Me being dumb (and how I learned to live with it)
One of the staffers here suggested to me that it was time to stop talking experimentation and place some bets. I said that I think we are making some moves, but that experimentation for innovation was critical. As I have thought more about it, some of the times I've been caught short by my short-sighted assumptions -- that my lens was the only way to view the possibilities -- have drifted back into my consciousness. And they have been a lesson to me not to assume that I "know" what works, without learning and exploring. Here are a couple of the more embarrassing ones:
* Back in the 90s, I didn't see the web as a huge threat to newspapers. I said that pages take too long to download. "I can read the entire newspaper in the time it takes to download half a dozen stories."
* About the same time, I told our publisher that we didn't need to worry about the classifieds. Our area is/was built on manufacturing jobs. Someone is going to search online for a textile mill job? Nah. (Fortunately, I wasn't in a position of any influence then.)
* Later, when we were pondering blogs, I asked our interactive specialist about their effect on traffic. He told me the value of blogs is not in page views but in the interactivity with visitors.
* When I first heard that IM'ing was the communication medium of choice for teenagers, it seemed nutty. "Why don't you just pick up the phone?" I asked. Then I watched my teenagers participate in a dozen conversations at once via IM, and I understood.
* "You found your college roommate through Facebook?" I asked my rising freshman. "Yep, I went to the UNC page, scrolled through a lot of people's pages and found some girls I thought I might like and starting talking to them." "What," I thought, in a flash of insight I knew enough not to say aloud, "that's a community you're a member of!"
Stop experimentation? I don't think so. I hope I've learned not to discount the possibilities and opportunities of new technology. (What we want to do and what we're able to do are different things.)
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