Life Archives
Hi everyone, Just a quick note before I run out the door en route to Peru for a week.
Thank you all for a wonderful year. It was an absolute blast and I owe an incredible debt of gratitude to all of the readers of the site for helping some of my projects get off the ground.
Anyway, thanks for everything and I'll be doing some 2008 wrap-up type stuff when I get back. (Also, I'm not bringing my computer with me, so if you email and I don't respond that's why. Oh, and if you've emailed me in the last two weeks or so and I haven't responded, sorry about that too, I'll be back to my regular emailing ways come January.)
Thanks again, happy new year and best of luck in 2009.
- Noah
PS - Sorry for the brevity here, I'm literally being picked up in 10 minutes.
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We're drinking this Friday. You should come along.
My friend Colin was kind enough to remind that it had been far too long since we did a little drinks shindig in NYC.
So we decided to organize one for this Friday and in the process of organizing (or thinking about organizing) we thought it would be even more fun if we got Alli and Theo in on the organizing action (and not just because both of their names can be shortened to four letters).
So the four of us are forming a quadumvirate (??) and having a rocking happy hour this Friday. here are the details:
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Date: Friday, July 25, 2008
- Time: 6pm - whenever
- Location: Sweet & Vicious (where else?)
- Address: 5 Spring Street (between Elizabeth and Bowery)
As usual, this is the kind of party where you bring anyone you want/post to your blog/show up whenever.
Hope to see you there.
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All about my big move to join The Barbarian Group
So I've got a pretty big announcement to make today. People who know me probably already know about this, but I haven't really told that many folks. I have moved to Barbarian Group to head up planning and strategy and I'm super excited (like super super excited).
There's lots of reasons I decided to move over, but mostly it's because I think the Barbarians are awesome. For those that don't know them, here's their Greatest Hits which includes Subservient Chicken and Method's Come Clean site and recently CNN's new t-shirt thing and Getty Images' Moodstream.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll all be hearing lots about what I'm up to over here in the coming months, but in the meantime I'll turn to an entry by Rick Webb on the Barbarian Blog to explain it:
The Barbarians and Strategic Planning
In thinking about the strategy and planning offerings at The Barbarian Group, it’s important to understand that we aren’t adding planning and strategy to our company, we are formalizing our offering and responding to increased, near-constant demand for planning and strategy that has thus far only been offered on a first-come, first-served basis by Benjamin, Bruce and Rick. Our clients have come to respect our insights into these areas and ask for these services more frequently, so the right thing to do was put a process around it, some discipline, and bring in a big brain to help us and ensure we do things rigorously and better than we did before.
Secondly, Noah is freakin’ awesome and we would have probably made a juggling department if that was part of his conditions for coming over. This is a joke, but intended to drive home the point that Noah was bright and there was no previous search underway for a new department or offering so much as he highlighted an opportunity and problem we had been ignoring until the perfect solution presented itself.
Thirdly, the ad-press-unnoticed addition last year of a User Experience department has been an unmitigated success. Like 1000% revenue growth in less than a year for the offering. Like pioneering-what-the-field-is type of stuff. Like we’ve been so busy with it we haven’t had time to write enough about it. And while this is awesome, User Experience at the initial side of things is heavily driven by brand and product strategy, and UX in the 21st century starts before the site, and begins to merge with your media strategy – Facebook app, widget, banner or game? Website or blog? That sort of thing. It all blends together, and our UX department has driven a need for disciplined strategic planning to drive it. And doing them both ensures a far more effective result. Just ask any startup company who has a brand strategist and a UX team at two different companies.
Finally, our aim is to offer every service under the sun in assisting organizations and individuals in forming, executing, measuring and capitalizing off of their interactive marketing. This is our organizing principle. Not being a production shop, not being an agency, not just creative, not just this or that. Everything in service to that goal. One-stop coordinated interactive brilliance for any type of organization that needs it. This is just another step for us in that direction.
That's it for now. Hopefully the return to full-time work (I've had 3 weeks off) will mean a return to posting here a little more often.
Finally, thanks again to everyone who has kept with me over the last few years, I really believe nothing I've accomplished would have happened were it not for this site at the center. So thanks for that.
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A little drinks get together this Friday.
So I'm back from vacation and feel like it's been far too long since I did a proper drinks get together. After consulting with my friend Colin, we've decided Friday evening at 6pm is ideal. As usual, bring along anyone you'd like.
