Author: Yodel'n

An experienced product strategist, product manager and business developer, and an MIT Media Lab graduate, I'm a lean innovator and a delighter of customers.
2016 Workgroup Topic Proposals

Why do my YouTube (next: livestream) videos still sound like sh*t?

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Anyone and everyone – literally, anyone and everyone – are recording videos on their phones and uploading to YouTube to share with friends and family. While picture quality steadily improves upon device iterations, audio quality consistently leaves a lot to be desired.

We have dialogue-disrupting ambiences!
We have diaphragm-distorting wind!
We have directionality-driven dynamics fluctuations!

noise noise noise!

With recent trends toward livestreaming, this audio quality problem has now evolved from a mere “fix it in post” problem into a no-holds-barred, guns-a-blazing, real-time audio challenge for us to solve!

It’s a physics problem.
No, it’s a transducer problem.
No, it’s a DSP problem.
No, it’s a latency problem.
No, it’s a UI/UX problem.
No, it’s a marketing/education problem.
No, it’s a product problem.

It’s all of the above!

Only the Big Brain can solve it.

2015 Workgroup Topic Proposals

Collaborative music creation – shit or get off the pot

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In 2006, 9 years ago, the Big Brain had a look at facilitating remote jam sessions.  Since then we’ve seen a plethora of online collaborative music creation platforms that have come and gone.

Is there a successful collaborative music creation platform out there today?

Or is this just Dropbox?

Is there a meaningful demographic of musicians and producers who actually want to collaborate online, whether in real-time or offline?

Or is this just a cool technical challenge that engineers enjoy solving and marketeers think is a differentiator, because Social and virality coefficients?

If there is a market, why are there no clear leaders?  What do we have to do to make a giant leap forward?

If there isn’t a market, let’s prove that and get off the pot.

2014 Workgroup Topic Proposals

Lets play lean startup

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We’ve got two days to validate a business model for a new company that we have created out of the ether of beer, sweat and BBQ.

We will identify our target customers, understand what they’re bitching about, and propose what we’re going to do about it & blow their socks off. We’ll run experiments on other groups (our target customers) to validate the hypotheses of our model.  We’ll iterate, and pivot and all that good stuff. And when our model is complete, we will be ready to put a dent in the universe and make a ton of cash.  Yeehaw!

With some sincerity, this topic is really about tech and business, not just tech.  I’ve heard as many grumblings about business and politics at BBQ as I have about tech problems.  Like Love and Marriage, you can’t have one without the other.  So, what if we set out to solve some business problems?