Sunday Night Link Treat
"a community theater reading of a tax return"
Just a few links of interest for Sunday night and a couple of books.
Relevant to your interests
Making Jodorowsky’s Tron - “That’s how powerful it is to allow A.I. to generate pictures of films or other art objects you wish could exist. It’s like watching a magic show. Going in, you know it will all be illusions and sleight of hand. But during the show, your suspension of disbelief kicks in. Your heart wants to believe it’s real, and it gets your brain to go along for the ride. Life is more fun that way.”
The Great Podcasting Market Correction - Predictably, the headline is a bit dramatic. There’s a better analysis mid-way though: (1) as tech companies tighten up (absurd) spending, Spotify and Amazon are doing less big deals with podcast networks, (2) there is actually growth in listenership and ad spending, but (3) there are always more and more podcasts, so it can seem crowded, and, (4) few have figured out how to move beyond high-touch ad sales and ad insertion (that is, the business model isn’t near as easy as, like, ads on the internet). // “In the four years since Herting founded QCode, the number of Americans who listen to a podcast every month has grown to 38 million from 26 million, according to Edison Research. Ad sales have increased to more than $1 billion per year from nearly $800 million, according to the IAB. In 2022, multiple categories of ad buyers, including retailers, surpassed their estimated total spending from the prior year, according to data from Magellan AI, which tracks podcast ad buys.”
I’ve been enjoying Hinada’s marketing explainers in her newsletter. They’re brief and manage to actually still tell you things to start doing. Here’s one on account based marketing.
The Airline Industry Meltdown Proves The Business Case For Digital Employee Experience - The business case for doing app modernization is often difficult to make. You can’t quantify “things could be better.” As with security, when things go wrong, you learn the costs quickly. So the Southwest meltdown gives us some FUD numbers if you have to do a business case by fear. FUD-based thinking is not good! It is not healthy! It is dumb! Anyhow, here’s some numbers: “An immediate 7% stock price decline during the outage. A $400–425 million revenue hit in Q4, according to the company.”
If you’re the Amsterdam area on January 25th, I’ll be hosting a watch party for our developer and operations conference, SpringOne. It’s free to attend and “you could win a Lego Technic McLaren F1 car. Refreshments and food will be provided!” I bet I don’t qualify for the Lego set. BOO! Register for it, and I’ll see you there.
Books
I haven’t mentioned books recently. Close readers of the wastebook can guess two I’m reading and would recommend:
Mouth to Mouth. Nice to read, a fun story, a bit of a gratuitous twist at the end. Two college acquaintances meet on a long layover and one has story to tell. The depictions of airport lounges are incredibly accurate…minus the caviar - anywhere that had caviar would have table service, like the Concord room at T5.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Finally, a well done weird book - modern day magic realism and all that. It’s a ghost solves his own murder type of thing, done with a hefty portion of hard-boiled nihilism and boneheaded goons.This one is great, and I’m happy I’m not done yet so I have more to time to enjoy it.
Wastebook
“I’ve never been to a will reading before.” “Oh? You think it’d be like a game show. But think of a community theater reading of a tax return.” Knives Out
Also: “in the meantime…I’d maybe run.”