Henning von Vogelsang « Henning von Vogelsang

Ask anthropologists how humans came to be, why they evolved and became such a successful species. They will tell you that to a great part, it had to do with the capabilities and skills we picked up along the way. As a human race, we have an extraordinary ability to adapt and learn. We pick things up quickly and make them work creatively. We are reinventors. This is not just true for an exclusive elite, it is true for every human being. We are built this way.

Dealing with trouble

I think it is fair to say that all beings have to deal with trouble at some point in their lives. As humans we have a certain sense of survival and improvement of our situation, which is probably not just a human treat. However, we are quite innovative when it comes to make the best out of a situation. There is a comforting thought to this: every one of us is an inventor.

Yesterday I followed a fascinating story on BBC World Wide radio. It was about Richard Turere, a 13 year old boy in Nairobi, Kenya, son of a farmer, who had found a way to scare away lions which were devouring the cows of his father. Farmers and wild life are living on a decreasingly small space on the edge of Nairobi National Park.

Richard combined knowledge he had gained while growing up with new ideas and the resources he had access to. He did not have a special education, training or degree to achieve his invention. He just did what humans do best: he observed, learned, understood and combined the ideas and resources he had access to.

Richard Turere, photographed by Dr. Paula Kahumbu

(Photo: Dr. Paula Kahumbu)

He experimented and tested different ideas until he found something that worked: a combination of car batteries with a motorcycle indicator box, triggering LED flash lights, which scares the lions away from the cattle. Richard was 11 at the time of his ingenious invention.

The BBC writes about Richard’s invention Lion Lights: “Richard’s device costs less then ten dollars, is made from nothing more than basically spare parts, and works because of one simple yet astute observation: he noticed that lions would stay away when he walked around with a flashlight.”

Don’t get me wrong when I say anyone can be an inventor. Richard’s invention is a brilliant idea that revolutionizes the way how farmers will deal with threats of the wild, not just in Nairobi, but throughout the whole of Africa.

Richard got a scholarship at Brookhouse International School when he was 11, and in February 2013, he was invited by TED to speak about his idea that improves so many lives.

Whatever it takes

It is one of those stories that is truly inspiring. It gives me hope, a small light in the darkness and all that turmoil and misery humans create.

But aside of the inspirational effect, this story also proves that invention is not about creating something completely new out of nowhere. It is mostly about making the best out of what we already have. It is something I have learned in my career and life, over and over.

A degree, special training, a great work place and environment are a great foundation, but they don’t replace your job to reinvent yourself. Every day.

Reinventing yourself means you are looking at where you are in life and where you want to be. It means not removing your past, but taking the best out of it, optimizing it and applying it for your current and future life situations. Reinventing yourself is probably the biggest invention humans have ever made. It isn’t pure willpower that gets us anywhere we want, it is reinvention.

Don’t be afraid

In my current point in life I am forced to reinvent myself. Part of this ongoing process is the complete overhaul of my website, a new strategy on how to approach businesses and companies and more clearly defined goals of what I want to achieve in the next couple of years. I did not write a business plan for this and no class taught me about these steps. I simply looked at the resources I have and combined them in a new way.

So next time you go over your résumé, or think about an education you’d like to add to your profile, or consider a new career in a different field, or even when you think about starting your own business: don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself. It is the best gift you have.

LinkedIn is a great way to stay in touch with business contacts. The site has changed dramatically in the last couple of years, with an increased effort of creating a community and binding people to the service, by offering improved user experience and access through mobile apps. A couple of new features were introduced, among them the endorsement scheme.

In theory, endorsements are a great thing: they are supposed to reflect a rating of skillsets, what your business contacts think you are good at. It works probably great if you specialize in one area and list up all associated skills.

(Photo: Trevy on Flickr)

A history of skills

The problem begins with careers that changed a lot over time. For an example, my education is graphic design. I have worked as a designer, then an art director. I have also worked in journalism and I was a copy writer for a couple of years. I became creative director, then consultant; I was account manager, account director, digital director, general manager, member of the board in corporate management and a business owner. I have worked in marketing, in branding, in strategic planning, in print as well as in the digital field.

In short, my skillset is quite big, but what I am focussing on right now is one thing: product development. I am consulting clients with everything associated to product development, from research to analysis, from concept to strategy, from design to implementation. My focus today does not lie in classic marketing. It lies in the creation of great products.

A lot of what I do involves the experience: it entails everything from the core product value, its main purpose, to the product experience (how it is perceived when applied and used), to the user experience (the interaction between people, products and their surrounding environment). There is a chain that links all these experiences and creates an impression, a brand reputation associated with the respective product or service.

And that is all I am about right now.

Misleading emphasis

The problem with LinkedIn endorsements is, they are pushing my profile in a direction I don’t want. They push it backwards.

Because everything people endorse is what people have experienced while they were working with me – often four, five years back in my career. A former boss of an advertising agency remembers me as a great art director. A previous business partner may remember me for writing scripts for corporate product videos. So far so good, but in accumulation this is more a reflection of the history of my career, than my actual goals today.

Endorsements in LinkedIn, as they work today, put a strong emphasis on career history and too little emphasis on my interests, my current work, the direction of my career.

No way out

This would be alright if one had the choice to control these endorsement keywords. But you don’t. There are only two options: accept everything or delete the respective keywords. And that poses a problem. Because “information architecture”, for an example, plays a small role in my current work and it is not what I offer as a service. I work with information architects and designers when it comes to that part.

Until recently, I was able to reject individual endorsements. Today I tried that again, but LinkedIn wouldn’t let me. I could only see the result and was promptly asked (pushed, rather) to endorse my connections. Even more, LinkedIn makes suggestions based on current endorsements of those connections. So people who are facing the same issue like me will be pushed even more into the wrong area.

Today, new people looking at my LinkedIn profile will see “information architecture” as an accumulation of endorsements. A majority of people seem to think I am good at designing wireframes, regardless of my current career level.

So is this really helping my business, is it hurting a lot, or is it irrelevant? If anything, it is not irrelevant at all. I can feel the gravity of this in the assignments I’m offered. My LinkedIn profile kind of overrides my actual offerings I present on my website. It is a psychological effect: if so many think I am offering information architecture, it cannot be wrong, can it?

But it is misleading. And right now, the only other option I have is deleting “information architecture” as a tag. I cannot reduce it, shift its order, lower its relevance – LinkedIn has given that whole lot of power only to my contacts, but none to myself.

If LinkedIn asked me to consult their user experience, I would say: fix this as soon as possible, please. Because it simply doesn’t work.

Assuming your iTunes password is not 1234, the birthday of your spouse or the name of your dog (which all would be bad choices), you will not be able to remember that secure combination of letters, signs and numbers. So you have to store it somewhere, and I hope you don’t have to type it in every single time.

The following describes in shortest possible form, every step that is necessary to download an app from the iTunes App Store on an iPhone or iPad:

1) Open App Store app
2) Search for the app you want and find it
3) Tap on Download, it changes to Install App
4) Modal dialogue Enter iTunes Password pops up
5) Close enter password
6) Close App Store app
7) Open 1Password app
8) Enter 1Password pass code
9) Look up account, find and tap it
10) Enter 1Password password
11) Tap and hold iTunes password until options pop up
12) Tap on copy
13) Close 1Password app
14) Open App Store app
15) Tap on download button
16) Download button changes to Install App, tap it again
16) Paste password from clipboard in modal dialogue
17) App is downloading

There has to be a better way, Apple.

Henning von Vogelsang

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The Great Invention of Reinvention