The big news in the entertainment industry yesterday was Paramount deciding to move back one of its major summer tentpole releases until March 2013. I’m only tangentially covering the industry at this point but my guess is that this probably sent shockwaves through Hollywood.The ad campaign for G.I. Joe Retaliation was already in full swing. I’ve seen trailers in front of movies. Paramount spent millions advertising the film during the superbowl. I saw a giant banner for this film in Bellevue the other day, unfurled right next to one for Men In Black 3. In an industry where so much of a film’s success hinges on the first three days, squandering all of that advertising feels like madness, with maybe a hint of desperation.
Why did Paramount do it? Ostensibly it was to give the film time to be converted into 3D, thus generating increased revenue worldwide. I don’t doubt that a quality 3D conversion could be completed in that time, but seems like some pretty poor planning to decide that this late if you ask me.
Spinoff Online has some interesting conspiracy theorizing about why the move. My best guess? The suits at Paramount saw the returns on Hasbro’s disastrous Battleshipand got cold feet. Companies have been ended for smaller flops. Maybe give viewers time to warm up to the idea of a toy-based film again?
Throughout all of this, my heart goes out to director Jon Chu. I was really rooting for him to break out into mainstream success with this film. He’s no slouch, to be sure: his past films have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. But Retaliation had the potential to single-handedly reach grosses in the hundreds of millions and cement him as a go-to action director with the chops to deliver a major blockbuster. This decision can’t have been an easy one for Chu (and I’m sure he didn’t make it, nor was he pleased with it – his Twitter account has been strangely silent, save for a cryptic photo that may have been unintentionally ironic).
Also check out this Hollywood Reporter interview, in which Chu talks about how liberating it was to shoot in 2D. Curiouser and curiouser…
(Thanks to Peter Smith for hooking me up with some of these links)
Over the past two weeks, I have seen many, many apartment units in Seattle. After much searching and deliberation, I’ve finally settled on a brand new apartment in the Belltown neighborhood, and it’s spectacular (the photo is above is a view from the rooftop deck). But even though I’m happy with my ultimate choice, this was a long, involved process that I’m not eager to repeat. No place I looked at was completely perfect; each one involved a series of trade-offs that I had to continually assess, as I decided whether or not I wanted to commit to spending tens of thousands of dollars on the property over the course of the next year.
At the end of this process, there were two finalists, each of which I made three visits to, frequently with friends so they could help me evaluate. It’s always been weird to me how blithely people approach things like car buying and apartment renting, often committing after a simple 5-minute visit. You’re about to spend like $30,000 on this thing that you’re going to have to live with/in for the foreseeable future. Why not perform some painfully thorough due diligence?
In order to expedite and organize the process, I frequently shot videos of each location, which was especially helpful when trying to recollect the property later. Just for the heck of it, I thought I’d share a few of them with you. You may find that they provide an insight into the Seattle rental market. It feels kind of weird for me to post these videos, because they contain specific locations in them and I almost lived at some of these places. Alas, they were not to be.
I was initially totally taken with Lawrence Lofts in Capitol Hill. The view is just incredible. However, after a further visit with my friends (seen briefly in this video), they convinced me that the amount of square footage, the total lack of significant closet space, and the open-bedroom format did not justify the asking price of $1975:
Another strong contender was a location called Harbor Steps, located right near the bustling Pike Place market downtown. It is hard to describe how amazing the view is. Breathtaking. The units were also large and spacious. The biggest downsides come from the location; it’s located in a sprawling complex with thousands of other residents, and it’s right in the heart of one of the busiest areas in Seattle, with tons of tourists everywhere all the time. Parking is also a whopping $210 per month, which doesn’t get you your own reserved space. That is unacceptable in my book.
One of my finalists was Citizen apartments in Capitol Hill. Like Lawrence, the apartment complex is totally brand new. I was particularly fond of this unit, which had a ton of space (nearly 800 square feet) and had a decent south-facing view. However, the amenities were not great (no fitness center, with the nearest one half a mile away), and noise from the highly trafficked street below also made the deal potentially unappealing. Parking was $175, slightly higher than in many of the other places I saw, though obviously not as high as Harbor Steps. Nonetheless, I was nearly certain that this was going to be the place until I found my current apartment.
For comparison, here’s another unit in Citizen that has slightly less space, but with a courtyard view as opposed to a city view. This unit was $140/month cheaper than the above unit. Is the downgrade in view worth the downgrade in price?
One commenter pointed out that it was “gauche” for me to be occasionally evaluating the property in front of the actual rental agent, something you can hear a bit of in the videos. On the contrary, I think it provided some refreshing honesty. Imagine being a rental agent and showing dozens of people your apartment units for 9-10 hours six days a week (including weekends, when it’s most busy). Most people are totally poker-faced about what they think about a unit, and often say nothing until they are talking about it on the car ride home. The process can be frustrating and trying for the agent, who is just trying to do a good job and has nothing to go by. When people are actually honest about their concerns in this process, it’s a better experience for everyone.
