“Adrià says he doesn’t listen to customers, yet his customers are some
of the most satisfied in the world. That’s an interesting riddle to
consider.”

One of the conversation’s participants, Phil, then noted that

“All indications point to Apple/Steve Jobs using the same strategy. El Bulli isn’t at all a mass market success, but the other is. Interesting indeed.”

Gastronomy and my favourite computers, together at last? That really got me going…

The key thing about both Adrià and Jobs is that they’ve taken a leap of faith, choosing to focus primarily on producing the best things they can – this, to me, is the primary goal of both businesses. Apple rarely if ever competes on price – in their view of the world, the profitability/viability of the business seems to be more of a constraint on how good they can make something, not a primary factor in considering how to build it.

This can seem expensive – Adrià’s huge test kitchen (not even mentioned in the HBS article) is an utterly ridiculous extravagance for one small restaurant out in the middle of the Spanish countryside. You can get a taste of the test kitchen (and the things that happen there) from this section of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations…

Apple. meanwhile, has taken some product ideas through many, many stages of development before deciding to shelve them entirely.

As Michael Lopp explained during an interesting session at SXSWi 2007, designers at Apple are often specifically briefed to come up with “whatever you can think of” in the early stages of product development, with no consideration of practicality or cost. They will produce around ten different designs, which are then pared down towards “the best stuff we can think of, within the constraints of shipping a profitable product”.

The key thing here, and the common thread between Apple and  Adrià is to truly believe that “if you build the best, they will come.”

As to the relative “mass market”-ness of the two, the biggest reason elBulli isn’t a mass-market success is that they’ve chosen not to be. Adrià could open a London elBulli, A New York elBulli and a Paris elBulli tomorrow, and all three would have overflowing reservation books. But a distributed restaurant empire would make it impossible to ensure the attention to detail and quality which makes the original restaurant so celebrated. And since producing “the best” is his absolute focus, expanding the restaurant would make no sense.

This is precisely why he’s branched out with Fast Good – it’s an opportunity to produce the “best possible convenience food experience” – a different set of constraints to being “the best dining experience in the world.”

“The best” is subjective, and depends partly on your market and the constraints under which you operate. But we live in a world where many companies seem to aim for “just good enough”, where “customer care” is a frustrating, maze-like mess and most products are serviceable but uninspiring. In such a world, it’s sometimes refreshing to remember that there is another way. That striving for excellence over budget streamlining; aiming for a defined audience rather than the mass-market can lead to the production of truly wonderful things, without necessarily sacrificing a sustainable, profitable business in the process.

They shared some elements of their visual language, but what was most striking was the stylistic similarity to “What Barry Says”, a pretty bleak critique of US militarism from 2003:

Now, I was always a bit suspicious of old Barry – while some of his points hit home, the entire thing was cloaked in the sort of overblown language (“War Corporatism”?) which you usually hear peddled by the Trots who sell the Socialist Worker around London. Without the stunning visuals accompanying it, his narrative just comes across as a directionless paranoid rant.

Nevertheless, the overall effect is reasonably stirring. For my money, though, today’s 2 videos were far more effective

First up, we have “Iran: A Nation of Bloggers”, a succinct and moving summary of young Iranians’ embrace of blogging as a way to protest the wrong direction many of them see their own country taking:

And then we have a speech by Harvey Milk (who’s obviously in the news again right now), set to modern visuals and a bit of mildly stirring music:

It’s almost become trite, in the wake of Obama’s presidential campaign, to talk about “hope” and “change” – but to me the contrast between 2003′s paranoid rant and 2008′s uplifting hopefulness really hit home. All the more because, despite the phenomenal victory of our President-Elect a month ago, the economic outlook is crushingly bleak; even as Obama won, bigotry claimed a victory in California; people are scared, confused and uncertain.

And yet hopeful. If everything else is washed away, it seems we still have that.

Photo of voting booths courtesy of nshepard on Flickr.

By November 4th, I suspect that a lot of people in America are going to be heartily sick of hearing about voter fraud.

Over the past week, the spectre of widespread voter fraud has been relentlessly pursued by various factions, most of them aligned on the Republican side of the bitterly divided 2-horse American political system.

