Category Archives: Uncategorized

How I Use Those Seven Questions (Or Five of Them, Anyway) With Bredemarket Clients

Bredemarket’s “Seven Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You” provides an ideal framework to launch work on a piece of content.

For one thing, they’re easy to remember: why, how, what, goal, benefits, hungry people (target audience), emotions.

So I use these questions in actual client work.

The seven questions.

Using these questions with a Bredemarket client

Again, this isn’t just ivory tower stuff. I actually USE these questions. Here’s an anonymized example of how I recently used five of these seven questions to launch a new client project.

The questions I asked

  • Why is this document needed?
  • How will this document be used? As a download? As introductory text within proposals? As a demo script, video script, or webinar script?
  • What funnel stage(s) should this document address? Awareness? Consideration? Conversion?
  • As a related question, what is the primary goal of this document?
  • Who should be the target(s) for this document? Decision-makers? Technologists?
  • Approximate document length?

Just between you and me, “approximate document length” is one of the questions I ask AFTER I’ve asked my initial seven questions. I normally don’t talk about my other questions (if I tell you about them I will have to kill you), but they’re there.

The questions I didn’t ask

And no, I felt no driving need to ask about the benefits of the document. The chief benefit is more sales of the product that the document will describe.

And in this case I didn’t ask about emotions. Perhaps I’ll address that once I have a better feel for the document and start writing it.

It’s too early to say how these questions will shape the final content, because I just asked them. But I believe the answers will give me a rapid head start on creating the client’s deliverable.

So what?

But you don’t care about my client (unless you ARE my client and are reading this). You care about YOUR content.

How can my question process help you create stellar content and more sales of YOUR product?

If you want me to annoy YOU with a lot of questions (in the same way that I annoy my existing clients), set up a free meeting.

The Next Salvo in the Data Center War

Monica had a burning question about the cast of the original “Jurassic Park” movie, and to obtain the answer, she accessed her favorite generative artificial intelligence tool.

Instead of receiving the expected blank prompt, Monica encountered a question:

City and state of legal residence:

Figuring the question was porn-related, and since she was an adult, she replied with no hesitation.

Pine Haven, California

Her tool then replied with the following:

On Tuesday, March 3, 2026, voters in Pine Haven, California approved Measure B, which prohibited construction of data centers within the city limits.

Monica remembered Measure B and her passionate “Yes” vote. Pine Haven was a beautiful town, and they didn’t need other peoples’ data centers ruining the landscape.

You know how I created this.

The message continued.

Due to a shortage of processing power, we must prioritize access to those who support data center construction.

ACCESS DENIED.

“It’s not fair,” Monica said to herself.

But oligopolies can do things like this. So don’t be surprised if your town is blocklisted from access to LLMs.

And this also.

Friday Facebook Failure Fun

This morning I wanted to use the Facebook app to reshare a couple of Bredemarket posts, but couldn’t switch to my Bredemarket profile.

Then I got a login screen.

Then I got a query error.

So I tried going to Facebook’s mobile website and got this.

Facebook.

According to The Independent, it’s not just me.

“Facebook has gone down in what appears to be a huge outage.

“The problems took down Facebook Messenger as well as the main app and website. Other Meta services such as Instagram and WhatsApp appeared to stay largely online, despite using shared systems behind the scenes, though some products such as Instagram’s website also suffered from issues.”

As a reminder, Bredemarket is also on LinkedIn.

The “Liturgy of the Falling Rain” Repurposing Exercise

In case you missed it, I recently took one Google Lyria-generated song, a Canva template, and other text and images and repurposed them as two separate videos: one for Bredemarket, and one for my personal use.

Repurposing is good.

Here is the audio common to both videos.

“Liturgy of the Falling Rain.” Google Lyria. Public Domain.

It’s Time

It’s Time.
It’s Time
It’s Time.

Let’s Go

Let’s Go.
Let’s Go
Let’s Go.

Don’t Learn to Code 3

Remember my series of posts (one, two) about how the decade-old “learn to code” movement has become horribly dated?

