgray.net/amp-nyc/) allowing us focused, intimate time with people who are just a couple of paces further along the path. The main challenges are relevancy and connectivity for the former; and scaleability (both laterally and vertically) for the latter. But now we can more easily see both types, why not keep them in our field of vision? [It’s not easy,](https://www.howardgray.net/2018/12/17/the-microscope-the-telescope/) but having two points of reference helps us avoid both under and overshooting. ### Positioning: Get Uncomfortably Narrow URL: https://www.howardgray.net/positioning-get-uncomfortably-narrow/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T18:15:59.000Z A lot of entrepreneurs and freelancers struggle with positioning. Often it’s ironic as the work many of us do is to help others communicate, tell stories, and stand out. Yet, of course, we struggle to do this effectively for ourselves. Here’s one way to think about it: get so narrow it’s uncomfortable. Get so narrow that it’s claustrophobic, nerve inducing. So it almost hurts. Get so narrow you feel constrained, boxed in, typecast. The shackles and the straitjacket are on, and there’s little room for maneuver. \[1\] This matters because once you’ve got there it’s possible to push outwards just a little and see something that’s specific, serviceable, and sizeable. Or more accurately – see somebody, see some people, some companies, some groups. There won’t be many, but they’ll be there, and they’ll be within your field of view. For small businesses this gives us an advantage. Going the other way doesn’t really work; attempting to squish your mass into a narrow space won’t fit. There’s excess that doesn’t have anywhere to go. As for trying to be everything for everyone? Maybe you can pull it off if you have the time, resources, fortitude and luck, but you just made it 100 or 1000 times harder for yourself. Instead, start uncomfortably narrow. --- \[1\] Here’s a personal example I suggested to the AMP NYC cohort I’m working with. Could I position myself to be the best facilitator of accelerator programs for media & entertainment business owners in NYC? It’s extremely narrow, but I probably can. In fact, by doing this I’ve probably escaped competition. From there, it’s possible to start nudging outwards and finding more people who are interested in what I bring. ### The Vessel & The Lens URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-vessel-the-lens/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:46:51.000Z Last week I had lunch with a friend who, like me, is a recent graduate of a coaching certification program. \[1\] As we compared notes on our various projects, I used a word I’ve been thinking about quite a bit recently with regard to my new venture. The Vessel. I explained this venture as being a vessel to contain and blend various elements of my skills, experience, and interests: [coaching](https://www.howardgray.net/coaching/), [teaching](https://www.howardgray.net/education-design-teaching/), content design, entrepreneurial thinking, [storytelling](https://www.howardgray.net/2018/07/16/tall-stories-the-importance-of-storytelling/). As I spoke, he gave me a look before asking the questions he knew I needed to be asked. What made it a vessel? What was important about that? What else could it be? Just because it’s a company doesn’t mean it has to be something into which resources are poured. What if it was broader? What’s the sum of all the elements being brought in? What do they represent? What if they represented a worldview? --- A way of seeing the world, and how it could be in the future. A lens to see the world and the elements within it. A lens to focus time and energies. A lens to sharpen the view. A lens to better see the people this venture seeks to serve. Vessels are useful. Lens are powerful. --- \[1\] The topic of two coaches meeting for lunch probably deserves its own post, and probably its own cartoon in The New Yorker – a joust of probing and empowering questions and wry *‘you got me with that one!’* moments. ### KPIs: The slide snap URL: https://www.howardgray.net/kpis-the-slide-snap/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:46:37.000Z Here are couple of simple KPIs for all the teachers, facilitators, and keynote speakers out there. 1\. How many times audience members take photos of what’s up on the screen. 2\. The slide that get the most snaps. These sound like strong metrics. Or are they? Do they in fact play to your ego and pride? Are they vanity metrics? And more than that, what if they’re indicating something is *not* working? What if the reason the audience is taking photos is because there’s too much information on there for them to process? Because it’s too complex to make sense of? Because you’re speaking too quickly, speaking without passion, using too much jargon, or referencing examples that don’t land with them? Of course, it could well be your content is clear, insightful, beautifully designed, and just calls out to be recorded by your audience so they can spend more time with it. If so, it’s done its job. Or perhaps there are some other metrics you could try instead. ### Sampling: You don’t know it until you’ve tried it URL: https://www.howardgray.net/sampling-you-dont-know-it-until-youve-tried-it/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T18:16:38.000Z *Why the Hitchhiker’s 3 rules of technology reactions permeate far further* Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, came up with three rules that describe our reaction to technologies: > 1\. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. > 2\. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. > 3\. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things. These rules also apply outside of technology. Or rather, they apply beyond our typical definition of technology. The word technology comes from ‘technique’; the way we do things. So by extension, Adams’ rules can apply to almost anything relating to techniques – the way we do things. It could be playing Fortnite, drinking Kombucha, or working with an [Executive Coach](https://www.howardgray.net/coaching/). When it comes to rule 1 – no problem. These things are just part of how the world works. We grow up into them. (In fact, there should probably be a rule zero: anything invented before we were born often seems clunky, twee, or ridiculous by the time we turn 7 years old) Rule 2? Perhaps there’s some resistance or lack of understanding, but these things are generally new and exciting – it’s worth trying them, and they may even lead to an interest, passion, or career. When we get to rule 3 things become tricky. > Wtf is Fortnite? I’d rather have a nice cup of Earl Grey than Kombu…Cambuche? Kambutcha? This gets harder still when the new thing is something personal. Something intimate, sensitive, perhaps at odds with social conventions, or carrying a stigma. Body art. Coaching. Polyamorous relationships. Digital nomads. Openly talking about mental health. This makes it tough for those of us creating new things, especially when we’re creating these things for groups either well rooted in rule 3, or tipping towards it from rule 2\. As you may have heard – the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club. However, the good news is we can gain leverage to bring new things to life by using a different kind of fighting: jiu jitsu. One jiu jitsu move is embracing stigma, and letting it give us more confidence that we’re onto something. What is a stigma today may well soon be revolutionary and exciting, and a few years down the line it may be part of the fabric of life. Pieter Levels talks about this in the latter third of this talk on bootstrapping side projects One effective way to mitigate the feeling of something new being against the natural order of things is to try a snippet, a sample. Low risk. Limited downside. Find out if it’s for you. I’m writing this on my 36th birthday. I guess Rule 3 has officially kicked in. As the world keeps turning and things keep moving, us over 35s are going to need snippets, samples, and tasters for all kinds of things. And right there is a new, innovative opportunity in itself. ### Adventures #30: Milestones, Deadlines, and the space between URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-30-milestones-deadlines-and-the-space-between/ Last updated: 2021-07-09T18:58:28.000Z _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Dominant Design URL: https://www.howardgray.net/dominant-design/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T18:17:09.000Z When the car company uses dominant design, they may not even know they’re doing so. When they see the company starting to mirror the most important parts of its product – that’s dominant design. If the engine and chassis are more important than the radio and the seat covers (and in most car companies, they probably are), then dominant design in the company will probably show up as a big focus on structure and productivity. The motor and the main skeleton are what drives *(sorry)* the business. And this doesn’t just show up in key objectives or operating style – the dominant design can appear through branding, hierarchy, communications, culture. We’ve probably all got some dominant design elements in our work. We can change the dominant design if we choose to – but it helps if we identify and understand its purpose first. Have you seen it? ### A simple way to get unblocked URL: https://www.howardgray.net/a-simple-way-to-get-unblocked/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:46:19.000Z You probably know the feeling: that project you’re working on just spins round and round; nothing moving; no new way of cracking the problem; no other route appearing. You want the ideas to flow, but they won’t. The more you force them, the worse it is. Or take a walk, take a shower, take a break. Still no good. Here’s something else to try. Get bored, with constraints. --- You could just get bored. This may help ([as Neil Gaiman suggests when it comes to writing](https://www.vox.com/2016/6/24/12023932/watch-neil-gaiman-seth-meyers?ref=howardgray.net)), but the constraints are important – especially when you’re an easily distracted soul or have other projects on the boil. One type of constraint that can work well is a social convention. For example, go to a talk. It can’t be a talk on just *anything* – the constraints may not be strong enough to keep you there. It needs a talk on a topic you’re interested in, but where your expectations are moderate at best. What you’re ideally looking for is a talk on a topic adjacent to the project you’re working on. It should be the kind of thing you impulsively sign up for a couple of weeks in advance, then bail on the day before *(be honest, you’ve done this)*. Take a notepad and pen with you, and show up on time. You don’t want to be a late arrival, otherwise you’ll be breaking the social conventions. It’s crucial you’re part of the audience, as this reduces the chances of you leaving early or opting out. Sit towards the back of the room, and listen to the conversation like you’d listen to music. Don’t try too hard to listen, nor to do something else. Wait for one of two things to happen: something you hear triggers an idea; or your interest and attention naturally wane. If the first happens – write it. Draw it. Keep going with it. If it’s the second – stay with it. In either case, see where you go. You may be surprised at what shows up. This has worked very well for me maybe a dozen times now. Go out and try it yourself. I just hope none of those event hosts read this. ### The perils of a chain reaction URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-perils-of-a-chain-reaction/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:56:23.000Z *Our well-intentioned but misguided desires to root for the independents.* A couple of times a week I’ll walk with my wife to her subway stop before I head a few blocks uptown to my office on Union Square. On the way to the subway is a Bluestone Lane coffee shop. Not long ago it was a plucky independent taking the start up plunge; now it’s successfully operating over 30 cafes and coffee shops. Each time we consider heading in for a coffee, a pastry or an obligatory avocado toast there’s always a strange feel of quiet unease \[1\] And no, it’s not that we’re fully immersed in the millennial trope of munching on smushed avocado in a Melbourne-styled cafe, opposite the Facebook office in downtown Manhattan. (Ok, maybe a little) What pulls on us more is perhaps another despair our generation wrings its hands over. This coffee shop company is a chain. Does this mean it’s faceless, ignorant, careless, evil? Not necessarily. In fact, probably not. But by virtue of us knowing it has more than one, two or three outlets, something changes. Our trust diminishes. It’s not a mast we want to nail our colours to. We know Blue Bottle is backed by Nestle, that Sweetgreen has raised big investment money. Does this make automatically the product worse or the experience less palatable? Unlikely. But something shifts. --- There are a few things that may be going on here. Here a couple of them. First off is likely some virtue signalling: advocating for the underdog and shunning what we perceive as the rich and privileged, even if we know little about the actual operations of the business. Second is what Rory Sutherland (via a study by Richard Thaler) refers to as Acquisition Utility. Simply put, we adjust the value of something (and what we’ll pay for it) depending on where we acquire it. Rory uses the example of a friend buying us a cold bottle of Heineken on a hot day at the beach. What we pay varies wildly depending on whether a friend tells us the beer is available from a beach shack or a boutique hotel. Same beer, same thirst quenching effect, and in this case no one around to even see where we got it from. You can guess which one people will pay more for. Compared to some cities, New York has an incredible range of independent outlets, especially in food & beverage. I’m not sure whether our reactions to perceived chains is tempered or amplified by this, but it feels timely to consider given recent events in the UK. As I write this, the British chef and entrepreneur Jamie Oliver has just announced his restaurant chain is on the brink of collapse. It’s not reasonable to place the cause for this on just one thing, but could one of the contributors be a shift in perception from entrepreneurial independent outlet to faceless fast casual chain? Arguably it’s been at ‘chain’ status for a while, but when we’re starting to question our interest in a group that’s made up of 5 or 10 branches, how do we feel when a company gets to 30 or 50? These perception shifts seem to show up most in hospitality and food & beverage, but I’m curious to observe where else we’ll see them have bigger effects. Perhaps even the Small Giants that Bo Burlingham writes about will be usurped by the one woman band, the two-man shack. In the end, perhaps it comes down to trust, trends, and admitting we’re in fact pretty protective of our avocado toast. *\[1\] Instead we’ll usually drop by ‘Astor Plate’; a small cabin on the street that knocks out unglamorous fried egg muffins and treacly black coffee. I think it’s independent, but honestly – I have no idea*. ### 22,000 songs in your pocket URL: https://www.howardgray.net/22000-songs-in-your-pocket/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:29:04.000Z Back in 2001, Apple CEO Steve Jobs uttered his now legendary one line pitch for a new product his company were about to release. ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ It’s unlikely even he knew how rapidly things would evolve from that point on. From iPod Classic to iPhone X; Pioneer CDJ500 to Ableton Live and Traktor. --- Fast forward 18 years from Jobs’ pronouncement, and I’m standing in a cavernous warehouse in the Bushwick neighbourhood of Brooklyn. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_1652-e1558446875265-768x1024.jpg) Bushwick haze. Saturday night warehouse party. It’s coming up to 3am on a Saturday night, the lights are down and the music is loud. Really loud. A friend and I are here to see one of the world’s best DJs power his way through a full-tilt 2-hour set: mixer LEDs pulsing, 3 turntables spinning, hands flashing from one to the next and back again. Classic tracks drop in from nowhere; brand new cuts slice through the room like laser beams. As another huge bassline rumbles in within mere seconds of the last, blended in seamlessly on the spot, I turn to my friend with a wry smile on my face as the crowd starts hollering in unison with maybe the very same question. > *Where did* that *come from?