Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Seth's book discussed “The Resistance” - the lizard brain of ours that keeps us back by spicing our dreams with fear so that we don't pursue them. This fear is insidious as it uses logic and reason to keep us from pushing through difficult phases to achieve a goal.
The fact that v. 1 of nonlinear was launched is largely due to this book. There were many reasons to keep back v. 1 or even scrap the project altogether but launching and enduring the pain of bugs was necessary to get to v. 1.3.
Rework
The original concept of The Digital Talking Pad called for a lot of features – an ability to send presentations to other, track how long people spent on each slide, and linking between different slides. Although it was never intended to have all the features of the original concept put into the first version of the iPad app, after reading Rework, even the original concept was boiled down to the essential elements – allowing for the delivery of non-linear presentations.
From Rework, I got that the number of bells and whistles isn't as important as the functionality of those bells and whistles. With nonlinear v. 1.3, this is the focus – making the absolute best tool for giving non-linear presentations using the iPad. Faster loading, more stability, easier to follow interface – these will be the improvements coming up in the next version. Going forward, changes are going to improve the core of the app.
What Technology Wants
While this an incredibly interesting on its own, the take away that is going towards v. 1.3 is that technology evolves. First versions barely work, which was the case for nonlinear v.1. However, they will improve. It gave me more confidence to pursue these later versions.
