Lauren Beukes – interviewed by Bruce Sterling

25 October 2011

In the first of our interviews with Webstock ’12 speakers, we asked Bruce Sterling to interview Lauren Beukes. Lauren was excited enough about this to tweet with the hashtag #AlsoholyshitBruceSterlingisinterviewingme.

Here’s the interview. Thanks to both Lauren and Bruce.

Bruce: Since you’re a South African writer from Cape Town, you must get all those South African Writer cliche’ questions from your many foreign interviewers. Why don’t you tell us about a few of those? You don’t have to actually answer them.

Lauren: Ha, actually no-one’s really made a big deal about that. Or not unreasonably so. They usually ask me about other South African writers, which means I get to list my favourites (some of whom are friends). Best stuff I’ve read lately: Siphiwo Mahala’s wonderful African Delights, Deon Meyer’s edge-of-your-seat thriller, 13 Hours, Diane Awerbuck’s Cabin Fever, full of perfectly beautiful and fractured short stories and SL Grey’s incredibly disturbing consumer horror, The Mall.

Bruce: If somebody in distant New Zealand has pretty much never heard of “Lauren Beukes,” what do you think they should wise-up-to first?

Lauren: The best place to get a sense of me is on Twitter. Also, if my Wikipedia profile is still stating that I’m a kraken-wrestling zeppelin pirate queen, that’s not *entirely* true. [Ed: sadly, it's not]

Bruce: You seem to be into a lot of creative work that isn’t award-winning futuristic South African cyberpunk thriller novels. Stuff like kid cartoons, techno-art, political satire, TV scripts, music and comic books. What gives with all that? Is that like your “transmedia strategy”?

Lauren: I love the idea that it might have been part of a grand tactical plan rather than lucking into some very cool things along the way. I’m a brilliant “managed procrastinator”. I’ll do anything to avoid writing a new book, including documentaries, comic books and kids animated TV shows. And it’s a nice balance. In 2009, I was writing a cute pre-school show for Disney about a little princess and her dragon friends by day and going home to write dark messed-up fiction about a magical criminal Joburg underworld by night. It suits me to vary my projects. It means I don’t get bored. I had a day job as a freelance journalist for a very long time and then got into TV script-writing, documentary making and, for the moment, I’m now focusing entirely on comics and novels.

Bruce: I hear you “directed” a TV documentary recently. With what, gaffers, best boys, lighting and all that? That sounds like a lot of hard work.

Lauren: Ha! More like a skeleton crew running around trying to catch up to our subjects, three hopefuls in the run-up to the Miss Gay Western Cape beauty pageant. I was really lucky to work with a brilliant experienced crew, including DOP, Nick van der Westhuizen, editor Izette Mostert and my husband, Matthew Brown who produced and did some of the editing, all on a ridiculous schedule. The trailer is here, if anyone wants to check it out.

Bruce: One of your novels has its own techno soundtrack compilation. Would madame care to expound on that?

Lauren: Again, I wish I could say this was part of some strategic brilliance on my part, but it just seemed like a cool thing to do. When I finished writing Moxyland, I approached African Dope Records, which has always been the future sound of Cape Town to me, and asked them if they’d consider doing a soundtrack to the book. They were a bit taken aback, but the idea intrigued them and they signed on to do a CD and digital release. HoneyB and I handpicked tracks from their catalogue to match the mood of the book and Fletcher of Krushed & Sorted did the final mix. And then we did it again for Zoo City, with HoneyB pulling in extra tracks for that authentic Joburg sound, with kwaito and disco soul and electronica from GhettoRuff and KaleidoSound as well as a selection of artists from Dope’s list.

Bruce: Webstock has got lots of web-geekery going on. Why don’t you entice the readers with some thrilling descriptions of the personal hardware set-up that you use every day? For instance: Ever find a word processor you actually liked? Me neither.

Lauren: I use Word. I know that’s sacrilege. But Pages doesn’t do the stuff I need it to do and I just can’t get into Scrivener. It feels like the time I spend learning how to use it and adjusting my brainspace is time I could be spending writing. The most important software I use is Freedom to lock me out of the Internet for set durations so I don’t mess around. Otherwise, Kindle for travel reading, iPhone for Twitter and email and entertaining my three year old and an iPad 1 for reading Wired and wasting time I should be spending writing (or learning to use Scrivener) by playing Plants vs Zombies.