* He knows what I’m thinking. *‘Amazing what you can do with 22,000 songs in your pocket’,* he says, quick as a flash. --- The iPod and all the devices that followed opened up access and lowered barriers to entry for music makers and enthusiasts of all stripes. In the world of DJs, 80 vinyl records in a box became 22,000 (or more?) tracks ready to go at the touch of a button – for amateur and professionals alike. This opened up an almost endless array of options (including getting software to do all the work), but it also forced a prioritisation on decision making and design. The tyranny of choice is real, so when you’re there, live in the room, with 21,975 options, you may want to think not 1 or 2 ahead but 3, 5, or 10\. Choice allows more scope for improvisation and experimentation, but paradoxically also makes it more challenging. This is partly why creativity can thrive under constraints, and why design and focused practice matter more than ever. There’s some compound interest at play here too. The more you play and the longer you stay in the game, the more you get. The collection builds. The routes, mixes, paths, and ideas stack up. There are signature styles that can be developed, purple patches to discover. The more you can find ways to stand out. There are some shortcuts available of course. But here’s the catch. To do it to a level where it means something, where you stand out? You’ve got to build the skills and hone the craft. And there aren’t any shortcuts for that. The shifts in our culture that technology creates may make the barriers to entry lower, but the barriers to success are arguably higher than ever. When it comes to the work we do, we’ve now all got the equivalent of 22,000 songs in our pocket. That range of choices and resources are table stakes now. It’s going to be our craft, creativity, design and discipline that’ll set us apart. And the DJ in question? That’s one for another post. ### The Circuit URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-circuit/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:54:42.000Z *The challenges — and the importance — of being out on the road, in the middle, on the circuit as a creative professional* When I was a talent agent, something I didn’t do as much as I should have was developing a deeper understanding and empathy for the experiences of my clients. They all came from different places, with different plans, but something a lot of them had in common was being on the circuit. The circuit is often in the middle of the market, and as with many things in life, the middle is a tougher place to operate than it first appears. Early on, you’re just happy to be out there, touching the elements of it. You’re able to publicly share your work, providing people with memorable experiences, and getting paid to do so. Sometimes you’ll be on the same bill as one of your heroes, or even headline a gig where everyone knows you’re the main event. Over time what began as a passionate hobby becomes a side project, the side project becomes a craft, the craft becomes a nice side income, and then one day it’s become full time. For some, they catch a wave and are propelled into the stratosphere: maybe for a week, a month, a year, or even a decade or three. But it’s rare. Many more fall away, bobbing under the surface. Every so often they catch a gulp of fresh air, or even another big wave to ride. Unfortunately some will sink. The rest shift up into the middle. The middle is definitely not a bad place to be. In fact, it’s to be celebrated. As one media & entertainment executive once said to me; > the definition of success in the music industry is survival. The circuit can be fulfilling and rewarding. It’s where you can share your craft with people who are invested, interested, aligned. Not every time of course, but more often than not, and with the right guidance and focus, the circuit works in more ways than one. ![Circuit](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/series-circuit-parallel-circuit.png) There are a lot of good gigs on the circuit. Some of them are institutions. Some are incredible. But here’s the thing about the middle, about the circuit. It’s tough. It’s the work. It’s exceedingly hard to rise above it, and worse for you to opt out. Some gigs on the circuit are so-so, and some are far worse. Any or all of these things may happen on the circuit. - The travel is arduous. - The hotel is grim. - The food is insipid. - The tech doesn’t work properly. - The promoter is shady. - The warmup doesn’t know what they’re doing. - No one knows why you’re there. - No one knows why they’re there. - The audience has been mis-sold. - So have you. - Promises have been broken. - It’s a long way home. And because it’s a circuit, it repeats. It starts again tomorrow. Or as Mark Twain may have said > *history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes* The only way you can really, genuinely understand the circuit is to be on the circuit. And it’s not just the DJs, or the musicians. It’s the stand up comedians building towards the hour; the authors on book tours; the workshop facilitators traveling to teach; the touring tattoo artists seeking to make their mark and share their art. If we’re on the circuit we need to be strong. We should stand our ground when things get compromised. Ask for what we need to do the work. Call out bad behaviour when we see it. Recognise the opportunity costs of the work – whether it’s from us overdoing it, undercooking it, or overplaying it. Yet we must also be grateful that we’re there. Through a combination of skill, talent, work, and a good dose of luck we’ve climbed high enough to be able to practice and share our craft, to be professionals at this. We should respect those who make the investment to enable us to keep doing what we do – whether fans, hobbyists, or professionals. If we happen to move up and out of the circuit – in whichever direction – we shouldn’t forget where we came from, and those who are in it. And we should acknowledge those looking up at the circuit, finding their way, nudging themselves into the loop to try and get their start. The Circuit is tough, but it matters. ### Are you running a meetup or a workshop? URL: https://www.howardgray.net/are-you-running-a-meetup-or-a-workshop/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T16:54:44.000Z *The corridor of uncertainty, and not getting what you came for.* A few weeks ago I ran a pilot of a new event. This event came about because of a blog post. I’m not sure how often blog posts are the catalysts for events, but that’s what happened here. I knew I wanted this particular event to be fairly unstructured; more akin to a get-together or a salon as much as it was a workshop (I really like workshops, but I also really like salon-style events) With this event, I had put some learning objectives in place, but it didn’t have a hard skills approach as most educational workshops do. As I prepared to launch it into the wild, the event hosts tweaked the copy I’d put on my brief one-page website, and I didn’t really pay any mind to the headline including the word ‘workshop’. The copy looked good and definitely improved on my previous version. Page approved, let’s go and get some signups. Fast forward to the start of the event, and I asked everyone what had compelled them to sign up. Almost half said something about the event title. Which included the word ‘workshop’. At the end of the two hour session I’d learned a lot; one of biggest learnings being that what I’d run was something pretty different to what I thought. This wasn’t a workshop. It was a facilitated meetup. Now, nothing wrong with this – not at all. But that title on the event page mis-sold it to my attendees. They came expecting a workshop: specific exercises, tools and methods to take away, work being undertaken, something tangible in their back pocket. I tried to facilitate it like a workshop, then swayed back to meetup mode, and then again into workshop mode. It was confusing. They didn’t quite get what they came for. Overall, everyone enjoyed the session, with good conversation and connections being made, but something was missing. I’d placed the session into the murky middle, the corridor of uncertainty. They didn’t know whether they would get what they came for. When this happens it make things hard. For you as a designer and facilitator, and more importantly for