Rough Drafts

Rough Drafts

Narrative specificity.

Narrative specificity means avoiding generalizations and using details to make your story come to life. Leave it out, and your words will be hollow and dead, like empty snail shells strewn across the dirt. It’s not surprising that many writers miss this point, particularly in politics and business.

Dylan Tweney Jul 19, 2016 2 min read

Rough Drafts

Alcatraz.

Yesterday I realized a dream I’ve had ever since I started open water swimming around 2010. I swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco. It’s about 1.25 miles though we covered a bit more water than that due to fighting the current a little. In all, it took me one hour and 13 minutes in pretty […]

Dylan Tweney Jul 14, 2016 4 min read

Rough Drafts

Bay Parade Swim Report

Today’s Bay Parade swim went super well. It was a beautiful day on the Bay, the water wasn’t too cold (maybe 58 degrees near the Gate, 62-plus in McCovey Cove), and we had a fun bunch of swimmers aboard our boat, comprising two teams: “Flood Tide” (my team) and “Frijoles Frios.” There was some initi

Dylan Tweney May 22, 2016 1 min read

Rough Drafts

When a clickbait headline leads to national outrage.

So Gizmodo publishes a story whose headline reads “Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News,” and the Internet goes predictably apeshit. There’s just one problem: The story doesn’t deliver what the headline promises.

Dylan Tweney May 19, 2016 2 min read

Rough Drafts

Breaststroke.

The breaststroke has a faint sense of femininity attached to it these days. There’s the name, of course: Anything beginning with “breast” seems inevitably female, at least a little bit. But it’s also a slower stroke than the crawl, otherwise known as freestyle. You could use the breaststroke in a fr

Dylan Tweney May 8, 2016 3 min read

Rough Drafts

7 thoughts on the tech media in 2016

The media is in a state of upheaval. 2015 was a stormy year, and signs indicate that 2016 will be even more turbulent. Last month brought the news that Al Jazeera America will shut down, that Facebook multimillionaire Chris Hughes is throwing in the towel on his ill-fated attempt to bring the New Re

Dylan Tweney Feb 9, 2016 6 min read

Rough Drafts

Wired gets tough on ad-blockers

Sometimes we get just what we deserve. This week the news hit that Wired is about to start offering an ad-free edition of its website for a reasonable subscription fee. For $3.99 you get access to a version of the website that shows no ads at all. That’s a pretty reasonable-sounding $1 per week, whi

Dylan Tweney Feb 8, 2016 3 min read

Rough Drafts

Life hacks for using social networks without being miserable.

Using Facebook can make you depressed, according to a survey of some relevant social-science research. But the same research suggests three ways to hack your mind-Facebook interface.

Dylan Tweney Jan 1, 2016 2 min read

Rough Drafts

To embrace innovation, CIOs need to learn to let go

Faced with the prospect of becoming mere custodians of whatever cool projects their fellow executives in marketing cook up, CIOs are learning to embrace innovation on their own terms.

Dylan Tweney Sep 11, 2015 4 min read

Rough Drafts

PR folks: Here’s how to pitch me

The lovely Ayelet Noff from PR firm Blonde 2.0 interviewed me on the best way for PR people to approach me with stories. Here’s an excerpt, but read the full story on her site if you’re wondering about this kind of thing.

Dylan Tweney May 13, 2015 1 min read

Rough Drafts

A few notes on innovation

Perhaps the Internet revolution is over. But perhaps the spirit is only sleeping, waiting for the next round of disruptive innovation to topple today’s giants, just as they toppled the previous generation.

Dylan Tweney May 11, 2015 4 min read

Rough Drafts

TL;DR: Your emails are too long

I recently met with an interesting startup from Israel called TL;DR that has changed the way I’m thinking about and using email. TL;DR stands for Too Long; Didn’t Read. It started as a quip used on Web forums and now occasionally stands in as a shorthand for “Here’s the summary of the long-winded th

Dylan Tweney Mar 14, 2015 3 min read

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