HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I'd love to see the study broken out by people who are listening for confidence vs. content.

I recall showing my mom Paul Buchheit's Startup School 08 talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

I thought it was great, and I remember listening very intently to parse out exactly what he was saying and figure out what he was saying. I showed it to my mom, and her first reaction was "Why are you listening to him? He seems kinda nebbishy."

Notice how many pauses, umms, y'knows, and other filler words are in that speech. I ignored them because I already knew what he had accomplished; my assumption was that he knew what he was talking about, and so I should pay close attention. My mom, who knows nothing about tech and didn't start using GMail until 2012, came away with the impression that he was unconfident, rambling, and didn't really know what he was talking about.

The advice to eliminate filler words may be a consequence of a world where people make snap judgments about the credibility of a person in seconds, and usually are not qualified to judge the content of the speech at all. Notice how the article says that this advice first caught on in the 20th century, right as mass communication and soundbite messages caught on. The studies they cite, however, all featured listeners from the same field as the speaker who already cared about the content.

⬐ kami8845

Thanks for posting this, can't believe it only has 10k views.

Paul Buchheit said something similar at startup school years ago and I watch the video every once in a while to remind myself not to be similarly prescriptive when I meet new people.

His key takeaway slide was a simple equation:

Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = Advice

The full video has more info on how to get past the advice you hear and actually process feedback:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

Love his answer to #7 on what advice he'd give to a new developer:

"7. What advice would you give to a beginner server-side developer and what to an open-source author / contributor?

Meh, advice-shmadvice. Who am I to give advice? What’s experience good for in our field? I used to know how to write a keyboard driver and floppy disc formatters with non-standard densities. I’d be all but obsolete today if I hadn’t learned continuously.

Oh, so maybe this would be one piece of advice: learn how to learn, and stick with principles; mastering individual technologies will follow.

Technology is a great servant but a terrible master. The best people in our métier are those who know how to quickly become experts in some particular field."

Reminds me of Paul B's video from startup school:

http://youtu.be/EZxP0i9ah8E

⬐ ptomalsky

Kinda funny to see Paul Buchheit talk about Friendfeed being the real deal and ragging on companies which flip for 20 million! (Obviously things change and I'm not trying to disparage Paul but it is funny)

⬐ rimmjob

Is this the one where he talks about how his experience at intel was analogous to steve wozniak's experience at hp? The idea that there were people just as smart and determined as them but weren't able to do anything interesting because of the environment really amazes me. reminds me of the talk richard feynman gave about the myth of some special talent or miracle that allows scientists to understand quantum mechanics. fuck, i need to get back to work

⬐ aaronsw

Anyone know what the slides were?

⬐ projectileboy

We did before Google bought Omnisio and killed it. Acquisitions sure seem swell for the founders; not so much for the users.

⬐ rudiger

Where are the slides?

⬐ smashing

Why what does he say? Can you summarize?

⬐ mdonahoe

This is a good talk, though I enjoyed watching him talk about Friendfeed knowing now that it has been bought by Facebook. At around 17 minutes:

"Everyone says 'We`re building something different' and whatever, but then they go and flip for 20 million dollars or something, and your like, well then you weren't really doing something different, were you?"

"So, but we really are doing things differently."

⬐ revorad

Paul has a brilliant sense of humour.

⬐ None

None

⬐ shii

In all fairness, Friendfeed was really different. I have been on a lot of different forums and sites online in my time, and I've never seen as robust a realtime discussion forum that aggregates your online identity like Friendfeed. Awesome discussions and groups from its heyday. Really active "rooms" and threads were amazing to participate in without hitting F5. Friendfeed was really something special. I'm surprised more people aren't using it as an intelligence and research/exploratory tool -- it's great for that sort of thing. Cool tools like Tornado were also built at Friendfeed.

If someone says "that's impossible", you can interpret it as: "According to my limited experience and very narrow understanding of reality, it's very unlikely."

An oldie but goodie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

Viral and limitation don't go hand in hand. Paul Buchheit made this point realy well in his startup school talk couple of years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E#t=21m56s

Paul Bucheit said something similar on Startup School 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E): "You should aim for 100 happy users". And he mentions that being happy is quite hard to accomplish, as happy users will not put up with any unevenness they see. I find this more useful for startups that are still looking for a business model (mostly consumer oriented startups).

⬐ dotBen

Paul Bucheit is lucky, however, that neither of his two big projects (Gmail and then FriendFeed) has ever had to sell anything.

In it's fair to say neither have been profitable (Gmail is a loss-leader to Google).

Now, I'm not dissing him or downing on his achievement. I'm just saying, he's done well out of building + propositioning free products.

⬐ DaniFong

Gmail sells oodles of advertising. It's not profitable?

⬐ dotBen

Apparently not because:

a) the shear scale of their email operation = large costs b) poor conversion on those ads as users are not in the "search" mindset when reading emails where as they are more likely to click on an ad when searching

⬐ DaniFong

Are you speculating, or is this apparent from some data that you have seen and I haven't yet?

⬐ dotBen

This is from someone I know who works in/around GMail team at Google. I have also seen research from the perspective of advertisers as to the performance of their ads on SERP pages verses appearing in GMail - I can dig that out if you are interested, let me know.

Paul Buchheit had a good quote at the 08 startup school.

  If someone says:
  "That's impossible."

  You should understand it as:
  "According to my very limited 
  experience and narrow
  understanding of reality, that's
  very unlikely."

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

Slides: http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/paul-buchheit-at-star...

⬐ derefr

(Unless they're a physicist; then it's jargon.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

Paul Buchheit at Startup School 08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZxP0i9ah8E

Sam Altman at Startup School 08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m43t44WL8-w