Thursday, December 30, 2010

“Real Artists Ship!”

Steve Jobs said that...

He was frustrated with how long it was taking some of his engineers to get a new product out the door. One member of the team complained that if he wanted them to create artistry he had to be patient, Mr. Jobs' retort has become the stuff of legend, not only at Apple computer but has been picked up by business leaders all over the world.

Earlier today another of the men I currently admire, Seth Godin, published on his blog a list of 13 things he had shipped in 2010. Apart from earnestly training for a triathlon, which has been a dream of mine since I was in my early 20s, I’m hard pressed to think of much that I actually shipped this year. 2010 was for me a year of planning.

Godin says that the key to shipping is overcoming fear. The plans are almost in place, I hope that I can avoid the fear and actually ship something exciting in 2011.

Did you ship anything exciting? What was it?

4 comments:

  1. My shipping days are over. I will go so far to say that I don't think you want this discussion on your blog. I did participate the shipping of a full trailer load of disaster relief supplies to Haiti after the earthquake, but I think you are asking more about entrepreneurial shipping. I too admire Steve Jobs. He built Apple from nothing twice. His visions for what computing could become are both in my office room (my "big Mac") and my iPhone which I am using to type this comment. Jobs realized that floppy and zip disk data storage were yesterday and CD/DVD burning were the immediate future and so the G3 macs of the late 90's were the first commercial computers to drop antiquated storage platforms. At the same time Apple introduced the IPod. I remember thinking, I can't imagine those catching on, but I knew the rainbow colored iMacs were going to be huge the first time I saw them. Apple had a long term plan as well. It first manifested itself with WiFi, then the iPhone/iPod touch but those are just small pieces of a big picture. That picture is the IPad. Apple intends to redefine the whole computer market by introducing a "pad" that is just as powerful as a desktop or laptop computer thereby eliminating the need for them altogether. If you are planning to buy an IPad, wait until April when a new far more powerful IPad is released. The first generation pad is only the beginning and from what I have read, the second generation pad will be well worth the wait. For me, my iPhone and IMac, both less than 3 years old, will be fine and by the time they are outdated, a single pad will be a viable option to replace both. I gave my mother who is a total technophobe an IPod touch (iPhone without the phone) for Christmas a year ago. She had never used a modern computer or the Internet before. She wouldn't even try to program the DVD player. Now, she is online all the time . My reason for giving her the iPod was actually therapeutic since she had a stroke the year before and needs to read and exercise her mind. It worked far better than I ever expected.
    Steve Jobs is an avowed atheist, which is a shame because he has no idea how much God works through his creations, or how God works through him. Given Jobs' health issues, he will be very lucky to survive another decade. I hope he changes his mind.
    As an entrepreneur, how can you plan for the future when uncertainty is the only certainty with the economy. How does one plan for "economic apocalypse" when they own a business? If you aren't planning in that way, it may be worth considering since the dominoes of Europe are already going down and the economic numbers being given by our government don't match the facts on the ground at all. It's far worse here that the SEC and the non-federal Federal Reserve corporation will admit.

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  2. Andrew...

    I didn't really mean this to be a discussion about Steve Jobs or Apple Computer but I posted your comments none the less. My intention was really to put a book end on my recent theme of personal responsibility and getting things done. The time for planning is over, in the immortal words of Captain Jean Luke Picard of the USS Enterprise - "Make It So"

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  3. That would be Jean-Luc Picard! ;)

    Old Trekkie here.....

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  4. Thanks Kurious...

    Never saw it written out

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