ThisJustin

I was talking to a good friend today and I mentioned Instagram to her as something she should check out. She thought it was really cool but she also felt like she’d missed hearing about it. In her words “I feel like a late-ard.” Somehow we’ve reached this place where everyone has to be on the cutting edge of everything. I’m not sure that’s a good place to be. Being aware of what’s happening in your industry / environment is pretty important. But I don’t think any one of us is on top of everything. We all have a lens / filter we view the world through. There are inherently some blind spots in that lens.

That’s why it’s so important to collaborate. To talk to the guy down the hall. The girl on the 7th floor. The dude in the Starbucks line. Everyone pays attention to different details. And the only way to hear about those details is to talk with a diverse set of people. People from inside, outside and around your industry / point of view.

So next time you wonder why you haven’t heard of something, don’t ask yourself why you didn’t find out about it yourself but rather ask yourself who you’re not talking to–where’s your blind spot and how do you find an interesting human to fill it?

This blog post started as a poem for some reason. So, as a bonus to you, here it is:

The Forgetful Tastemakers

we are the tastemakers
we will tell you what you want
we heard about it before you did

we are younger
we are sexier
we are faster

we drive cooler cars
we wear tighter jeans
we listen to bands that don’t exist yet

we have a beta invite
we read the article first
and we read it on our unreleased prototype device

we only follow one person and he doesn’t follow you
we already blogged about it
we code in HTML 7

we forgot to listen
we forgot to stay ignorant
we forgot the user