Steve presented Designing for Unmet Needs at Warm Gun. [slides/audio/sketchnote]

Steve spoke to the Denver UX Book Club (video).

Alex Blumberg has a podcast about his journey to start a podcast-related business. A recent episode of This American Life included an excerpt from this podcast (called StartUp), in which Blumberg is half-heartedly pitching his idea to investor Chris Sacca.

They talk for a while, and Alex is having difficulty in explaining his idea and what he’s asking for.

Alex Blumberg: So it’ll take a million and a half dollars, I think. And–
Chris Sacca: Take out the “I think.”
AB: Yeah. It’ll take a million and a half– I’m looking for a million and a half to $2 million in seed-stage funding.
CS: No, no, no, no, no.
AB: Yeah.
CS: You were looking for a very specific amount of money.
AB: I’m looking for– [LAUGHS NERVOUSLY]

Finally, Chris decides he’s just going to show Alex how to pitch his idea and he very masterfully riffs a confident and coherent bit of persuasion. It’s certainly worth listening to, but here’s the excerpt from the transcript.

Hey, look, can I get two minutes from you? So here’s the thing. You probably know me, producer of This American Life, been doing it for 15 years. You know it’s the most successful radio show, top of the podcasts in iTunes, et cetera.

So here’s the thing. I realize there’s a hunger for this kind of content out there and there’s none of this [BLEEP]. It’s just a bunch of jerk [BLEEP] podcasts. Nothing’s out there.

Advertisers are dying for it. Users are dying for it. And if you look at the macro environment, we’re seeing more and more podcast integrations into cars. People want this content. It’s a whole new button in the latest version of iOS.

So here’s the thing. Nobody else can make this [BLEEP]. I know how to make it better than anybody else in the world. And so I’ve already identified a few key areas where I know there’s hunger for the podcast. We’ve got the subject matter. We’re going to launch this [BLEEP]. I know there’s advertisers who want to get involved with it.

But here’s the unfair advantage I have. Because of what I’ve done in my past careers with This American Life and with Planet Money, people are actually willing to just straight-up pay for this stuff. And I’m not just talking about traditional subscriptions. I’m talking– we did this T-shirt experiment at Planet Money where we got $600,000 coming in, where people actually gave us money to buy a t-shirt with our logo on it as part of the content. It was integrated directly. And I know we can replicate that across these other platforms.

So here’s what we’re doing. We’re putting together a million and a half dollars. That’s going to buy us three, four guys who are going to launch these three podcasts in the next 12 months. We think very easily we could get to 300,000, 400,000 net subscribers across the whole thing.

With CPMs where they are in this market right now, I know on advertising alone, we could get to break even. But as we do more of this integration, we get people texting in to donate to this stuff, buying some of this product, doing some of these integrated episodes, I know that we’re going to have on our hands here something that will ultimately scale to be a network of 12, 15 podcasts. The audience is there. They want it. Nobody else can do it like we can. Are you in?

It’s so painful to hear Alex stumble and when Chris takes over, I felt a sense of relief and a certain excitement, to hear an idea presented in a way that was designed to engage and persuade. This is a valuable skill in many aspects of professional life, especially when we’re in the business of sharing ideas. The superlative example in this podcast is quite inspiring.

The relevant section starts at 19:21 in the embedded widget below.

Steve gave a keynote presentation, Designing the Problem, at Interaction South America

in Buenos Aires [video, slides/audio/sketchnotes]

• I’m mostly over my jet lag and back to work after a couple of weeks in Europe. This week is all about following up: active proposals for this year and next, inquiries from teams looking to work together, deferred networking meetings and more. I’m excited, but the to-do list is a long one.
• I’ve got a War Story almost ready to post, with just a bit more info required before I post it. Look for it in the next day or two!
• Just announced – I’ll be speaking at the Warm Gun conference, December 4 in San Francisco.
• Just announced #2 – I’ll be doing a workshop and a keynote presentation at Interaction South America, this November in Buenos Aires.
• Ten years gone: From October 2004 – Roomba precursor offers discount just for telling a friend.
• What we’re consuming: Ramen Dojo, East Side Gallery, Walker Evans, Stadt Land Food Festival.

