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duminică, 6 noiembrie 2016

Seth's Blog : How they talk you out of voting

How they talk you out of voting

The easiest way to win an election is to get the people who might vote for your opponent to not vote.

TV has proven an effective engine behind this strategy, and voter turnout has plummeted since campaigns began running significant TV campaigns 50 years ago.

It works because it's not that difficult to talk someone out of voting.

The two most common unstated reasons for not voting are:

"I don't want to vote for the person who loses, because I'll feel badly having wasted my vote and being associated with the unpopular outcome."

"I don't want to vote for the person who wins, because then I'll be partly responsible for whatever happens."

A popular rationale to justify either of these reasons is:

"I don't like either candidate, they're both terrible."

The thing is, there has never been a perfect leader. There has never been a flawless president. There are always weaknesses, foibles and scandals. It takes more than a hundred years before the patina sets in, and even then, most great leaders throughout history had defects that would cause them to wither under today's profit-minded, scandal-focused media.

Same thing for the charities we donate to (or don't), the heroes and mentors we revere, the organizations we're proud to be a part of.

Change is always rough around the edges. It has no right answers, no ideal keys that unlock the future. But risky schemes are always risky.

The media, with our complicity, has created a game where we end up disillusioned and disgusted. But it's only the disillusioned and the disgusted voters who are capable of raising the bar in the long run.

Vote as if you're responsible, because you are, especially if you don't vote.

Vote as if it's not anonymous, knowing that you'll have to explain it to your grandchildren.

Work for justice. Progress is possible. It matters.

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vineri, 4 noiembrie 2016

Seth's Blog : And when it breaks?

And when it breaks?

Every website your organization puts up is going to reach a moment when it is obsolete, out of date or buggy.

How will you know?

And what will you do about it?

Big organizations have this problem every day. When building a website, the hierarchy pays attention. There are meetings and approvals, and it all fits together in the current strategy.

But a year or a decade later, those folks have moved on, but the website remains. And it's unlikely that there's someone checking it for bad behavior.

So there's the Fedex database that sends customers to a drop box that doesn't accept packages any longer. Or the part of the Brother website that requires users to change their password every single time they visit. I'm sure I have pages out there on the web that are out of date or buggy as well. It's inevitable.

Here are two simple questions that ought to be part of any online launch:

Where can our users report defects on this page?
If you include a link to a human or perhaps a monitored feedback form, it's a lot more likely you'll hear about the things that aren't working in time to actually fix them before you take a loss.
What's our plan for sunsetting this site?
If they close down Vine or our strategy changes or we need to take action, who is responsible?

Stick around long enough and it's going to break. We come out ahead when we treat that event like part of our job, not a random emergency.

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