Bruce: So, what does that three-year-old eat? She looks pretty lively. I can remember dietary preference being a major power-issue at that age. 3.

Lauren: Oaties! It’s a less sugary generic of Cheerios. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, plain yoghurt, spinach, crumbed chicken, fish fingers, bacon and carrots dipped in tomato sauce (but never more than three). It is a big power struggle. And she’s very, very stubborn. And smart. And often outwits us.

Bruce: You sure are super-active on Twitter. And you commonly tweet stuff like: “Was the US military drone virus caused by pilots playing Mafia Wars?” You wanna explain Twitter to people who still think it’s all about tweeting one’s lunch?

Lauren: Partly, it’s about finding cool curators of interesting links that wouldn’t normally cross your input field (although I suspect most Webstockers would have already picked up that particular one, which was from BoingBoing). You turn up some great stuff that I never would have found on my own, so does William Gibson, Charl Blignaut, @gammacounter, @theremina and @joeyhifi, among others I follow.

It’s an open conversation, a way of engaging with intriguing minds, of having cool random strangers engage with you, in a way that’s not weird or invasive (apart from that guy who was all “Yo, ‘sup, read my shit! I’m an awesome fukin writer.” by way of introduction.)

Bruce: Besides trips to other nations of the southern hemisphere, what comes next for Lauren Beukes?

Lauren: I’m hard at work on my new novel, The Shining Girls, about a time-travelling serial killer, which is due out in early 2013, and a twisted take on Rapunzel for Vertigo’s Fairest mini series, a spin-off of Bill Willingham’s brilliant and epic Fables, which should be out around August 2012.

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 12
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The speaker interviews: Jason Cohen

4 March 2011

We asked Darryl Gray, BNZ design consigliere, and founder of Hive, a nifty tool for scheduling projects and people, to interview Webstock speaker and all round awesome dude, Jason Cohen.

Darryl: Your Webstock talk (‘A Geek Sifts Through The Bullshit’) encourages a commonsense approach for startups, rather than following a set doctrine. How and when should entrepreneurs follow the advice of internet darlings such as 37Signals?

Jason: The thing to remember is these doctrines aren’t rules, they’re better named as “styles.” There’s no rules in business any more than there’s rules in art. It’s useful and healthy to explore various styles, figuring out which resonate with you, as you develop your own.

Rather than asking “When should I follow 37signals,” the question should be: “How do I know which of the various bits and bobs (as you say in NZ) from the 37signals blog applies to me?” If you can answer that, you can filter any advice anywhere, and that’s an invaluable life skill. That’s what the talk is about.

Darryl: You coined the notion of the Startup Death Clock (readers: calculate your own death at http://startupdeathclock.com). Tell us about the idea behind it and people’s reaction to it.

Jason: Sweet! I always wanted to coin something, but it’s something you can’t claim to have done yourself, just like you can’t give yourself a cool nickname. (Now I just need a cool nickname.)

The idea came from fear and worry of course. It’s something every founder faces; sometimes great “ideas” are merely articulating what everyone already knows tacitly but isn’t mindful of. It’s the simplest spreadsheet you’ll ever make (unless you use Excel for groceries like my wife does, but then she’s a chef and efficient at such things), and yet it’s a punch in the face. Or a kick in the ass — that sets the momentum better.

I think people loved it because it’s a combination of simplicity (easy to understand, implement) and truth. That’s always popular. The best bloggers already know this… It’s just easier said than done, for all of us.

Darryl: You’ve had all manner of roles in your startups (“salesman, designer, marketer, accountant, and changer of the pellets in the urinals”). Do you think that kind of experience is important for all entrepreneurs?

Jason: Yes, if you’re not the janitor you’ll never understand whether HTML5 is revolutionary or just another goddam thing.

Seriously, it depends on what you make by “experience.” If you mean “You need this experience first in order to be successful,” then absolutely not. I didn’t; most successful entrepreneurs I know didn’t either.