It’s been well over a year since Interviewing Users came out. Below is a roundup of links to various bits connected with the book. I’ll republish this occasionally with accumulated updates. If you haven’t already, get your copy here! And if you have, it would be great if you wrote a brief review on Amazon here.

The Book

• Buy from Rosenfeld Media
• Buy from Amazon
• Foreword by Grant McCracken
• Excerpt from chapter 2
• The cover
• Acknowledgements
• FAQ
• Testimonials
• Images and diagrams

Reviews

• Web Designers’ Review of Books
• How To Interview Your Users And Get Useful Feedback by Garrett Moon, Founder of TodayMade
• Reviews on Goodreads
• QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association) Views Magazine (PDF)
• New: Reviews on Amazon
• Why You Should Read ‘Interviewing Users’ by Steve Portigal

Interviews

• New: Tuesday #TechHour
• UX Discovery Session
• Wise Talk
• The eLearning Coach
• UX Magazine
• UX Matters
• UIE Book Corner (audio)
• 33 voices (audio) [summary slidedeck]
• UX Booth part 1, part 2
• Business 901 (audio)
• Huffington Post
• Ethnography Matters (and in Spanish)
• Interview with Denise Lee Yohn (audio)
• The User Experience podcast with Gerry Gaffney
• Steve speaks with Jared Spool about field research
• SpoolCast: Steve Portigal’s Interviewing Tips

Presentations

• IXDA Los Angeles/LA UX Meetup – slides, video, alternate video, tweetstream
• recording of O’Reilly webinar #1
• recording of O’Reilly webinar #2
• A 5-minute talk about The Power of Silence

Other

• All our 2013 writing about Interviewing Users.
• New York book launch party
• San Francisco book launch party
• Answers to questions from readers of the Usabilla blog
• War Stories
• Susan Dray’s reflections on the impact of the War Stories

Steve taught Well We’ve Done All This Research, Now What? at EuroIA in Brussels [slides].

• I got to Berlin last night, after a successful and enjoyable experience at the EuroIA in Brussels. My workshop went very well and the slides are here. I’m here to explore neighborhoods, take pictures of street art and architecture and funny signs, go to museums, and eat interesting food!
• Ten years gone: From September 2004 – Lapping up dollops of Japanese pudding shake, Gary Cole is a secret rock-star dad, Butt Rub Seafood & Barbeque Rubs and Seasonings.
• What we’re consuming: Leffe, Gaufre de Liège, chocolate, comics.

• I’m just in the office for today, finalizing my workshop for Saturday, finalizing logistics and packing and so on. Tomorrow I’m on a plane to Brussels.
• This week is EuroIA where I’ll be doing a workshop about synthesizing field data.
• Ten years gone: From September 2004 – Foreign grocery museum included in a teacher’s guide to Action Activities for International Business.
• What we’re consuming: Reaching my autistic son through Disney, Dread Zeppelin, Digital tools for design research, Every day Sunday, The German Doctor

I saw this BitTorrent billboard in San Francisco last weekend.

Its specific message is opaque, telling us only that people are greater than servers. Hopefully we knew that already, but now we know that BitTorrent knows that too, via this techno-corporate version of a spray-painted cri de coeur. (Looking online for the image, I found the above on BitTorrent’s blog where it may refer to some peer-to-peer alternative to peer-to-cloud product, but that’s as far as I got).

The New York Times carried this full-page ad for PayPal yesterday.

Beginning with the constitutional We The People , the copy culminates with their new slogan, a graffiti-rendered People Rule.

Maybe there are humanists at both these organizations who are indeed passionate about the people they are trying to serve, but it’s hard not to be cynical about these corporations co-opting the language and aesthetics of rebellion and independence to persuade us to adopt their particular technology product versus some other. More than anything, it looks as if the tech industry is trying (yet again) to humanize its image.