Who: Noah and Colin (and anyone else who you want to invite)
When: Friday, June 6 from 6pm until whenever
Where: Sweet and Vicious, 5 Spring Street between Elizabeth and Bowery
Why: It's been far too long and it's getting warm in NYC
Like I said, feel free to tell or invite anyone you'd like. See you Friday.
And I promise that I will be posting more regularly sometime soon.
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I won't be around for a few days as I enjoy the ocean and humidity.
Hi everyone,
I'm on a much needed vacation enjoying the beach and the sun in the Caribbean.
That means no posting from me for a while (though since brand tags launched I'm sure you've gotten used to it.
What I do have is some really smart people who have agreed to post entries for me over the next few days.
I've given them no brief or guidelines, so it's completely up to them. I hope you enjoy and I'll see you all when I get back.
Best regards,
Noah
PS - brand tags 840k tags ... I'm pretty excited.
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An invitation to get some drinks next Wednesday, March 26.
Since lots of folks are in town for Thursday's PSFK conference (and it's nice to have an excuse to get together), Faris and I have taken the bull by the horns and decided to plan a little happy hour for the evening before.
As usual, everyone is invited (whether you're going to the conference or not). It should be good fun. Feel free to bring friends, coworkers and casual acquaintances. Here are the details:
Where: Sweet & Vicious, 5 Spring Street (btwn Elizabeth and Bowery)
When: Wednesday, March 26, 7pm - whenever
Feel free to pass this along, cross-post it or whatever else. Hope to see some of you there.
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Just some random thoughts and excuses for why I haven't posted in a while.
Okay, this is one of those posts where I give lots of reasons why I haven't posted in a while and throw a bunch of stuff I've been thinking about out at once. So sorry about that . . .
First off, if you're in New York City next Friday, February 22nd, you should come out for my birthday. Here are the details:
Date: Friday, February 22nd
Time: 6:30pm - Whenever (optional 2 hour, $20 open bar starts at 7pm)
Location: Antarctica Bar, 287 Hudson St (right below Spring Street)
It's always a good time and everyone is invited. Bring your friends and have them bring their friends.
Second, part of the reason I've not been writing much is that I've been teaching myself PHP. After I built How Much Does it Buy I got real excited. It was the first time I had actually built something by myself, from scratch, in PHP. After that small win I decided to try something a bit more tricky and build a little backend to approve submissions from others. I think that's finally done and you can try it out (and see what others have submitted).
After that I decided to get started on another idea I've been cooking up for a while with some friends and have managed to build out the entire backend. Needless to say, I'm quite excited about it and it's been taking up quite a bit of time. All the work and progress got me thinking about why I was more successful learning PHP this time (I've tried to learn it in the past a few times, including once or twice from books). In reflection, I think what happened here may actually be a fairly straightforward educational framework (though one quite different from the current system):
- Get a small win (in this case it was programming the not-so-complex HowMuchDoesitBuy.com).
- Take those learnings and go back to figure out the basics as needed using a project as your curriculum (as I am building out this new site I constantly refer to Google for answers to my PHP questions).
What struck me about this was how different it was from the way school works. In language classes, for instance, you classically learn a ton of syntax and basics before you actually learn how to talk. Or, as Robert Frank writes in the Economic Naturalist,
"Knowing about the pluperfect subjunctive is not a bad thing. But if learning to speak a new language is your goal, the time and effort required to learn the explicit technical details of this tense would be far better spent in other ways. Courses that focus most of their energy on such details are no fun for students, and they're also astonishingly ineffective."
As a side note, Good Magazine had quite an interesting article on how the Mormon's teach language this way.
Anyway, I'm not sure where all this goes, but I find it interesting.
Think that's it. I'm off to Austin this weekend (and plan to stop by likemind Austin). If you're around you should come.
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A huge thank you to everyone that commented at NoahBrier.com in 2007.
I was planning on holding off posting this, however, Google has locked me out from sending emails after I sent out a massive New Years note last night (if you want to go back to the other posts, here is my best links of 2007 volume 1 and volume 2). So for those of you that have written me back, I will respond as soon as I'm allowed to send mail again. For those that I didn't get to send to before the lockout or whose emails I don't have, here's the "card" I included . . .
