creative commandments, good conversation starters, small kindnesses, an interesting pricing experiment

Kevin Straszburger down the parenting 🐇🕳️

Welcome to the startupy newsletter, a laid back column about very serious ideas.

Also, wait. What’s startupy? Startupy is where curious humans curate and interconnect the best of the Internet. We're on a mission to build a more human and nourishing Internet.

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Mood

Cool things curated in our universe

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MIND EXPANDING CONCEPTS

A list of 40 mind expanding concepts, via Gurwinder. Here’s what I highlighted:

Path Dependence: The QWERTY keyboard layout was a misguided attempt to stop typewriters jamming, but, despite being inefficient for typing, it’s endured into the digital age, because we all just accepted it as the norm.

The Opinion Pageant: The rise of social media as the primary mode of interaction has caused us to overvalue opinions as a gauge of character. We are now defined more by what we say than what we actually do, and words, unlike deeds, are cheap and easy to counterfeit.

Golden Mean: Good character is not about maximizing virtues but moderating them: to be sensitive without being fragile, confident without being cocky, steadfast without being stubborn, driven without being reckless, focused without being obsessed.

Idiocy Saturation: Online, people who don't think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user. Worth remembering whenever online dumbassery drives you to despair.

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THIS IS A GREAT POEM

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FAMILY CONVERSATION STARTERS

I’ve been enjoying these family conversation starters - perfect for mealtime or bedtime, with a fun mix of age appropriate questions that range from silly to thought-provoking.

More on the art of having effective, joyful conversations here.

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START WITH WHY

Revisiting this excerpt from actionable gamification.

Many corporations and startups excitedly tell me, “Our product is great! Users can do this; users can do that; and they can even do these things!” And my response to them has been, “Yes, you are telling me all the things your users can do. But you have not explained to me why the user would do it.”

and thinking about how innovation is about designing customers, not just new products, services, or user experiences.

Facebook asks its users to become more open and sharing with their personal information, even if they might be less extroverted in real life. Amazon turned shoppers into information-rich consumers who could share real-time data and reviews, cross-check prices, and weigh algorithmic recommendations on their paths to online purchase. Successful innovators ask users to embrace—or at least tolerate—new values, new skills, new behaviors, new vocabularies, new ideas, new expectations, and new aspirations. They transform their customers. 

Check out more in the innovation and storytelling collections.

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A GREAT PRICING EXPERIMENT

An interesting new pricing model from Telfar. Most brands start the season with high prices and as time goes on sell any extra inventory at a discount. Telfar is starting with its lowest prices, which will rise over time - the opposite of a sale.

I love the execution and seems like a great way to make your own rules and reward early adopters. I wonder what a similar model for software (which has zero marginal cost and never really “sells out”) could look like.

More in the pricing collection.

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13 CREATIVE COMMANDMENTS

via are.na

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Curator spotlight

KEVIN STRASZBURGER

Building Objet to enjoy a better relationship with objects
objet.cc
twitter.com/k7vin

DOWN THE PARENTING 🐇🕳️

Why is this interesting?

Parenting is everything at the same time: the most exciting, challenging, enriching and humbling human experience possible. As a parent, you’re literally watching life itself unfold before your eyes. It shows you, as a specie, how resilient we are, how curious, how creative, imaginative and yet, how love and attention are necessary components at every step of the way.

It also feels like exploring our past, I mean, our previous 300,000 years since we emerged on Earth. Kids have so much to teach us. When you embrace parenting, it’s like unlocking a superpower to experience life at its fullest; closer to the truth, and eternity.

A podcast worth listening to on the topic?

That whole interview of Esther Wojcicki on How to Raise Successful People is worth a listen. Her ’TRICK’ acronym is a great one to remember: Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, Kindness.

Things worth reading and watching on the topic?

The book The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori. As a whole, I actually found it quite ‘unbalanced' let’s say; it might also be a question of time [after all it’s been written a few decades ago] - that being said, I highly recomend reading chapter #12; and then #15 and all the following ones until the end — at this point, it’s getting exponentially greater

The newsletter ‘Fab Fridays’ is a must-follow - as she desribes it ‘childhood education with a twist + new ways to learn’ - and since she was about to give birth, I’d expect some awesome content + questions to come soon re: very early childhood

Mathilde in Confidence & cie. higlights that one thing she’d like to watch out & nurture in her kids: confidence. When asking herself ‘how to raise confident kids’ she breaks it down to few points: curiosity, effort, kindness, resourcefulness, adaptability, resilience.

I love Henrik’s conclusion in Childhoods of exceptional people: “It is just a way of viewing children: as capable of competence, as craving meaningful work, as worthy to be included in serious discussions. We can learn to view them like that.” Word.

Projects worth following on the topic?

The Synthesis school: teaching kids to collaboratively work with information.

Primer: real-world learning and problem solving through a network of micro-schools.

A french one - Colori: to teach computer science to kids from 3 years old onwards, with no screens.

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