Inauthenticity

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Let me unpack that a bit…

Hugh and Crye t-shirt

Recently, Hugh & Crye, a DC-based clothing firm for men, with a novel take on sizing, recently did a Kickstarter campaign for their new line of fitted t-shirts. What the hell? H&C has been around for about 5 years, and based on their product growth and hiring seems to be doing quite well. I like their stuff. Why do they need a Kickstarter? The original goal of Kickstarter was to “kickstart” new products by providing crowdsourced seed funding so that you (you!) can ensure that a great idea gets off the ground. And if a project doesn’t make its goals, no harm done, and no money wasted. A fantastic example is the Oculus Rift, which was a Kickstarted Virtual Reality rig, and is now a subsidiary of Facebook. Kickstarting a project is a rather labor-intensive alternative to trying to get a bank loan, or maxing out your credit cards, but with much less risk. It’s a very community-driven, authentic way of getting support for a new venture, moving it from the prototype phase to the initial manufacturing round.

Bikeshare hills, incentives, and rewards

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A topographic map of Washington in 1791 by Don Alexander Hawkins. I live on the top edge of the map, on one of those hills.

I’m a generally happy user of DC’s Capital Bikeshare system – just renewed my annual membership today in fact. But I don’t use it as much as I’d like to, for one critical reason. I live on top of a hill. Riders are happy to take bikes from the neighborhood to their jobs downhill, but are much less likely to ride them uphill. As a result, the bike racks in my neighborhood are frequently completely empty by 8:00 or 8:30am, despite the many stores and businesses in the area. The only days I can reliably take a bike into work are when I leave at 7:15 for 8:00 meetings, which is thankfully not too often. On several occasions I have looked at the handy real-time map of bikeshare bikes, only to observe that there are no bikes available within a 15 minutes walk of my home!

Marketing on Harlan D. Harris

Inauthenticity

Bikeshare hills, incentives, and rewards