attendees. Pilots are called pilots for a reason, but something to get clear as early as you can is knowing what you’re creating. It’s surprisingly easy to miss. ### Back to business school: the new case study URL: https://www.howardgray.net/back-to-business-school-the-new-case-study/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T16:06:54.000Z Almost every form of school and education is getting questioned, queried, unbundled, and rethought. The same is happening in business – people are starting to as what is it for; what does purpose really mean; what’s sustainable; what’s right; what are the 2nd and 3rd order effects of what this does. Take the two together – business and school. Business School. That’s changing in lots of ways too. Here’s one. A key tenet of just about any business school curriculum is the case study. The old case studies were focused on the big corporate names who either went out and played, became remade, or got gruesomely slayed. The new case studies are going to be different. Some of the new case studies will focus on the small giants – the successes that fly just the radar, not quite in the consciousness of the masses. But more likely the new case studies will be on organizations smaller still. Not the elephants, the hippos, or the lions. Not even the deers or the rabbits. They’ll be about the mosquitos, the tree frogs, and the [hummingbirds](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/02/04/from-the-magpie-to-the-hummingbird/). The new case studies will be about those people and organizations taking steps just a couple of paces away from where the rest of us – those of us who have enrolled and invested – are at. The new case studies will be human stories. Relatable. Real. Actionable. Insightful. Vital. Students will gravitate to them, dig in, see the paths they can explore. And here’s the kicker. If you’re one of those people whose footprints are a couple of paces away from those in the cohort – those who are ready to become the new case studies – you’ve just put yourself in place to tap into a fresh marketing opportunity. We already know that one of the most powerful ways to build your brand is to have someone else tell others about it. But this isn’t about existing customers, nor the Instagram influencers du jour. We’re talking about the teachers. They’ll spread the word for you, and be happy to do so. They’ll tag you, big it up, put your name up on the big screen. They’ll ask their cohort to think about you, what you stand for, what makes you stand out. They’ll want to share it, and their cohort will too. Even better, the teachers and their students starved. They’re seeking someone like you, right now. So forget the speaking gig and the PR offensive. Become the person the teacher seeks out. Because you’re authentic, alternative, doing it a new way, doing it a real way. Teachers, meet the change makers. Change makers, meet the teachers. It’s time for the new case studies. ### Freelancer to Entrepreneur: The Forest, The Mountains, and the Water URL: https://www.howardgray.net/freelancer-to-entrepreneur-the-forest-the-mountains-and-the-water/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T22:58:01.000Z Imagine a landscape. It has a forest on one side and a mountain range on the other. The two are separated by some water. The forest is made up of luscious shades of green, so dense it’s almost a jungle. This sea of green is punctuated by snaps of red, blue, orange and yellow from wonderful flowers and fruits. Out on the mountain range, the peaks start small before sprawling back into epic heights. The mountains’ sandy grey facade appear barren and desolate, but we often hear stories of magnificent castles up in those rarified airs where the clouds start to touch the rocks. In the forest there is everything you’d expect of a healthy, prosperous woodland. Wise old trees mix with rapidly extended creepers; colourful shrubs sprout alongside exotic flowers and bountiful berries. For the experienced visitor, the forest is plentiful – it protects from rain and sun, and as an ecosystem is long lasting, tried and true. Some visitors live in the forest itself, others travel in from local villages, and a few build their homes at the water’s edge. However, for the novices there are pitfalls. Not all these berries are what they seem – some are poisonous to touch or taste. The creepers become a nuisance, or even suffocating. The oldest and wisest trees are hard to find. Many go in search of them, but many more ignore them – passing over their unremarkable, gnarled appearance for something more instantly gratifying and aesthetically pleasing. And despite all its lusciousness and hidden depths, the forest needs careful nurturing to survive and grow. In the forest are the freelancers. Meanwhile, in the mountains, dusk starts to arrive. As the dark blue hue of night draw its veil, a series of small basecamps become visible on the lower peaks. They’re uncomplicated structures, nothing noteworthy at first glance. Simple tents that don’t attract attention. Some fly flags or are made of colourful fabrics, yet very few appear flamboyant or garish. Most of these small camps are open to curious visitors. They’re self-sufficient, with a small group of intrepid explorers inside. A few venture to the forest, but most are preparing themselves for the next peak to climb. Some of their peers have made it all the way up into the castles – manning a turret, or overseeing one of the castle’s most proud and productive areas of output. A select few have even made it all the way up the peaks unguided and built their own settlements. Not many people know what it’s like up there, except those that come down to visit the base camps from time to time. Rumour has it there are other towns and cities on the other side of those mountain peaks. From the small camps on the lowest peak to the castles way up in the sky, out on the mountain range are the entrepreneurs. Between the forest and the mountains is a body of water. It’s strangely hard to spot between the two landscapes sitting either of it. What’s unique about this body of water is its changing nature. It can seem truly gargantuan – a chasm. Or a tightly winding river, with rapids, rocks, tight bends, and exhilarating peaks and troughs. Or it appears to simply be a gentle stream, water softly flowing as clear and smoothly as can be. How we see the water depends on our current vantage point, our life experience, our abilities, and our perception. Some of us never need cross the water. Others may move back and forth every few years. Venturing across can feel like a invigorating paddle in a stream, or a terrifying journey in unknown depths. Recently, there’s been more traffic across the water, far more than the elders remember a few decades back. Some people have been setting up home on the water itself; in self-built houseboats, or grouping together in rented vessels. A few even make their livelihood ferrying others back and forth or up and down the river. For these people making the crossing or spending their time on the water, they know something of both the larger landscapes. Whether on the river, in the forest, or up in the mountains, surviving and thriving in each environment requires different skills. Those who do best are often to be the people with a particular mindset, and a strong understanding and respect for the ecosystems in which they spend their time, and on which they rely. The forest is plentiful, and in most times will happily provide, but it cannot be rapaciously stripped. It tends to be best to visit when not in desperate need of sustenance. The forest’s ecosystem is incredibly complex, and although no one fully understand its ways, we can approach it respectfully, with an attitude of wanting to help it sustain and grow, as well as feeding ourselves and those around us. While from afar the mountain is incredible to behold, up close on its sheer masses of rock the rewards are far less obvious. To climb any of its demanding peaks requires teamwork, focus, grit, a degree of fearlessness, an ability to both take and mitigate risk. We may slip, fall, or never make it all the way to the top. Perhaps that’s just fine. We can find surprising and unique places to set up our camp along the way. All these places can feel like home, or they can feel unnerving, confusing, and unfamiliar. The good news is that wherever we are, we may surprise ourselves at the inner resources we have available to us. If we want to make a change it’s still always possible for us to head into the forest, up to the mountain, out to the river, or back to the village. And wherever we are, there are fellow travelers out there, ready to go on the journey with us. --- *Note: This concept first came to me during a coaching session. I was talking with my coach about moving from freelance to entrepreneur and the challenge of crossing the water.