If you mean “You need to be eager for new experiences and willing to jump in on topics you’re uncomfortable and unknowledgable about, rather than saying ‘it’s HIS job’ or blathering on about how you’re ‘wearing so many hats’,” then yes. Get in there. The days of “I’m just a coder” or “I’m just a designer” are over. Not if you’re an entrepreneur.

Darryl: A theme of your blog is encouraging small businesses to ask hard questions of themselves, and give honest answers. Are most startups you meet in denial? (Bonus question: If so, how can they change?)

Jason: Of course, because most people are. Your idea is your baby. It’s tied up in your ego as well as your finances. It’s fine to do lip-service to the idea of being introspective and listing to potential customers, but in my experience few people actually ask the tough questions or change their mind. Human nature.

I’m not sure if you can fundamentally change who you are, but you can consider this: If you’re backing off rooting out the truth, you’re just making it less likely that you’ll succeed aren’t you? And final success — at whatever your venture morphs into — is the thing that will fulfill you, impress others, pump your ego, and whatever else you’re doing this for.

Seek truth and ultimate success, not validation of immediate ideas and notions. Don’t think of it as being wrong, it’s finding something even smarter.

Darryl: Tell us why you encourage small companies to “stop acting like a faceless, humorless, generic, robotic company!”

Jason: Because that’s who we enjoy doing business with, and because it’s one of the few things a small company can do that a large company cannot, and therefore an automatic competitive advantage that’s silly to discard.

Darryl: As you’re about to discover, New Zealand is a long, long way from … well, anywhere. What advantages do Kiwi entrepreneurs (or anyone outside Silicon Valley, for that matter) have when launching a web startup?

Jason: Silly-con Valley is where almost all companies go to die. You just hear about the raging successes because those make good press, but that’s not the usual story. So anyone striving to create a company that actually makes money for making a product people actually want is already, in my book, ahead of northern California.

Advantages in NZ in particular? It won’t be in connectedness, fast turn-around for tech support (for America/Europe), or access to vast capital or lots of employees. So it’s any company that thrives on the opposite: A product that doesn’t need tech support or big investment. A company which isn’t trying to be Facebook, but rather just trying to make a nice living for 1-3 people.

Example: The best on-line training class in CSS3 and SASS, sold for $99. It’s training in itself so you don’t need “tech support,” it’s needed by a million people, it’s useful world-wide, no one cares where the author is located. There’s a hundred other examples.

Darryl: What’s the single most important piece of advice for a fledgling web entrepreneur?

Jason: Success = Tenacity + Luck. Most startups die because the founder loses interest.

Darryl: Your latest company, WP Engine (wpengine.com), provides a fast, secure, and scalable platform for WordPress content. How did the company come about, and what interests you most about this area?

Jason: I needed it myself, then I interviewed 50 people and found that, with a pitch developed as I went along, 30 of them were willing to pay $50/mo if I built it. 20 of those actually did buy after we launched, by the way.

It was easy to recruit people to work for WPEngine, which is another good sign. If you can’t convince people to join in for little to no salary, how do you expect to convince customers or investors?

What interests me personally is the art of optimization. See, after all the writing and marketing and business philosophy crap, I’m still just a geek, and I’ve always liked optimization — making things faster, more scalable, more robust. WordPress needs it, and millions of people want WordPress to be optimized, so in this case personal passion matches (well enough) with market need.

Thanks Jason and Darryl!

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 2011
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The speaker interviews: Merlin Mann

9 February 2011

Mike Brown from Webstock interviewed Merlin Mann. Well, not so much an interview as a conversation. Ok, so, not so much a conversation as Merlin talking and Mike valiantly saying ‘yes’ and ‘good’ and ‘cool’ on occasion :)

Still, lots of good stuff about Merlin’s workshops and keynote at Webstock; the three desert island albums each would choose; and what it is that Merlin actually does!

Enjoy. And it goes without saying, but we will anyway — we’re really, totally and utterly looking forward to having Merlin at Webstock!

It’s a .mp3 file and around 57 minutes of goodness.
Merlin Mann – Webstock interview

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 2011
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