HUGE THANKS to my friends Sarah, Megan, Audrey, Laremy, and Laura for helping me to navigate this treacherous process. Big thanks also to my rental agent, Kim Reidy, who was an invaluable guide throughout.
I thought the premise of this article was pretty silly, but it actually contains some great insights into the process and limits of profile-writing for a magazine like The New Yorker:
To put it mildly, there’s something of a New Yorker feature curse going around Hollywood these days. It doesn’t always hold true — Dana Goodyear’s profile of James Cameron certainly didn’t hurt “Avatar” — but when it does, the results can be startling, especially when you set the articles alongside the films they so effusively describe. Tad Friend’s profile of Steve Carell, for instance, portrays its subject as “a brilliant piece of software, a 2.0 fix for the problem of unfunny comedy,” whose approach to collaboration is nothing less than “a painstaking set of procedures aimed at maximum creativity.” The result? “Dinner for Schmucks,” a critical and commercial nonevent that few would hold up as a model of “the golden age of improvisation.”
Readers of this blog know that I’ve recently started a new job at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. I’ve only been there for a week, but I’ve already started to feel a sense of pride creeping into my psyche when I read about the company’s breakthroughs in tech news. Conversely, I feel involuntarily defensive when people bash it.
Thus, it’s no surprise that Alex Goldfayn’s piece in Mashable this morning (“Why Microsoft Is Being Left in the Dust“) really got my ire going. Here’s the main thrust of Goldfayn’s argument:
If you want to know why Microsoft’s share price has been flat for 11 years while Apple, Amazon, and Google shares have soared, this is why. Microsoft is not innovating aggressively. It is not leading categories or blazing trails. No, it’s acquiring aggressively as a shortcut to innovation. That isn’t working. Its own history suggests as much.
Let me begin by acknowledging that Microsoft is not a perfect company. It’s a massive organization with nearly 100,000 employees and on a fundamental level, large organizations just can’t move as quickly as lean and mean startups. Microsoft’s track record in the consumer market has not been perfect (see this interview with MS executive Robbie Bach for a fascinating take on this), but it’s frequently come out with products that demand and deserve our attention.
Goldfayn’s piece is pretty meandering; he brings up a bunch of random examples and doesn’t really tie them very well to his thesis. The primary focus of his article is Microsoft’s recent investment in Barnes & Noble. Why invest in an organization that is so far removed from Microsoft’s core competencies? Goldfayn cites several acquisition examples to back up his claim that this acquisition will turn out to be ill-fated: 1) Windows Phone/Nokia, 2) The Yahoo/Bing search deal, 3) Skype.
With regards to Windows Phone, although Nokia had a rough quarter recently, people love their Windows Phones! With Windows Phone, Microsoft accomplished what any sane observer would have deemed impossible: it took a flagging operating system off the market (Windows Mobile), righted the massive ship, then came back from nowhere with a user experience that some reviewers have described as being “in a class of its own.” Windows Phone may not have the market share of other OSes but we are just getting started over here.
With regards to Bing, Goldfayn writes that “Google’s search market share is a dominant 66%, with Microsoft’s Bing a very distant second at 15%. After spending billions building and marketing Bing, Microsoft is barely visible in Google’s rear-view mirror.” Again, Microsoft has shown that it’s in this thing for the long haul, and its recent innovations in social search show that it’s not content to merely be a follower. Will the market share come? I can’t say, but I know that we’re the only company that has made significant inroads against Google. Who else can say that? Who else even has the capability to be able to do that?
And as for the extremely recent acquisition of Skype, even Goldfayn acknowledges that “it’s too early to tell”! Give it a few months, will ya? Sheesh.
There’s a broader trend here that really troubles me among the tech pundits, and that’s the following implication that I sense from reading pieces such as Goldfayn’s: “You stink at this so just stop trying already.” I read Apple-centered blogs such as Daring Fireball pretty religiously, and the unadulterated joy that the authors get from seeing Apple completely lay waste to their competition is palpable. It’s fun to root for the winning team; no doubt about it.
What we forget is that a world where one company dominates an entire industry isn’t really great for anyone (Microsoft is no stranger to this concept). Do we really want ridiculously important industries like search, mobile, and publishing to be dominated by a single company (i.e. Google, Apple, and Amazon, respectively)? Do we really want people like Microsoft to lay down their arms and just give up? Because if so, we’re asking for a world with less choice. We’re asking for a world where consumers lose big time.
As for me? I for one am glad we’re fighting these fights.
