About the Author

Ian Lamont is the founder of i30 Media Corporation and the creator of the Lean Media framework. His media career has spanned more than 25 years across three continents, including a stint in the British music industry and a six-year residence in Taipei, where he learned Mandarin and worked for a local TV network and newspaper. After returning to the Boston area, Lamont shifted into digital media, building websites for Harvard University, developing online services for technology publisher IDG, and serving as managing editor of The Industry Standard blog platform and prediction market. Later, he founded two ventures, including a mobile software company and i30 Media, which publishes In 30 Minutes guides (in30minutes.com). Lamont is a graduate of the Boston University College of Communication and MIT's Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership. He writes about Lean Media and related business and media topics at leanmedia.org.

Reviews

"Lamont has successfully taken concepts from the Lean Startup movement and applied them to media production projects. No longer can there be the 'one visionary way' -- instead, there needs to be humility (know your customer) and incrementalism (test often) as the keys to creative outcomes."- John Maeda, Head of Computational Design & Inclusion at Automattic, Inc. and author of Laws of Simplicity"Drawing on his own experience in the recording, news broadcasting, web journalism, and book publishing industries, Lamont distills a doctrine of project management informed by the lean manufacturing and startup movements--one that takes advantage of new technologies that make professional-quality media easier to produce than ever. Instead of the "chubby approach" of rigid plans with big budgets and lavish marketing, he advocates projects run by small teams with limited funds and a more improvisatorial style. Central to his method is creating rough prototypes--demo tapes, film shorts, series pilots, stand-up jokes, novel drafts--and testing them on audiences to find out what works, then incorporating their feedback into improved versions, leading to a successful product launch. Several chapters focus on strictures of good testing, particularly the importance of identifying the right target audience. Lamont illustrates these ideas with a wealth of engaging and well-chosen case studies."- Kirkus Reviews