So, do we really need UN Election monitors at the polls? Will this election be decided by shadowy “leftist” groups who manage to nefariously concoct millions of fake ballots nationwide?

In a word, no.

Most of the current allegations are centered around ACORN, an activist group who run voter-recruitment drives across the US. ACORN’s fundamental problem lies in their operational methods – they pay canvassers by the number of registration forms they bring in.

Obviously, for some canvassers, this offers a temptation – fill in a few extra forms with fake names, and earn some extra cash. ACORN claims that they try to vet these forms, but it’s almost certain that their vetting procedures can’t detect every fraudulent registration.

But, ultimately, none of this actually matters.

Fake names on the electoral register do not automatically mean that fraudulent votes will be cast. In actual fact, it’s highly unlikely that they would be, for a very simple reason.

Vote fraud is a felony, and in order to commit it (and get away with it) on the scale needed to tip an election, you’d need hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes.

Logistically, any one fraudulent voter is unlikely to be able to vote more than 4 or 5 times in one day. They’d need to cast each vote at a different polling place (lest they were recognised casting a second ballot), and there aren’t that many polling places.

This means you’d need, at absolute minimum, 20,000 people in a state willing to risk multiple Felony conviction for their candidate. Now, it could be argued that the fake registrations some ACORN canvassers are turning in can also lead to a felony conviction (they have in the past), but the risk/reward dynamic is very different there – the (often fairly poor) canvassers are trading off the risk of getting caught against the reward of extra money.

Fraudulent ballot-casters would be extremely unlikely to be paid for their efforts, unless there was such a systemic vote-rigging operation in place that it had access to hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay off its fake voters. Without leaving a paper trail.

So where, exactly, are you going to find tens of thousands of people to participate, without reward, in what would be the greatest group-felony in history?

It’s certainly not going to be the one-size-fits-all “illegal immigrant” boogeyman.

I can tell you, as a legal alien in the US, that any felony activity will see a foreigner (whether here legally or otherwise) deported and refused entry for at least 10 years. Given that people are here because they have jobs, friends, families and partners, the risk of being torn away from one’s entire life is not worth risking for any kind of political conviction. Those “illegals” who commit crimes are a minority, and sure, some of them might crawl across a desert and sneak over the border again, but you’re unlikely to find 20,000 such people per state.

All in all, then, the existence of an enormous, rich, shadowy “underground vote-fraud cartel” seems highly, laughably unlikely. It seems even more unlikely, given that the allegations are all focussed on fake Democratic registrations, at a time when the Democratic candidate is showing a significant lead in every poll, and has been for weeks.

So, what’s with all the “voter fraud” news stories?

I believe that the GOP is fighting two fronts here.

On the one hand, casting doubt over millions of new-voter registrations in the lead up to election day could gum up the works enough that sizable numbers of voters aren’t allowed to cast their ballot.

Just this week in Ohio, it’s been ruled that the state must immediately enact a new system to check new voter registrations, of which there have been 660,000 this year. If it proves impossible to do this, it’s possible (and no-one really knows how likely) that many of those voters could be turned away on November 4th, a useful result for the Republicans, who are trailing slightly in a close race in that state.

Given the current state-of-play in this race, though, I doubt this would be enough to ensure a Republican victory on a national scale. McCain is fighting a rearguard action in several previously-safe GOP states, and has already pulled out of states which were once considered “swing”. Based on current numbers, even victories in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, as well as too-close-to-call North Carolina would still leave him well short of 270 electoral votes. He’d need to turn around Nevada, North Dakota, Missouri and then erase a 5% poll lead in Colorado to clinch the presidency.

It’s faintly possible, at an extreme long-shot, but it’s a hell of a lot of work to do in just two weeks across the entire Union, at a time when McCain is completely locked out of the chief dynamic of the race.

Which is why I believe that the RNC has another reason for pushing the ACORN-baiting hard, and pushing it now.

It’s all about November 5th, and the days that follow.

One thing that sustained Democrats’ morale through their defeats in both 2000 and 2004 was the notion that their candidate had been “robbed” by partisan dabbling in the vote-counting. Whether it was Florida for Gore, or Ohio for Kerry, the popular Democratic narrative in both elections was that voter-disenfranchisement had led to their unfair defeat.

