I’m thinking about working on this design… honest
Now that I’ve been back in the World of Work for some time … and finally comfortable enough to think in those terms without blushing… I’ve been reading business-type magazines again.
Having completely missed the collapse of the dot-com bubble - I was let go at the ShitFuckPiss company the week before 9-11 - I guess I missed how far things have fallen.
So last month on my way down to sunny Florida I grabbed a copy of Fast Company. Boy was I in for a shock. Instead of the phone-book sized magazine of the late 90s, the 21rst Century version of the magazine is thinner than my old copies of Mad - with about as much content.
For an even sadder comment on how things have fallen for the old gray lady - check out their blog. Notice how many comments they get.
Now read this post. Back in the day, this PR guy couldn’t get old Heath’s phone number, let alone his email address. Now he’s giving away his IM handle and begging for story ideas.
Do you think I should take my money out of tech stocks?
Glad you’re reading magazines again! My phone number has been in my email signature file since 1997 — just as it’s been on my team bio page on fastcompany.com . Think what you will about whether I’m “begging for story ideas” or making myself even more accessible to readers by blogging my AIM, but I’ve always been highly visible and accessible. I’ve certainly never been hard to find online; I’m sorry you couldn’t google me.
You know it’s just amazing sometimes… there’s no getting away with saying anything on the Internet anymore. Maybe there’s a story there…
I’m really fascinated by the IM thing Heath. Honestly.
On the one hand it’s finally bringing that old “promise of the Internet’ thing to reality - instant communication anytime, anywhere (once the whole planet is wired for 802.11x). Yeah it’s four years to late to save any of those amazing, brillient companies you used to write about (and I used to hawk) but it’s finally here.
On the other hand, I’m sitting there staring at your IM nick on my buddy list thinking ‘I really could IM him with this brillient story idea but he might be in the middle of reading a really important email or paying his bills on-line or even reading Megatokyo.com and that ‘baBING’ noise followed by my pithy message clogging up his monitor is just going to annoy him.’
I do like the blog. And I really enjoyed the article about Steve Jobs last month (I’m an Apple geek). I was being snarky and you called me on it.
You should be commended actually for having the guts to put your IM nick out there… I actually deal with journalists who still prefer snail mail. Tells you something about my clients.
There are still plenty of amazing, brilliant companies around — as well as people who used to work for the amazing, brilliant companies of the past. I hope to continue writing about them.
You know as well as I do that IM isn’t the best mode of outreach for a story pitch. Why would you use my IM for that? You now have my email address if you didn’t before, which you can certainly use. I’ll help as much as I’m able.
BTW, the Apple story ran in January. We’ve published several interesting issues since then. ^_^
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