* *This is the extended mix 🙂* ### Labels In, Labels Out URL: https://www.howardgray.net/labels-in-labels-out/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:42:20.000Z We’ve always had labels in one way or another. First, the label tended to be the same as the job we did: hunter, blacksmith, doctor, cleaner, lawyer, CEO, intern. Over time the label became more nuanced, including a role descriptor, elevator pitch, or value proposition: PR executive overseeing the company’s communications strategy; partnerships manager connecting brands to podcast creators. Then the labels became more numerous as the era of the portfolio career, the multi-hyphenate, the slash came into view. Coach/Educator/Writer. Full Stack Developer/Inclusive Tech Activist. Curator/DJ/Lawyer. The labels used to stick – for a 10-15 year chapter if not much longer. Now, the labels shift and cycle depending on the audience, the career stage, the way we’re feeling, the way the world is going. In the space of a year we may see ourselves cycle in and out of two or three labels. Or perhaps a label we gingerly put on many years ago suddenly gets proudly pinned to our lapel. Or, the label we’ve worn may no longer feel right, and we slip it under the lapel instead of being worn on top for all to see. Entrepreneur. Writer. Activist. Mentor. Stylist. Actor. It’s easier than ever to shape shift, to swap and switch the labels. It’s also easier than ever to label ourselves, or to pin ourselves down. What’s important to remember is that there are differences between quietly practising a skill, consciously giving ourselves the label, and going out and doing that work in the world. Labeling can be powerful, but it’s also got to be handled with care. We can change whenever we want to, but these labels, just like fashion, are fast becoming part of our identity. We may choose to step out in this season’s hot designer trend, pick out some understated chic, or just go with the dependable, sustainable basics. It’s up to us. ### The Music Industry's 73% URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-music-industrys-73/ Last updated: 2024-12-26T01:26:29.000Z This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the [top 1% of musicians accounted for 60% of concert revenues](https://www.wsj.com/articles/music-superstars-are-the-new-one-percenters-11556962200?ref=howardgray.net) – up from 26% in 1982\. The top 5% of artists get 85%. Yesterday this popped up on my Twitter feed: > "There needs to be a culture change, of art before profit, of encouraging variety, of benevolence, of selflessness,"[https://t.co/PC8rgSVbJE](https://t.co/PC8rgSVbJE?ref=howardgray.net) > > — Jack Workforce (@JackSpectraSoul) [May 9, 2019](https://twitter.com/JackSpectraSoul/status/1126624963463647232?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=howardgray.net) In another post, [I wrote at length about the challenges facing people working on the business side of the music industry](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/04/02/what-the-music-industrys-people-need-next/) – particularly those in artist management. Clearly these problems are even more prominent on the creators’ side. While anxiety and depression are best handled by mental health professionals, I’m curious about what the power of facilitated peer groups can do to remedy this. I’ve found ‘circle’ style coaching sessions to be very effective ways of working. Circles vary in style, but generally share these key characteristics: - Bring together 5-8 people at a similar stage in their career and personal growth - Facilitated by a professional coach to provide structure and space, and to ensure time is well spent - Each circle member commits to participating for the duration of the circle (usually a minimum of 3 months, often 6-12) - Circles can gather either in-person via video chat and/or in person - Everything shared in a circle is held as confidential to create a safe space for exploration Benefits of being in a circle include: - Receiving feedback and guidance from peers - Seeing challenges from new perspectives and vantage points - Accessing actionable new methods and tools to apply - Finding a sense of alignment on challenges that may have previously insurmountable - Moving closer towards becoming the creative and human you want to be Circles are also far more cost-effective than individual coaching – something not to be taken lightly when one of this group’s main concerns is financial instability. Perhaps this is one way of taking better care of that 73%. If you’re interested in learning more [about coaching](https://www.howardgray.net/coaching-faq/), or becoming part of a circle, I’d love to [hear from you](https://howardgray.typeform.com/to/SQRcY1?ref=howardgray.net). ### Book Request: The Coaches URL: https://www.howardgray.net/books/book-request-the-coaches/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:41:27.000Z *Note: this is [an idea I am getting rid of](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/05/10/why-we-need-to-get-rid-of-ideas/) (for the foreseeable at least)* Coaching has exploded in popularity over the past decade. Starting in the world of sports, before being embraced by senior executives in the business world, coaching is now a practice utilized across technology startups, the nonprofit sector, and a broad spectrum of independent creators. Yet coaching is still largely misunderstood and often carries a significant stigma. The industry itself is largely unregulated and fragmented. A cursory scroll through Instagram reveals a dizzying array of self-styled coaches specializing in everything from launching a business, to tapping into one’s inner power, becoming a better marketer, or overcoming harassment at work. For the uninitiated, understanding what separates a good coach from a bad one can feel like an overwhelming task. Despite this, many of the world’s most notable and recognized performers attribute much of their success to the coaches who guide, challenge and champion them. This disconnect brings up a number of questions: - What is it about coaching that’s so effective? - What makes coaching different from consulting, mentoring, or therapy? - How do styles and methodologies of coaching differ across industries? - How can coaching help us fulfil our potential? - And does the world need coaches now more than ever? One way of answering these and many other questions is a book going behind the scenes of success with some of the world’s best coaches. To this writer’s knowledge, it doesn’t yet exist. An anthology of insights, stories, and ideas, the book would be written as a collection of short interviews, each introduced and narrated by the author. Each interview would be accompanied by a full-page portrait photograph of the coach. The interviewees are a global array of coaches working with athletes and actors, executives and entrepreneurs, activists and artists. These are the people who help top performers of all kinds see their potential, reach their peak, rediscover their abilities when all may seem lost, and build successful lives and careers for the long haul. Some of these coaches are well-known names in their own right, but many more are one step behind the curtain. Their knowledge and expertise have largely been hidden from public view – until now. This book is for anyone who wants to better understand what goes into sustained success, and how the practices of the world’s best coaches can be applied to everyday life. --- Interested in this idea? [Let me know](https://www.howardgray.net/contact/), I’d love to get your take on it. ### Going Solo? You’re still in the Rat Race URL: https://www.howardgray.net/going-solo-youre-still-in-the-rat-race/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:40:50.000Z Many of us strike out as consultants, freelancers, entrepreneurs, or artists to escape the rat race – to get away