Unexpected consequences

One of the great pleasures, and occasional frustrations, of writing is that you rarely know when your work is going to impress someone, or have some kind of unexpected impact. They just wander off on their own, getting read by who knows who....

Today I heard the second-best story about the effect of something I'd written, when I was introduced to someone who's doing some freelance work for us. It turns out they found out about the Institute through a couple articles about the new mouse a couple months ago. Apparently, they saw my job title and thought, That sounds like an interesting place. I should check it out.

Now they're working for us.

The best story, however, was relayed by a colleague at Stanford after an article-- another mouse article, ironically-- was published in the Stanford alumni magazine. A few months after it came out, I got a message from a friend. He had a student, a product design major, who apparently had been having trouble explaining why he had chosen his major (or, to put it another way, chosen to spend $80k of his parents' money on something they were skeptical of). This kid had given the article to his parents, as a way of helping them understand why the subject was important, and why he wanted to do it.

Apparently they read it, and got it. That was cool.