The rights and wrongs of either side’s claims in these matters are irrelevant. What was important was the story which could bring people together; hold them in, and keep them believing in their chosen party. In some ways, I think this was dangerous – the possibility of an Ohio miscount for Kerry overshadowed the fundamental problems with the candidate (that he was about as charismatic as a park bench), and probably held the Democrats back from a more careful, honest re-examination of their message and their electoral strategy.

Regardless, it’s ancient history now, but it’s a useful and informative lesson for GOP strategists who must be, at the very least, making contingency plans for a 2008 presidential defeat.

The prospect of a President Obama is particularly dangerous for the GOP, since his entire political style is one of moderation, consideration and pragmatism.

The Obama I’ve seen campaign seems to be (for all that this might make some more-liberal Americans wince) something of a centrist, and if he wins, and assumes the presidency with the same measured approach, it’s possible that he could win over some of the flagging moderate GOP base who are deeply tired of the reckless abandonment of Fiscal Conservatism, and the over-pandering to the far-right which have marked the Bush years.

A President Obama, in other words, could cause a small but significant shift in the two-party power balance. It’s not that likely – Americans support their Party the same way they support their Baseball team – through any number of missteps, mistakes and bad performances. Besides, whoever the next President is, his primary job is going to be keeping a sinking ship afloat, leaving scant time and resources for large-scale, political-landscape-altering changes.

But if you’re a GOP strategist looking 4, 8, 12 or 20 years out, you’ve got to be considering the possibility, and preparing for it by sowing the seeds of doubt and mistrust. It’s a lot easier to pull your party (or your sports team) together behind a “we did great, but the other guy cheated” message than a “we sucked” message.

A quick note: I’m a Brit who’s been living in the US for 4 years and watching this election cycle with more than a little bemusement. I’m a taxpayer who’s not eligible to vote, which means I’m viewing the whole electoral process from a weird, bystander position. Whilst I personally believe that Obama is the better candidate for President in this race, the intent of the above isn’t to lay out a partisan case, but more to examine the meta-narrative behind this particular piece of the campaign cycle. As with many things in life, the subtle details beneath the “surface story” are often more interesting than the story itself.

This year at SXSWi, I was invited to take part in 20×2, an event where 20 people are given 2 minutes each to answer an “open-ended question”. The question this year was “What is the difference?”

I was blown away by the range and quality of the other participants’ answers. This was my humble effort, delivered as a straight-up talk.

The difference, in a word, is passion.

In all our pursuits and endeavours, it is passion which leads to the creation of the genuinely great, or the superlative experience.

Thank about it – who do you most associate with passion; Steve Jobs and his irritatingly exquisite products, painstakingly put together by folks who care about the minutest details or… well… Bill Gates?

I’ve seen the effects of passion in the panels I’ve attended here at South by Southwest. All of the best panels have been hosted by people with a genuine passion for what they’re talking about.

In all honesty, some of them have had so little real content that they’ve actually subtracted from the sum of human knowledge.

But when that nebulous non-content is delivered with infectious passion, it still has value. The raw emotion itself inspires, leading us to new insights and ideas.

The greatest music ever produced, from the snarl of the Sex Pistols to the intricate scales of Rachmaninov, is fired through with deep, passionate enthusiasm and dedication. And the same is true for every other creative field:

The writing of Dickens or Ginsberg or Phillip Pullman; the art of Rothko or Monet; superlative graphic design or exquisitely prepared food by chefs like Thomas Keller – passion informs all of these things.

Life… is better with passion. It crackles with electricity a little more; sings a little more.

So my plea to all of you is this: let go of all those other influences on the things you do. Shut out the shareholders, investors, editors or producers; ignore the spreadsheets, monthly growth charts and budgets. Whatever it is you do in life; however you do it, feed your creativity with your passions, be they kittens or cushions, candles or cattle-prods, cocktails or cave-paintings.

Channel that energy into everything you do. It’s the easiest, most fulfilling way to truly make a difference.

Veering onto another topic entirely, though, today’s major preoccupation is international in nature. Right now I’m working n a talk I’ll be giving soon to a bunch of Korean developers in Seoul, regarding Flickr’s API. What’s interesting about this is the peculiar challenges it raises.