from the pressured, constrained, exhausting, repetitive life that is ‘regular’ work. Here’s the thing we don’t realise – we’re still in it. We may not be doing those same things in step with those hundreds of others: chasing the cheese, sitting at the same desk; waiting for the same train home. But we’re still in our own rat race. Focusing on being productive. Putting in the hours into unglamorous work. Getting into routines. Adhering to standards. Dealing with feelings of futility. Chasing the tail. Some of it feels even worse than the rat race we’ve left behind. But much of it helps us. So, the bad news is if you’ve left the rat race, you’re probably still in it. The good news is you can choose the maze – and the cheese. ### Why we need to get rid of ideas URL: https://www.howardgray.net/why-we-need-to-get-rid-of-ideas/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:40:38.000Z On this week’s episode of his Akimbo podcast, Seth Godin answers a listener question about focusing – more specifically, how to focus when there are so many ideas that appeal. One way is to to blog; not as a way to just share ideas, but also to get rid of them – to stop carrying them around. I suffer from creating, collecting, and carrying around many ideas. They probably weigh me down more than I’d like to admit. So you’ll be seeing more ideas on this blog. Partly because I want to share them, but also because it’s a good way for me to get rid of them – to lighten my own load and to focus. In one way it sounds selfish, but I hope it will prove to be the opposite – more ideas to give away to others, and more space for me to focus on doing good things for others. Let’s keep getting rid of ideas. ### Becoming a wizard URL: https://www.howardgray.net/becoming-a-wizard/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:31:31.000Z ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/photo-1471045220822-f3f0ad3a5416-1024x576.jpeg) Regular readers may know two of my favourite podcasts are ’The Moment’ with Brian Koppelman, and Seth Godin’s ’Akimbo’. Every year or so, the two get together on ‘The Moment’ for a discussion revolving around the themes of showing up in the world and going out and doing creative work. In one of their episodes, Brian calls Seth ‘a wizard’. \[1\] It’s part of out of awe and respect, but possibly even more out of frustration and exasperation. How can mere mortals even imagine being so disciplined, creative, focused, insightful, and concise? The word ‘wizard’ really hit me. Magic, mystic, wisdom, mastery. Building hard earned skills, teaching others, able to wield great power but being self-aware enough to act in a judicious and measured manner. Being a wizard is pretty appealing. We ourselves may never quite get there, but what are some of the steps along the way? What does thinking like a wizard do for us? And how can we start practising like one? After all, there’s got to be a source to the sorcery. \[1\] I’m not on first name terms with either, but using last names feels so…well, formal. And this blog ain’t formal. ### Empty Tank URL: https://www.howardgray.net/empty-tank/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:15:12.000Z On June 1st 2015 I broke out alone again. This month marks the end of the fourth year as an independent. It also marks the very first time the tank has been empty. There’s not enough left in the tank and the pipes to give the engine what it needs to keep going. As you may have guessed, I’m referring to the tank we call money, cash, currency. And the pipes are the cash flow. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some close calls. Projects getting cancelled, people paying late, underestimated tax bills landing on the doormat with a thud. This time though, there isn’t enough. There’s still fuel coming in, but it isn’t getting pumped around quickly enough. I have a piping issue. It’s stressful, no doubt. There isn’t just one tank though. There’s the money tank. That’s the one in question here. It’s running on fumes right now, and the money tank powers a lot of other things, whether we like it or not. The good news is that although this tank is running low, the other tanks are still running high. Creativity, curiosity, outlook. Those tanks aren’t brimming, but they’re still well stocked. The tricky thing is that the money tank can drain these too. Like I say, it powers, and controls, a lot of other things. Here’s the paradox though – when that first tank is full, the other tanks seem to get ignored. It’s only when we’re running low that we really notice and call upon the precious resources we still have available. ### Coaching for creative inspiration URL: https://www.howardgray.net/coaching-for-creative-inspiration/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T17:52:12.000Z A key component of a coaching certification program is to get coaching. Not ‘get’ as in ‘understand’, but ‘get’ as in enrolling with a coach. Becoming the client. There are some obvious benefits to this: learning new techniques and approaches from another coach; putting yourself into the shoes of a client; getting a better sense of the flow and arcs of individual coaching sessions and longer-form engagements; and, of course, being able to get coaching on topics of your choice. In my coaching program we engage with two types of coach: a peer coach, and a certified coach. A peer coach is a fellow student in our cohort. Peer coaching sessions take place each week, with each of us rotating between client and coach over a 1 hour session (so we get 30 minutes each as a client, and 30 minutes as a coach). The peer coaches rotate every 8 weeks or so, but many of us keep our previous partners and end up doing several sessions each week. Our work with a professional coach entails a minimum of 6 sessions with a graduate of the program who is now a certified professional coach. In these sessions we’re the client, no rotation – so a full hour of being in the client’s seat. An unexpected but delightful bonus of doing this level of work as a client (2-3 hours every week, and sometimes more), is the compound interest on my creativity. Because coaching involves asking powerful, probing and thought-provoking questions, as a client I’ve found myself digging deep for answers. Sometimes those answers get articulated in unexpected ways – through imagery, metaphor, being able to tug on different threads that I usually wouldn’t see – let alone access. As I listen to myself talk through a topic with my coach, ideas and concepts surface as if by magic. They could be ideas for blog posts, new ways of seeing projects, colours to use in a design, fresh models to apply, or alternative approaches to take. Perhaps these opportunities would have appeared otherwise, but my bet is they’d stay below the surface without the coaching time to focus the mind and explore deeper. We often think of coaching as being a practice to help us get overcome challenges. It can also be hugely effective for accessing completely new, fresh fuel. And the inspiration for this blog post? Where else but a coaching session. ### Adventures #29: Darwin discoveries, deep fakes, and deep space URL: https://www.howardgray.net/adventures-29-darwin-discoveries-deep-fakes-and-deep-space/ Last updated: 2021-07-09T18:59:47.000Z _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Overrated Mentors, Underrated Coaches URL: https://www.howardgray.net/overrated-mentors-underrated-coaches/ Last updated: 2025-07-05T13:53:25.000Z Mentoring and coaching often get thrown into one bucket. On the surface they sound pretty similar; practices that help people make progress. However, go down a layer or two and there are a host of differences ([I wrote about these here)](https://www.howardgray.net/2018/03/22/advisor-mentor-coach-counsel-whats-in-a-name/). Broadly speaking, mentors are people who have trodden a similar path to the one currently facing the mentee. They’re often successful people who are in a position to dispense wisdom, advice, and guidance. A lot of people are seeking mentors. But mentoring has a few big problems associated with it. First, it’s hugely inefficient. It doesn’t scale. And while this is a challenge for many kinds of professional services, the issue with mentoring is two-fold: mentors tend to be successful, busy people with pressures and constraints on their time and just don’t have the capacity to mentor all