Aaron Gerdes

I’ve kept this Paul Graham quote close over the past few weeks, it’s been lending me lots of inspiration each time I see it:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems© that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

Read the full article here.

You brand is defined by the consumer, not by you – I think everyone can agree with that. In the same breath, most marketing pundits will add the fact that you can no longer control your brand – an assertion I am not sure goes hand in hand with the first one.

You brand gets defined by the UI (User Interface) of your company, the interface through which your customers and prospects interact with your company. That interface gets determined by pre-sale activities – i.e., advertising, retail layout, retail personnel attitude, telemarketing, sales people’s knowledge of the industry, etc -, as well as immediate post-sale activities – i.e., packaging, ease of use to set up the products, available help options, etc. -, and the long term post sale activities – i.e., telephone support, return policies, warranty policies, on-site support, etc.

Francois at Emergence Marketing totally nails what I was getting at in my earlier post about how the lines are blurring between marketing, product development, and user experience (UX)!

I got tipped off that my name was recently registered in the .net domain. (There are a few other Aaron Gerdes’ out there)

I realized I never locked up the .net and .org relatives of aarongerdes.com—luckily .org was still available.

Just a friendly reminder to register all the main TLDs for your name.

If I didn’t have mine, the first few results for my name would include an anti-foreign aid essay written by a highschool student in the Midwest. Eep.

Cleaning out old starred items on Google Reader, I came across this quote from a McKinsey article in a post at Emergence Marketing:

“Once a fairly discrete department within the organization, marketing is more and more often being asked to fulfill a far more significant, strategic role with implications for the entire enterprise.”

This made me think of catching up with an old colleague recently. As we filled one another in on recent projects, I noticed a pattern—that my clients have needed solutions at the intersection of product development, marketing, and usability.

The nature of delivering products or services via the web and word-of-mouth over tight-knit communities has been making those fields difficult to separate.