Data is your eyes, not your brain.
Technology creates the context for persuasion, but content persuades. Technology helps get content to the right people at the right time. The content still has to influence. Delivering the wrong content at the right time is as bad as delivering the right content at the wrong time.
If you're lucky on a team, even if you're not sisters or brothers, you become such a family that you get that kind of open and honest relationship. Where the chemistry is great and even if tempers flare, you forgive each other. I was always looking for a sisterhood. You're not always lucky enough to get that magical chemistry, but you can't win without it.
My curling personality really had the killer instinct, compared to the real me. I kind of liken it to when a surgeon is going into the operating room and has to put his game face on. But in real life, he might be a charming guy to have a beer with. Everybody always told me that I had Maurice Richard eyes when I competed; that the intensity that was on my face was scary. But that was what I needed to bring when I stepped on the ice. And even to this day, when I get on the rink, that person comes out pretty quickly. My brain and body know that I'm going into battle.
The entire customer or user experience - from raising awareness, to buying a product / taking action, to getting customer support - is going digital.
If we continue to treat content as an extra to information architecture, to content management or to anything else, we miss a bright opportunity to influence users. Content is not a nice-to-have extra. Content is a star of the user experience show. Let’s make content shine.
I loved curling and I loved the social aspect of it, the team. It's like if you had the same golf foursome for a long time, or if you're a bridge player, or a beer-league hockey team. You start to look forward to that time together and camaraderie, and having something that you do just for yourself.
I don't have any regrets, really. What I got out of the sport was more than I ever dreamed was possible. We took some good runs at the Olympics, but the closest we got was third in the Canadian trials. But I can't ever say I regret that, because I loved the career we had. And for me, that was enough.
I appreciate all the people I've met through curling. It's been woven through the story of my life. But that win-at-all-costs attitude is, thankfully, no longer there. Still, when I step on the ice, something goes through my veins. It's showtime. When you've spent over 40 years chasing something, it never leaves you.