A couple of months ago, Dhanush N wrote a piece for Developers Global after Oracle’s layoff of 30,000 employees. Much of the post is only available to Medium subscribers, but the beginning is visible to all.

And it’s not a feel-good beginning.

“They told you to learn to code. You did. They told you to upskill. You did. They told you to embrace AI. You did. Then they used the system you helped build to replace you.“

Since that layoff, it’s been revealed that companies ended up overspending on AI.

Before the bot takeover, Oracle moved…twice

Wonder what the conversations are within Oracle’s California Texas halls right now.

And within Texas government, which previously issued statements such as this.

“In a statement, Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed Oracle’s relocation to Texas and credited the state’s business-friendly climate, low taxes and strong workforce for what he called the “tidal wave” of businesses relocating to Texas.”

Of course, even before everyone not named Ellison at Oracle was replaced by a bot, Texas found out that it wasn’t the big winner after all.

“In 2021, a Tennessee panel approved $65 million in state incentives for Oracle, with the company planning to bring 8,500 jobs and an investment topping $1 billion to Nashville over a decade. Then-Mayor John Cooper’s office announced that the company, currently based in Austin, Texas, planned to build the new campus with 1.2 million square feet (111,400 square meters) of office space….

“Frist, a doctor and businessman, asked Ellison why Nashville was chosen. Ellison, whose company bought electronic medical records company Cerner in 2022, called the city “a health center.”

“”We’re moving this huge campus, which will ultimately be our world headquarters,” Ellison said. “We’re moving that to Nashville.”

“Ellison then joked that he “shouldn’t have said that.””

But where will Oracle’s workforce (either bots or a return to flesh-and-blood) reside in 2028? Qatar? India? We’ll see.

On Android APK Sideloading

Apple and Google (and probably Samsung) defend their lockdown of their app stores (and the resulting 15-30% or so cut they receive from app revenue) by saying that their “App Store” and “Google Play Store” provide safety to users. Would you want to risk your phone by downloading from sleazy sources, or would you prefer to get your apps from the name that you trust?

If that were true, I wouldn’t have to clean a particular person’s phone every once in a while because he downloaded an app from one of those stores, which then proceeded to download a bunch of other apps.

But on the other hand, there are sometimes legitimate reasons to “sideload” Android apps (Android Package Kits, or APKs) from alternative sources. Maybe the app is one that shouldn’t be accessed by run-on-the-mill consumers, so therefore an alternative distribution mechanism is needed. I could name some examples, but if I named them I’d have to kill you.

But as Lifewire notes, you have to take a few extra steps to allow downloads from outside the App Store and Google Play Store.

The biggest step, of course, is to allow the download of “unknown” apps from non-Apple/Google sources. Needless to say, you should only download apps from a site that you trust. No, not mikrosofft.com.

  1. Open the Settings app and tap Apps or Apps & Notifications.
  2. Tap the three dots in the upper-right corner. If you don’t see that, skip down to the next step.
  3. Tap Special access, or Special app access on some Android devices.
  4. Tap Install unknown apps.
  5. Tap Chrome (or whichever web browser you use).
  6. Switch the toggle next to Allow from this source so it turns on.

For more details on APK installation, check the Lifewire page.

On Data Sharing, Flock, and Other Entities

Jim was at his desk when the phone call came in.

“Hey, Jim! This is Charlie!”

Jim hadn’t talked to Charlie in years.

“Hey, um, Jim, I understand that your agency has some license plate recognition capabilities.”

Jim confirmed this.

“Um, mind if I take a look at it?”

Jim asked what Charlie wanted to see.

“You know…stuff.”

If you boil down the controversies about Flock Safety, Clearview AI, and other investigative software packages, some of them come down to these data sharing issues.

Flock Safety may sign a contract with a particular local police department, the police department may use the software only for authorized purposes, and may ensure that department personnel are trained not to use the software to stalk ex-girlfriends and the like.

But in law enforcement, there’s a long-standing tradition of law enforcement agencies helping each other out.

“Interagency collaboration in law enforcement is the process of multiple agencies working together to share resources, coordinate responses, and improve public safety outcomes. From routine operations to large-scale emergencies, collaboration between agencies is essential for effective policing.”

