Iteration

It’s my second TC Disrupt in NYC, and this time it was the Song and Janine show. This time last year Jonathan and I did this show together, and remembering how that went underscores the leaps and bounds by which Jon’s iterated and improved on how he does his thing over the past 12 months. (No, he didn’t suck then. He’s just even better now.)

The really interesting thing is seeing this iteration happen right before my eyes. No one really enjoys trade shows I don’t think, but it’s excellent target practice for pitching - lots of people coming at you to hear about your product, with relatively low risk if you screw up since most of them aren’t really paying that much attention anyway.

Watching Song in action reminded me exactly of Jon last year: tweaking the words to describe what we do, tossing out different example use cases first, trying new things to get the other guy to talk more. Both of them were ecstatic about things they picked up and diligent about noticing what worked well and what didn’t. And both of them said to me at the end: How was I? How did I do?

The thought of how much more awesome Song will be next year, with this kind of iteration over a few hours compounded over 12 months - makes me dizzy with glee.

A while back at Google, I was outmaneuvered in a tough negotiation and sat glumly with my boss doing a post-mortem. He said, quite kindly, that he should have been the one at the table, not me, given that the other guy was essentially Jack Donaghy (this pre-dated 30 Rock, so I’m paraphasing) and it was just too goddamned unfair. This didn’t make me feel better, and in self-pity I said I didn’t see how I could ever be as good as he (my boss) was.

“I’ve got 10 years on you,” he said.

Seven more to go……