the people who want to be their mentee; and the mentoring relationship almost always needs to be 1:1 to be effective. Thus, there’s a big supply issue. Second, it’s an unbalanced exchange – some of the best mentor/mentee relationships are two way, in that both people take on both roles, but generally they’ll be one way. There’s no problem with this in itself, but because of the first problem, the mentor is going to have to choose who to mentor. If, as is likely, she chooses the brightest and the best, where does that leave everyone else who’s in need? Third, people who are successful aren’t often very good at teaching those who aren’t. Not many of them use or possess teaching or coaching skills. If you wanted to improve your running technique, would you hire a well-known athlete like Usain Bolt, or his far less-known coach? By now you may be thinking the answer is to avoid mentors and hire a coach instead. Coaches have more capacity, can work across a broader range of needs, and are well positioned to set people up for success. Perhaps. But bear in mind that these are totally different skill sets. Mentors have been there, done it, experienced success first hand. Coaches know how to guide people towards the behaviors, routines, and mindsets to find that success. But they may not have experienced it directly themselves. They may not have been players in the game. A healthy dose of skepticism helps when choosing on either side (whether looking past brand and signaling value of a mentor, or a coach not being able to walk the talk), but my take is that for the vast majority of people coaching is going to be more immediately impactful, actionable and accessible than finding a mentor. In either case, how do we know if someone is worth working with as a mentor or a coach? Here’s one simple heuristic. They’ve done good work themselves, or the people they’ve mentored, guided, taught or coached have done good work. Even better? Both. ### The Rotation URL: https://www.howardgray.net/the-rotation/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:40:07.000Z Menlo Innovations is a software company based in Ann Arbor. They’ve become well known for staying true to their innovative title – not only in the work they produce but in the way they do the work. One example is in pair programming. This isn’t anything extraordinary on its own; in fact it’s now common to the point of being standard practice at many technology companies. What Menlo did a little differently was the rotation. Each week one of the pair would rotate out and someone new would rotate in. But the difference wasn’t the rotation itself. It was about who rotated and the outcomes that created. Every so often, someone with no technical knowledge would go into the rotation. A marketer, a human resources manager, an intern. And just like the pairs before them, they’d pair program alongside another programming. Why do this? It was surely incredibly inefficient. Projects would fall behind, other work would fall by the wayside, and team members would become frustrated. The rotation of non-technical people into the programming pairs meant that everything had to be simple. It meant there was no excessive terminology, overly complex systems, or hidden or hoarded knowledge. It meant diverse perspectives, ideas and experiences came together. It meant everyone could learn, and everyone could teach. It meant everyone could tell the story of the company, of the work, and why it mattered. Rotation is something we could probably use a little more of. ### Ghosted: from URL to IRL URL: https://www.howardgray.net/ghosted-from-url-to-irl/ Last updated: 2021-07-23T18:19:29.000Z This week the video conferencing company Zoom announced its IPO. In the Forbes profile of its founder Eric Yuan, this nugget jumped out at me: *For his IPO road show, Yuan deigned to make the 50-mile trek from his San Jose headquarters to San Francisco for a single investor lunch—and then bolted back to work. Everyone else, money manager big or small, met with him virtually, over Zoom. When Yuan flew to New York for the IPO, it was just his eighth work trip in five years.* 8 work trips in 5 years. A lot of us may do that in 1 year. Some of us do that in 1 month. A few brave souls would do it in a couple of weeks. Whether by cause or effect, a common frustration I’ve been hearing of late is a lot of in-person meetings getting repeatedly rescheduled at short notice or just shelved completely. There are likely a few factors at play here: a renewed focus on protecting time; the increased stress and overwhelm that seems to be part and parcel of modern work; wider shifts in our culture; and the wealth of communication options that contribute both positively and negatively to all three of the others. For those of us who place great value on in-person connections, these shifts can be troubling. Video technology like Zoom is an incredible enabler, and nearly flawless in quality, but it’s still not the same – and until we truly do enter the matrix, won’t ever be. The question now is about making choices. Where and when do we keep pressing ahead to bring people together in-person and risk the ghosting, rescheduling, and disregard for time and energy? And to what degree do we accept that remote is the future, and lap up the efficient, convenient, but 2 dimensional utility it provides? ### Two Tunnels URL: https://www.howardgray.net/two-tunnels/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:39:24.000Z Imagine your primary area of focus as a tunnel you’re digging. You may be digging into clay, sand, soil, or rock. If you have two areas of focus, you’ll have two tunnels. They may start far away or close together. Digging two tunnels simultaneously is almost definitely going to be harder than digging just one, but there are factors to consider: the tools at your disposal, the type of earth you’re tunnelling into, some secret tunnelling knowledge you may possess. The two tunnels could be dug in sync, sit parallel, veer away from each other, or end up converging. They could end up doing all four. As for where these tunnels go – it’s often hard to say, especially when we’re starting out. But it’s worth being as sure as we can that there’s light at the end of them, and we have a lamp to guide us as we dig. ### ™ URL: https://www.howardgray.net/3481/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:39:11.000Z Trademarks exist to identify the origin of some kind of good or service – the origin being the business that serves as the commercial source of that good or service. What we often miss is that there are two types of trademarks – a trademark and a registered trademark. While an unregistered trade mark offers some legal protection to the owner, registration offers far more. But beyond protection, trademarks are also a type of signalling. In service businesses like consulting they’re increasingly applied to models or frameworks. The trade mark says that time and expertise has gone into the idea’s creation. That we took the time to register this concept as a trade mark. That you should trust us because of it. That it’s worth paying a lot of money to access what lies behind the ™. In these cases the trademark isn’t really there to protect the IP at all. It’s there almost solely as a way to differentiate, to increase the perceived value of the service, and to signal. And it often works. We could think of Open Source being the opposite of a trade mark. But it’s also protected – by its community. And it’s also a signal – that we’re open, inclusive. Wherever we look, there’s more protection – and more signals – in place than meets the eye. ### Keep it boring URL: https://www.howardgray.net/keep-it-boring/ Last updated: 2025-05-24T18:31:20.000Z > *Wanna know what kills more police than bullets and liquor? Boredom. They just can’t handle that shit. You keep it boring, String. You keep it dead f\*\*\*ing boring.