As long as the two agencies have similar purposes, no problem.

But what if the second agency has different priorities than the first?

Let’s take an extreme example.

  • Agency 1 uses Flock Safety data ONLY to find people who run red lights or speed.
  • Agency 2 uses Flock Safety data to find people who are not running red lights, but are going to suspicious places and associating with suspicious people.
Running a red light and speeding.
Not running a red light or speeding.

Is this justified investigation, or overreaching surveillance?

And, more importantly, does Agency 1 agree with these uses?

Just thinking out loud…what if the Flock licenses with these agencies prohibited agencies from letting other agencies use the software? There’s even an economic justification for it: every agency that borrows the Flock account of the first agency is a potential loss of sales to Flock.

John E. Bredehoft, (Semi) Super IC

I read Tamara Grominsky’s weekly newsletter, and the 177th edition caught my eye.

It opened as follows:

“What does the future of PMM leadership look like?

“The Super IC role is so hot right now.”

For those unfamiliar with the “IC” acronym, Grominsky was referring to an individual contributor, as opposed to a manager of people.

The Super IC

Grominsky credits Elena Verna with the “Super IC” concept:

“I’m talking about employees with no direct reports who can do work that used to take a whole team (all while still getting paid like a leader). I’ve been calling this new role the High-Impact Individual Contributor.”

But I prefer “Super” to “High-Impact,” because it’s a lot more visual.

Google Gemini.

Perhaps I got a little too carried away with Tamara Grominsky’s “Super IC” idea. But at least you can’t accuse me of imposter syndrome.

But one distinguishing feature of both Grominsky’s and Verna’s definitions is an extremely capable lone wolf who, due to today’s tools, can do what used to require an entire team. Grominsky expressed it as follows, using the common “PMM” acronym to refer to a product marketing manager:

“Now, with tools like Claude Code, a PMM can vibe code the landing page, build an interactive demo, create a dashboard, and ship experiments themselves. The work that used to require a team and a few weeks can happen in an afternoon.”

In Verna’s case, she is currently living the “Hi-C” dream.

“My role is basically to parachute in and out of different projects and teams wherever I can create the most leverage. But mostly, I just have a huge block of IC work that I’m doing on my own. I’m running campaigns. Driving partnerships (did you see my latest LinkedIn x Lovable perk?). I’m coding my own growth optimizations and product updates. These are things that I used to rely on a large Growth org to do… now, I can do it all with just me, myself, and I.”

Now I’m not sure that I can do this for an organization as an outside consultant, unless I am REALLY embedded into the organization. Sure I can perform a number of the required tasks (although my vibe coding needs a bit of work).

Google Gemini.

But I don’t know that I can do this on behalf of an organization that does not employ me. The organization would be understandably leery of an outsider having all that power.

But certainly an organization’s EMPLOYEE with appropriate experience and authority can take the reins and call the shots, contributing directly to growth.

What about a SEMI Super IC?

But things are not binary, and it’s possible to be somewhere on the continuum of IC-dom: a SEMI Super IC, as it were.

In that case, I as the Semi Super IC would take care of most of the work, and just toss a completed artifact over to my consulting client for the final steps.

Google Gemini.

In this case, I (as Bredemarket) take over as much of the load as possible.

Google Gemini.
  • I do NOT require you to provide me with a briefing book. I use my own questions to effectively assemble everything that a brief would contain.
  • While I DO need you to review what I delivered, there have been many times when my clients have accepted my drafts without question.
  • The one big barrier to a lone wolf delivery model is the need to access your tools for the final distribution. One of my clients actually gave me privileges within the company blog and the company LinkedIn account, and I regularly posted things directly to LinkedIn on behalf of the company. In any case, there was no need to transfer content from my Microsoft Word document to the client’s own tools.

So you can see how Bredemarket can serve as a powerful “super” individual contributor, freeing you for other priorities.

If you need my superpowers within your organization, why not set up a meeting with me?

Google Gemini.

Sorry for sharing it again, but now I’m strutting around proud.