I have been an employee of Microsoft for three days. For my first day on campus, all new hires went through New Employee Orientation (NEO), a glorious 9-hour session where experienced employees explained our benefits to us and got us up to speed on the technical ins-and-outs of working at the company. Since then, I’ve just been soaking up as much information as possible, trying to ramp up for the exciting projects I have in the weeks ahead (and which I hope to explain to you eventually, when the time is right).
In the meantime, I present a few stray observations I’ve made during my extremely short time here so far:
The People – Over 45,000 people work at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus, well above the number that populate many universities. The diversity of individuals is insane. There are FTEs (full-time employees) and contractors and vendors, recent college graduates and grandparents, people from every state in the U.S. and from dozens of countries all around the world. All types of viewpoints and personalities are well-represented, but there is one thing that everybody has in common: They are all extremely frickin’ smart. From what I heard about Microsoft back when I was at Harvard Business School, the interview/recruiting process is designed to winnow down the pool of candidates to only the best of the best. The intellect of the employees here is palpable, and there’s a really empowering sense that one gets from knowing that one is working with some of the most skilled people in the world.
The Benefits – My colleague at Microsoft described their benefits as “the Mercedes Benz of benefits.” I’m inclined to agree. In learning about our benefits, I feel very much like Alice in Wonderland; just when I think I’ve reached the bottom of the rabbit hole, I continue tumbling down. In a word, the benefits are astonishing. People’s lives can change due to the benefits they receive here. You can finally get surgeries done that you’d once deemed unfeasible. You can lose that weight you’ve been angling to get rid of. Most importantly, you can see IMAX movies for $3 a piece! When I learned that I’d be receiving an offer from Microsoft, I felt like I’d won the lottery. And while I don’t think that sentiment has changed, learning about the benefits here is like learning I just won the Power Play component of the lottery too.
The Cause – Nearly all the people I’ve met are not only more than competent, they’re also passionate about what they’re doing. They love this company. They love what the company is doing, and they love what it stands for. Ultimately, Microsoft is all about harnessing technology to make people’s lives easier. And while we all may struggle occasionally with an Excel spreadsheet or agonize over a Word doc, nobody reading this can deny that their lives have in some way been touched by the work that Microsoft has done over the past few decades (most likely for the better!).
People are doing things here that will change the world. They want to surprise and delight their customers. They want to take technology to its fullest potential.
I’ve only been in Seattle for about four days, but here are a few brief, unscientific observations I’ve made during my time here:
Rain – WTF, dude? It’s everywhere. It’s constant, and it’s cold. And people don’t use umbrellas? My local friend Megan told me that using an umbrella is a really good way for people to tell that you’re not from here. I say, if using an umbrella results in social ostracizing, then I am ready to become a pariah.
Speed – I haven’t been here that long, but already I’ve had a person tell me, “We do things a lot slower here on the West Coast.” I’ll leave it to your imagination what the context of this was. Suffice it to say, people here are a lot more chill. They drive at the speed limit. They are patient and good at waiting. They don’t flip out in the middle of department stores. Basically: the opposite of how people behave in Boston.
The Seattle Freeze – I haven’t experienced this directly yet, but many of my friends have made mention of it. To quote from Urban Dictionary:
It’s not that people here are unfriendly, they will hold the door for you and wave you into traffic and stuff like that, it’s that everything is maddeningly impersonal. The attitude is “have a nice day, somewhere else”. It’s easy to get along but making friends is almost impossible. People will say they want to hang out with you sometime and look at you like a freak when you actually suggest something. People enthusiastically say they are coming to a party then don’t show up. People are flaky and hard to pin down. Girls lead you on for weeks and snub you with no explanation. People are insincere. Norms of social interaction don’t apply here. Most people don’t like or dislike you, they’re totally indifferent. Every interaction will be maddeningly superficial.
This sounds like the worst fate imaginable. I shall endeavor to counteract this as often as possible by forcing my way into people’s homes and having dinner with them against their will.
The Food, My God, The Food – I thought I had it good in Boston, but the food scene here is far better than I could have possibly comprehended. I’ve only eaten at a few restaurants so far and already I have been blown away by the selection and the quality. Dollar for dollar, you cannot beat this place. And I’ve only just begun my culinary journey.
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I spend a lot of time thinking about my past and about the decisions that have led me to this point. This phenomenon has become even more pronounced, as I have just uprooted myself and moved to Seattle (follow me on Twitter and Facebook to see all my updates as I adjust to my new life here).
A lot of people say you shouldn’t spend time in regret; it wastes a lot of energy and doesn’t really accomplish anything. Still, a part of me can’t help but dwell on my mistakes and ponder the counterfactuals.
Kathryn Schulz’s TED Talk on regret, which I just watched today, is perhaps one of my favorite TED Talks ever. In it, Schulz beautifully articulates the importance of regret. Far from being something we should discard, regret is perhaps something we should embrace because it can help make us who we are.
I was unexpectedly moved by this talk. I hope it helps you too.