* > > Joseph ‘Proposition Joe’ Stewart, The Wire As a way to go about one’s business, perhaps we underestimate keeping it boring. During season 3 of the classic HBO show *The Wire*, drug kingpin Stringer Bell needs to keep business going while under the eye of the police. His benevolent rival crew chief Prop Joe Stewart suggests the way to go is for Stringer to spend his days at the photocopy shop he owns – running reprographics requests rather than harvesting heroin profits. He can continue running the real business from the back room, with a careful eye, a second phone, and plenty of discipline. He’s just got to keep it boring. Joe’s advice holds up well for the rest of us too. What’s seemingly boring can be the solid foundations of our business: routine, discipline, habits, rinse and repeat. They’re the things that enable us to do the work. It’s easy to get pulled into what appears to be glamorous and dynamic, the place [where the juice is](https://www.howardgray.net/2019/02/12/the-juice/). While we’re probably not trying to avoid slipping up in view of the Baltimore police department, we all have our own personal nemeses who like nothing less than to be bored and ignored. They’re the inner critics, censors, the devils on our shoulders. The best way to evade them? Keep it boring. Keep it dead f\*\*\*ing boring. ### Bonus Content URL: https://www.howardgray.net/bonus-content/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:38:56.000Z TV shows, self-help gurus, car salespeople, and yoga certification courses all offer bonus content of one kind or other. Behind the scenes footage. 5 steps to greatness in a handy PDF. Tinted windows. Advanced yoga poses DVD. When it comes to experiences, especially those where we are enrolled to learn and grow, the extra learnings that come from bonus content can be very welcome. But what if we don’t get what we came for in the first place? Is the bonus content enough? Or does it have the opposite effect of what was intended, and instead shine a light on the crucial elements that were missing? In our race to stand out and stay connected, we may invest a lot of resources in creating and delivering bonus content. Before that, it’s worth taking the time to understand what everyone came for in the first place. ### Learning Styles: 3D Mapping a Conversation URL: https://www.howardgray.net/learning-styles-3d-mapping-a-conversation/ Last updated: 2023-11-25T02:13:59.000Z One of the learnings from being a student again has been around my own learning style. Other than a few short courses and MOOCs I haven’t done much classroom-based work since university – and that was nearly 15 years ago. The delicious irony here is that much of my work these days involves the design and delivery of education experiences. Being on the other side of the table again has been a valuable experience. It’s reminded me how important it is to place yourself into the shoes of whoever is on the receiving end of what you’re offering: Player <> Manager Designer <> User VC <> Founder Principal <> Agent Teacher <> Student My biggest challenge as a student has been listening. I have no problem with this 1:1 or in small groups (in fact coaching clients often comment on my listening abilities). The problem is in larger group settings. Without visuals to guide me I either become easily distracted, or struggle to absorb what’s going on. A common activity in my coaching program has been observing practice coaching sessions. As these are conversations, listening is the primary activity. Notes work to an extent but don’t tell enough of a story as a lot of the work is in the movement and direction of the conversation rather than just the words being spoken. Frustrated, I started trying some alternative methods. First, a simple graph – time on axis, agenda type \[1\] on the other. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_1577-1024x768.jpg) Note to self: Is this a blog post? ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_1576-1024x768.jpg) This method helped with exercises in small groups, but in the bigger group I still found myself unable to concentrate fully for the full 20 minute duration. I tried a graph with 3 axes. Again, agenda type on the Y-axis, this time going from 10 to -5 (somewhat arbitrary, but aligned to the 3 agendas. The numbers helped me figure out where a conversation was currently at). Time went on the X-axis as previously. Then on the Z-axis were notes on the coaching methods used as well as some notes on content, reactions, and changes in the client. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_1578-1024x768.jpg) Mapping this 3 dimensionally made it so much easier for me to figure out what was going on. As I listened to the conversation, I could follow along visually and also incorporate numerical data to help me understand the agenda depths and time check points. ![](https://www.howardgray.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG_1575-1024x768.jpg) One of the earlier 3D versions Doing this repeatedly across a few demos enabled me to see some patterns and paths that just wouldn’t have been available to me in a purely auditory way of learning. To further help me understand what was going on, I also started using different colours for different coaching methods and styles of questions. I’ve since used this graphical method as a tool in my own coaching practice: at appropriate moments in a session I can reference the graph (either visually in my mind or quickly sketched in my notebook) to see how deep we’ve gone, how much deeper we could go, and at which points certain different coaching techniques and methods can be utilised. Next? Perhaps a sleeker digital version with some real 3D capability. But for now, a pen and a couple of coloured pens will do. Try it yourself – 3D mapping a conversation. --- \[1\] The 3 agenda types we explore are Presenting (P), Deeper (D), and Transformational (T). In very simple terms, part of the coach’s role is to guide a client from their Presenting Agenda, into a Deeper and then Transformational Agenda, before finding alignment with that original Presenting Agenda. ### Signposts and Surprises URL: https://www.howardgray.net/signposts-and-surprises/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:38:37.000Z One of the principles of adult education is that adult learners like to know what’s going to be happening next. As facilitators and teachers we’ll usually do this by signposting in some way: an agenda at the beginning of the day, or a nod to the hands-on activity we’ll be getting to after the lecture part. But here’s the tension: we want to make sure there are magic moments. These are where the big breakthroughs happen. And they usually need to be a surprise in some way. They can’t be openly signposted. This applies outside the classroom too. Whether we’re pitching for investment or telling a joke – we need both of these elements. It’s hard for one to happen without the other. We want to signpost to the audience where we’ll be going, but the surprises are where the magic happens. This is a craft we can apply ourselves to – finding ways to provide both surprises and signposts. Because in today’s world of scarce attention, to break through we need to be able to create some magic. But without the signposts, we may have no one with us to experience it. ### Cultivate your questions carefully URL: https://www.howardgray.net/cultivate-your-questions-carefully/ Last updated: 2021-07-25T21:30:34.000Z Last week I went on a training course. In these situations I tend to be either very engaged or very agitated. As this course was well designed and facilitated, I found myself highly engaged and time flew by. There was just one occasion where I felt out of sync. A prompt was put on the screen. It was a question for us to discuss in pairs. The facilitator had used the word ‘inject’; we were discussing how it would look to inject something into an organisation. I couldn’t get my mind away from what this word did to the question. We’d been talking about embedding and cultivating, now we were talking about injecting. This one word completely changed the conversation. What did an injection do that cultivation didn’t? Perhaps it suggested a drug that could wear off, or even a placebo? Maybe it was the big push a company needed – the shock of the new substance entering the bloodstream. To his credit, the facilitator went with us. Instead of closing things off, he encouraged us to try on both words in the question. It led two very different but equally valuable conversations, and opened a whole new line of enquiry on the topic at hand. And as it happened, he’d only changed the prescription from ‘cultivate’ to ‘inject’ a few minutes before the session started. It’s amazing what a word can do. _Includes the latest 500 public posts. Use `/sitemap.xml` for the complete archive of public content._