I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank those of you who commented on the site. I got about 800 this year and I wanted to personally thank every one of you. It means an incredible amount to me when someone finds something interesting enough to add their own two cents. It still blows me away that I can put some half-baked thoughts out there and get such amazing responses. So without further ado . . . (in chronological order from the first time they commented in 2007)
Vaspers, Michael, Max, CK, Alex, Adrian, Liz, Justin, Jeff, El Gaffney, Candice, Joe, Michael, Josh, Johanna, Nate, Mike, David, Barbara, Andrew, Abe, Adam, David, Bonnie, Chris, Shana, Aaron, Charles, Arienna, Gregory, Kevin, Marc, David, Charles, Jason, Paul, Russell, Amber, Josh, Range, (The Other) Noah, KG, Chris, Harris, Chet, Erik, Karl, Jarrett, Christian, Devin, Shobita, Paul, Mark, Peter, Akhila, Debbie, Ed, Jack, Tad, Steve, kt, Drew, Ori, Eric, Phil, Ronnie, Clay, Bb, Martin, Herb, Kim, Kathy, Scott, Christina, Tyson, Minic, Brian, Dino, Joey, Kyle, Ryan, Onika, Scott B., Brian, David, Sarah, R, Michelle, Matt, Brad, Stephen, Sokratis, Dave, Oakie, Jeck, Ian, Lebbonee, Leah, Andy, Tiffany, Jamie, Adam, Philip, Lon, Mark, George, Bryce, Amanda, Ben, Chartreuse, Sonali, Stephanie, Ari, Sarah S., Satish, Eric, Michelle, Heron, Scott, Headphonenaught, Athur, Jeff, Christina, Pam, Damiano, Erin, Evan, Silvia, Rebecca, Katie, Rob, Michael G., Tim, Christian, James, Miguel, Dan, Mike A., Johnny, MJM, Antonio, Jamie, Brian, Paull, Ross, Dave A., Matthew, Courtney, Michael, Ryan A., Dan, Orli, Fraser, Esther, Ray, Nichelle, Jamie, Mark S., Monica, Joe, Michael, Florian, Pieter, Carmen, Amit, Meba, Benton, Tangerine Toad, Rashmi, MC, Diana, Lindy, Wes, Nandhu, Angus, Seni, Joshua, Dave, Ryan G., Jay.
A huge thanks to each and every one of you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the feedback and support. You're all great. For anyone I missed, I'm sorry. For anyone that didn't comment last year and felt like it, why not give it a try now? Or just email me and say hi.
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I am having a little get together in San Francisco tonight and you are invited.
[This is an email I sent to friends in sf. I decided to post it here and invite all you as well.]
Hi everyone I know who lives in or around SF,
I was thinking about getting a bunch of people together Monday night for some drinks before I leave town for the other coast. If you're so inclined and available, here are the details:
Time: 6pm
Date: Monday, October 22ndm
Location: Rye, 688 Geary St, San Francisco, CA 94102 -- http://sanfrancisco.citysearch.com/profile/41873212/san_francisco_ca/rye.html
Rye is a cocktail bar with delicious drinks. It's a bit expensive, but you can always grab a beer instead of a cocktail (but really, the cocktails are quite delicious).
Obviously feel free to tell friends, post on blogs, scream from building-tops about it. The more the merrier.
Thanks and hope you're all well.
- Noah
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A small addition to likemind this month.
As with most months, I like to remind people that likemind is happening. We're in 37 cities (if my counting is right) and we're pretty excited to be opening our first dual city this month as likemind Brooklyn joins Manhattan (we felt like the time was right).
What's extra exciting for this month, though, is the realization of an idea Piers and I have been bouncing around for a while. We're going to see what happens when we throw a question out to the likemind network. It's a bit scary, since the beauty of likemind is it's free-formness, but we are quite committed to keeping things that way. No one is required to talk about it, but we thought it might be a nice way to meet new people you otherwise wouldn't chat with (it's much easier to start a conversation off a prompt you've been given).
Anyway, this month's question is: "If you were to rebuild your city from scratch, how would you build it differently and what would you keep the same?"
Got any thoughts?
Update (10/17/07): I am headed out to SF tomorrow AM. Will be there Friday for Influx Ideas (and hopefully stop by likemind). If you're around, drop me a line.
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Hi, I'm 