This is a great read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/feb/02/featuresreviews.guardianreview14

---

quote:

It's easy to imagine that you have to be a genius in order to become highly skilled, or at least that exceptional talent rules in the craftsman's roost. But I don't believe this. While not everyone can become a master musician, it seems to me that skill in any craftwork can be improved; there is no fixed line between the gifted few and the incompetent mass. This is because skill is a capacity that we develop, and all of us can draw on basic human talents to do so.

---

---

quote:

Three abilities are the foundation of craftsmanship: to localise, to question and to open up. The first involves making a matter concrete; the second, reflecting on its qualities; the third, expanding its sense.

---

I damn near put this on the radio side because it's entirely appropriate.

The parallels between people working to refine their craft and build value from the skills that result is clear in my mind.

Cookie cutter, non craftsman, kinds of work results in cheap, utilitarian products. They are safe, often effective, but not always robust or enduring.

Good for that predictable quarter over quarter result graph, but bad in the longer term as we let a lot of potential slip by, favoring the easy buck, over the worthy one.

Radio is an entertainment medium. It's also a community thing where news, support, and other basic things happen when they need to.

I assume everyone here has been to some theatre. Ever wonder why the classics endure and are robust, despite many years of effort to best them?

Craftsmanship baby!

I've been to newer shows and they are great, don't get me wrong there. However, few of them are really, truly great, and it's because they are works of trained people, not works of love and passion. And yes, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but I hope you see where I'm going with that.

The science of entertainment is well documented. We know how good stories are built, how vivid characters and scenes are drawn, assembled and presented. All well known quantities, if well executed, will entertain well enough.

But they don't always endure, and that's where the art of it comes into play.

The craftsman, no matter their discipline, will have worked with the medium, stumbling, learning, and building. They know it and can express themselves with it, and it's that connection between minds that endures.

When we experience something realized by a craftsman, we have a conversation of sorts. We get to know who they are, what their story is, why it matters. These are things that transcend the product, and are things I remain very passionate about.

Just thought I would share those musings on this quiet and cooler Sunday!

So, how do we get the board members of various radio corporations to read this fabulous post?

Also, have you ever sent your thoughts along to CBS, Entercom, CC, through their corporate websites?

No I have not.

I think anything that goes through a website is gonna get bagged, tagged and filed. I know better than to pursue that venue. OpEds have a better shot, but I don't think I've the history necessary to lend credence enough to make that a bother either. I could be wrong...

I wouldn't bother expressing this stuff at all, but for the idea that I might be wrong about it and always look for the challenge contrary. Also there is a therapeutic value to doing it.

Setting something to words will clarify and refine passion and ideas in a way that simply musing over them won't. I do that for the pleasure of it really.

Regarding radio: I think it's gonna have to hit a hard bottom before things will change up. Until then, every last gimmick will be tried and tried again until it's clear where the value is.

We get bright spots from time to time. So we enjoy those, talk about this medium we love and continue on.

Call it the market in action.

> I've been to newer shows and they are great, don't get me wrong there. However, few of them are really,
> truly great, and it's because they are works of trained people, not works of love and passion.

In the days before the reality TV bandwagon pulled up, sitcoms were the dominant fare on primetime network TV. There were some that were enjoyable to watch because they presented a somewhat novel scenario that was funny, fresh, and made one think. There were also many "formula" sitcoms where it seemed as though the creators analyzed a successful sitcom (such as Seinfeld) and merely tried to copy what they thought were the key elements to create success. To me, the latter often came across as uncreative, predictable, and not that funny. The writers of these copycat programs may have been trained, but there was little apparent passion for the situations or characters that they were creating.

On a totally different subject related to craftsmanship, I have a friend who was doing professional level woodworking before he was injured in an industrial accident at a different job not related to his woodshop. On a variety of occasions, he has tried to convince me that I should build a shop and go into professional level wood craftsmanship, eventually leaving the corporate world and doing woodworking full-time. I have a great deal of skepticism about this being a viable course of action because I can't imagine that there is much of a market today for handmade furniture and ornaments, and I imagine that the small market that exists must be very competitive. What do you think?

I know something about this, having done wood working in the past.

There is a market, and it's actually a pretty good one, but you have to satisfy niches.

Some analysis of current trends in wood is time well spent. One of the better niches right now happens to be quilt racks, and other old world craft related things. People buy these, often unfinished, and paint them and display their own wares or works on them.

There are other niches, such as toys, shelving and such.

It's completely possible to have a coupla people building products in a shop, selling mostly via internet.

There is a significant ramp-up time as you must compete with established vendors, might need to travel some to make the right kinds of friends, and get your initial customers to talk you up.

If you are good at leveraging the Internet, this is a nice bonus as getting in front of people matters and not everybody doing this does it well.

There is a lot of word of mouth going on.

To combat that, you need a good back story, and lots of phone / travel engagements (shows and such), followed by happy talkative customers.

When things are hot, there is a nice margin. When they cool down, you keep the stuff in your back catalog to capture what revenue you can, then you also need to be looking for other hot things to ride them as they come.

Not a bad idea to differentiate your stuff as well. Serial numbers, burned in stamps and such are ways to create value and express rarity where models vary in subtle ways with stories attached to them.

Sounds goofy, but that's how the artsy craftsy niche currently works.