

Derek Sivers' 3 Minute TED Talk (Video) - phatboyslim
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2151-derek-sivers-3-minute-ted-talk

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snprbob86
At the PAX 2009 Saturday night concert, my 5+ friends and I were people
watching. There really are some odd folks at any big geek convention.

While we were waiting for the next act, someone brought up the story of the
shirtless dancing guy and I jokingly challenged my slightly drunk friend to be
that guy. He said "I can't dance." I told him "Dude, just do the Hokie Pokie."

He started singing and dancing and we all backed up a few steps. He was
joking, but he soldiered on to the second verse, and then the third. During
the 3rd verse, we kinda felt bad for how ridiculous he looked and people were
watching _us_. So I and a few of our circle started in. Then, a girl in a
giant dragon costume ran over to join. As soon as the dragon girl showed up,
everyone was watching. We started the song over, expanded the circle, and
before you knew it, there was 3 more people running over. By the time we
actually made it through the whole song without having to expand the circle,
there was almost 40 people doing the Hokie Pokie!

The weird bit about this story, however, is that doing the Hokie Pokie in a
circle limits how far you can grow. As the circle kept expanding, it became
less and less space efficient. People were excluded simply because there
wasn't space for them to join. At almost 40 people, the Hokie Pokie circle had
effectively collapsed under its own size. Maybe next year we'll try a dance
that scales better.

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smhinsey
Your hokie pokie story reminded me of this video:
<http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1912826> (Sorry for the collegehumor link,
it seems to have been removed from youtube.)

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daveisconfused
Am I missing something? That's video shown in the article...

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akadien
The Dancing Guy never fails to amuse. Almost as good as the Hitler subtitle
meme.

Of course, a "lone leader" is an oxymoron. By definition, a leader requires
followers. The concept of "first-follower advantage", as opposed to "first-
mover advantage", is interesting to think about in the context of technology.
Haven't most or all of Apple's really big things been "first-follower" or
"early-follower" products?

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10ren
In support of you: your first _competitor_ validates your market space.

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gridspy
Yeah. For about 1 week I was totally paralysed by this list of my competitors.
Then I realised that

1\. They totally validate my value proposition

2\. None of them offer multi channel, web enabled, real time power monitoring

3\. I am the bomb.

Okay, perhaps 3 is exaggerated, but I've got to stay sane somehow!

The list: [http://blog.mapawatt.com/2009/10/07/list-of-energy-
monitorin...](http://blog.mapawatt.com/2009/10/07/list-of-energy-monitoring-
tools/comment-page-1/#comment-1962)

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nhebb
Seth Godin says we need more risk takers like Guy #3. Let's go out on a limb
and say that guys 1-3 are all stoned. What does that say about the difference
between risk-taking vs. lack of inhibition? I think a lot of what is called
risk taking is actually just stage fright and fear of public failure.

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amohr
Well in this case, the consequence of failure is the ridicule and
embarrassment, so the risk calculation is affected by the dancing guy's
perception of those consequences. This isn't exactly a far-reaching effect.

In other cases, the risk may be greater - when thesixtyone launched a full
interface redesign, they could have sat on their hands indefinitely, not just
because of stage fright, but because something that they put a whole lot more
of their life into is on the table than the opinions of other shirtless
concertgoers.

I think it's related to a lot more than inhibition, although I would agree
that the risk-taking personality trait probably spans both situations.

And to be fair, Seth also said we need more leaders(1) and artists(2) -
encompassing all three of the core team, really. Also, it's worth note that a
stoned customer is still a customer :)

(1)<http://amzn.com/1591842336> (2)<http://amzn.com/1591843162>

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gridspy
You can remove inhibition by removing risk.

Money back guarantees, free trials, browsing existing sites, services that
attract groups of people are all great for this.

Gridspy offers a 5 year back to base hardware warranty. I'd like to offer a
"if you don't like it, send it back for a full refund any time in the first
year" warranty.

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vibhavs
Transcript can be found at Derek Sivers' site: <http://sivers.org/ff>.

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dzlobin
I'm a bit confused, as this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5SycZjGhI> is
his TED talk, and the dancing guy was just a really good video that Derek
posted, right?

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prabodh
No..the video you have posted was from TED talk 2009 in Mysore, India...and
the video mentioned here is from TED talk yesterday as Derek mentioned in his
blog

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dzlobin
Ah, ok thanks

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est
Obligatory:

Bolero - Maurice Ravel

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-4J5j74VPw>

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staunch
Very well done.

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lecha
Strong stuff!