Firstly, I’m not 100% confident that my inevitably-slightly-manic English presentation will be all that understandable to a diverse group of Korean speakers. I’ve brewed up something of a defense against this – designing slides for the presentation which contain both an English component (so that the presentation matches the talk, and I know what’s going on, more-or-less), and a Korean translation. Hence the hurry to get the slides done – so that a Korean co-worker can translate! Nevertheless, it means that every design has to be somewhat “symmetrical”; and that there’s half the usual space per slide for any given concept.

But the really weird thing is how much uncertainty a foreign culture injects into the process of building entertaining presentations. In the circles I move in (amongst my fellow Flickr-ites, for example, and other talented presenters such as the lovely Mr Coates), the Done Thing these days is to illustrate one’s slides with somewhat-relevant photographs, usually as a background to the slide.

The approach makes a lot of sense for the Flickr team (we are, after all, in the business of hosting awesome photos), and has taken off in general due to the ease with which anyone can find good creative-commons licensed imagery through Flickr.

Using photography in this way also has the advantage of making the presentation immediately more visually appealing, and allows for a host of sly (or not so sly) jokes in the form of tangentially-related imagery, or flat-out visual punnery.

For example, one might illustrate a slide on the “flexibility” of various feed formats like this:

A bad pun, but good enough for a sympathetic laugh to humour the hapless presenter…

Such puns fall apart when you’re thinking in more than one language, though.

I don’t speak a word of Korean, so I have no reliable way of telling whether the concept of “flexibility” is as, um, flexible in that language. It’s quite possible that “human flexibility” and “versatility of web feeds” are two entirely different words. At which point the pun falls apart and I start to look like a pervert who likes pictures of people stretching their feet above their heads. It might still get a laugh, but for oh so wrong a reason.

I have no timely way of finding out which puns will work and which ones won’t, so my only sensible course of action is to limit the punnery as much as possible, which in turn limits the images I can use.

Even where puns aren’t involved, some concepts may not be universal. It took me 15 minutes of research to determine that, yes, Korea uses the “no entry” sign prevalent elsewhere.

And finally, there’s the issue of cultural sensitivity. I’m thinking of introducing myself with this awesome picture that Stew took of me wearing his “Bacon of the Month Club” nose…

…but I really should ascertain if there’s any Korean taboo around pigs or animal noses. Nothing says “awkward” like debasing your own image five and a half thousand miles from home.

This, in short, is like doing a vast, multi-cultural jigsaw puzzle. It’s kinda fun in a way, but also pretty weird.

Images from Flickr, and by (in order) marekj, elle_rigby and the inimitable Stewart

But anyhoo…

For quite a while, I was a big fan of Mark Morford’s SF Chronicle column. The writing was alternately breezy and frenetic, and each piece generally contained a kernel of truth or outrage which was… resonant.

Over the past year or so, though, the quality dropped. His politically-leaning pieces became directionless rants, and more and more columns were taken up with meandering rambles about consumer technology or science news.

At points, the only fun left was to play “spot the ‘Bush-ravaged’”, scanning each column to see how he’d managed to work that horribly over-used phrase of his into a subject completely divorced from Republican politics.

Today’s piece, however, is something of a return to Morford of old. It’s a little bit honest, a little bit brutal and a little bit sweet. It also contains the killer line

…whose biological clock is ticking like Dick Cheney’s pacemaker in a gay fetish dungeon…

…which made me accidentally snort tea this morning.

Since the column in question was apparently prompted by his newly single status, the headline here speaks for itself.

But here’s something that’s been rattling around my head for a while, and it needs to get out.

Contemporary songs which capture the essence of a particular city. I have a burning need to compile lists of such things.

So let’s start with the easy ones…

Sufjan Stevens – Chicago (er, Chicago)

I’ve spent less than a day in Chicago, but besides being an incredible piece of music in its own right, this song sums up my limited experience of Chicago perfectly.

All things go, all things go

Somehow it sums up the closeted, slightly dirty feel of downtown Chicago, the run-down neighbourhoods nestling uncomfortably next to the freeways that lead into the brighter centre (freeways you can never access, due to construction work on the ramps).

It sums up the bus station, a nexus for crazy shouting homeless people tucked underneath the breathtaking modern city library. And it sums up Millenium Park, a beautiful space full of modern art which, by the nature of its newness, remains completely disconnected from the city which surrounds it.

Interpol – NYC (New York)

I had seven faces,
Never knew which one to wear.

The subway is a porno,
The pavements they are a mess.

Chosen with even less authority than my transitory experience of Chicago. See, I’ve never even set foot in NY. And yet somehow, I’m pretty sure that I know her already. She’s the slightly more glamourous, less historied sister to London, a city I know and love deeply; a place I still carry with me in my very bones.

And this song is about the inevitable relationship that you have with such cities. You have to love them, the instant you set foot in them, because they desperately need that love. And you need it too. You need to love and be loved in return.

And yes, the city will wear you out, make you scream to the roots of your soul, but still you’ll love her. Kiss her quietly in corners where no-one is looking. Because every second you spend in her, she shapes you and makes you into someone subtly different. Subtly (you like to think, as does she) better.

New York Cares.

Mountain Goats – You Or Your Memory (Los Angeles)

I checked into a bargain priced room on La Cienega
Gazed out of the curtains at the parking lot
Walked down to the corner store just before nightfall in my bare feet…

The only tangible connection between this song and LA is that reference to the major thoroughfare of La Cienega, but somehow, once that connection is made, the entire bittersweet lament becomes rooted in what must be, ultimately, one of the most impersonal urban areas in the world.

LA is lonely, even when you’re with good friends. Somehow it’s impossible to completely shut it out – the desperate posing, the horrow-show grimace of the waiter who’s achingly desperate to “make it” somehow. Wherever you go in Hollywood, Venice, Santa Monica… that same relentless distressing need.

This song isn’t about that need. It’s about the oppostite of that. About escape, hiding, dealing with personal grief in a cheap motel. And yet the psychic backdrop of LA, all its intensity versus the private moments we all need sometimes… that just makes it all the more poignant.

And down there in the dark I could see
The real truth about me

…and epihpany that LA perhaps needs a little more of.

And I’d love to continue in this vein, but, well, my mind fails me at this point. Nominations, please. Cities and their defining songs. Send me a postcard. Or an email. Or a comment.

The item in question is a Lexus advertising campaign, whose tagline is…

A Strong Want is a Justifiable Need

Part of the problem with writing about this is that it’s so utterly horrible that it defies rational thought. Paul at eyeteeth probably chooses the best path in offering a picture of the offending ad with only a title offering commentary.

But after a few minutes, I realised that I could probably have some fun with the idea, so I dashed off a letter to Lexus’s “General Requests” email line, as follows…

Dear Sir/Madam,

I’m writing to commend Lexus on their recent billboard campaign featuring the slogan “A Strong Want is a Justifiable Need”. I was so compelled by this idea that I have adopted it as a new, all-encompassing personal philosophy.

Furthermore, I’m impressed that Lexus has seemingly taken it upon itself to fulfill the General Public’s “wants” which are, under this beautifully simple concept, automatically justifiable “needs”.

For quite some time now I have “wanted” to receive a sum of $1,000,000 without any obligation whatsoever, and I have to thank you for making me realise that this is not simply an abstract desire, but something to which I am entitled.

Since Lexus seemingly aims to provide for such reasonable requirements, I am therefore writing to ask that your company provide me with the aforementioned million dollars, thereby satisfying my current need.

I am particularly looking forward to spending a small portion of the sum on a Lexus hybrid.

You can contact me regarding the delivery of this “strong want”/”justifiable need”. I suggest that a direct wire transfer of the money would be the most efficient way of fulfilling my “need”. Banking details can be provided on request.

Again, thank you so much for leading the way in conflating desire and requirement into a brave new paradigm of personal satisfaction, and an exciting new chapter in the cherished American Dream.

I am sincerely looking forward to their reply. Perhaps you have a “strong want” of your own which the philanthropists at Lexus can help with? Whilst $1m might honestly be a bit of a tall order, there’s definite scope to play with this. Does anyone have a “strong want” small/cheap enough that Lexus can be talked into providing it?