In December of 2009, Seth Godin put out a call on his blog: donate 30 dollars or more to the Acumen fund and receive an advanced copy of his new book, Linchpin.

That was the deal that I signed up for and here’s the review.

Upon opening the book, the first thing I noticed was the loose page placed inside.  It was a typed letter to me, as an early reviewer, briefly explaining Linchpin and thanking me for any review I might write.  I didn’t expect this.  The only way it could have been better was if it had been personally addressed to me and actually signed by Seth.  Also if it had been handwritten, but given that over 2000 people got in on this deal, that’s probably asking a bit much.  Certainly the book as it’s found in stores won’t have this loose page, but it does highlight that Seth is willing to practice what he preaches.

The other thing I quickly noticed was that the inside of the book jacket contains a collage of pictures.  It’s face after face after face.  I vaguely remember reading on Seth’s blog his request for photos, but I wasn’t expecting to see it here.  How expensive is it to print all these photos on the inside of the book jacket, typically a place left completely blank?

Already, this book is different.  The difference also extends to the content.  I’ve read some of Seth’s previous books: The Purple Cow, and The Dip.  I enjoyed them, but Linchpin is a departure.  I think that previous books of Seth’s could be described as pithy.  They have a core message that is repeated in various ways, but after reading the book there isn’t much else to take away beyond the main message.

Linchpin is weightier.  More arguments are presented, more evidence given for why Seth sees the need for people to become linchpins and to make art.

That last sentence needs some definitions.

When Seth writes about a linchpin, his definition is of a person who is indispensable.  They are indispensable because if the business let them go, it would require a significant amount of time to find and/or train someone else to replace them.  This is because the linchpin went above and beyond their job: they make connections and get work flowing.  Being a linchpin is more than just having domain knowledge: it’s also being willing to do the hard work and getting it done.

Finishing.

Seth stresses that point.  Linchpins finish.  So who is a linchpin?  Someone who finishes.

What does a linchpin finish?  Art.  Seth points out repeatedly that when he says art he doesn’t mean the kind made with a paint brush and canvas, or clay and a spinning wheel, although his definition could include those things.  Art is anything that makes the world a better place.  It’s going above and beyond.  It’s the waiter who smiles and is friendly while serving you and it’s the office assistant who makes sure the people who need to be talking are. They make art and in their art they finish, they ship.

What keeps people from being linchpins, from finishing?  The resistance.  Our lizard brains, the fear we have of moving forward.  It’s the part of us that tells us we’ll be laughed at.  The part that doesn’t want us to look foolish.  The part that has us check Twitter for the one thousandth time in the past hour, despite the deadline we have tomorrow.  That’s the resistance and it’s what we’re fighting to finish.

Most of us fail.  That’s what makes linchpins so rare and so valuable.

The book starts out interestingly, as a history lesson.  Seth details how the world has been set up to lead us here, to a world where most everyone follows the system and linchpins are rare.  Then the book slowly morphs and becomes more like a typical Seth Godin book, with him communicating his message and then pounding it home with example after example and continually layering on the details.

My main criticism of the book would be the “foot note system” he introduces early on. Sections with titles in parentheses are supposed to be ones you can skip if you want.  The problem is, I couldn’t tell much difference between these sections and others.  They read the same and felt the same, not like an aside.  Seth introduces the foot note system idea but then doesn’t use it much at all.  If feels like an afterthought, a half formed idea.  The book is better served if you pretend the foot note system doesn’t exist and read everything anyway.  I suspect this is what most people will do.  If Seth wanted to somehow make the book shorter, he either needed to cut those sections he felt unimportant or provide an executive summary.  Most adults are adept at skimming if they don’t want to read something, so leave it up to them what they want to skip and don’t want to.

Is the book worth it?  I say yes.  It’s a more substantial book than any of the previous Seth Godin books I’ve read.  It felt like I was reading a book more in the David Allen vein than in the Seth Godin vein, although it is still clearly a Seth Godin book in style.  However, if you’re expecting instructions on how to become a linchpin, a step by step list, you won’t find it.  It isn’t there and Seth explicitly says he can’t give it to you, because it’s different for everyone.

It’s clear from the references through out the book and the included bibliography that Seth Godin is very well read across a variety of subjects.  It demonstrates how cross pollination of ideas can lead to new and better ones.  Seth writes in the book that to have good ideas you first have to have lots of bad ones, but he doesn’t mention the value in exposing yourself to many ideas and how that helps to generate new ones.

A puzzle of the book is that on the final page, the words The Resistance are printed, although it has a curious misspelling that I haven’t reproduced here.  When I first read it, I wondered why Seth chose to put it there, with the misspelling.  Now that the book is officially released, I know why: it is a key you can use to unlock bonus material Seth has provided online.  I should be happy for the bonus, but I’m not.  I liked it better when the final page was an enigma.  What did Seth mean and what did he want me to think?  Was it a reminder to never forget what keeps me from getting ahead?  Something else?  Now I know there wasn’t a deeper meaning, which is disappointing.

I recommend Linchpin.  It’s worth the price, especially if you like Seth Godin.  If you don’t, it might still be worth it, given how different this book is from his others.

If you don’t want to read it, here’s the book in a sentence for you:

Be smart, work hard, do more than is required of you.

Come to think of it, this could describe most of Seth’s writing.

There are times I go to write a blog post and a thought holds me up – I think I’ve read this before, but I know I didn’t write it.

I had planned to write a blog post on considering the opposite of whatever you’re doing – but Derek Sivers has already written it for me.  In fact, he’s produced the message thrice, twice as a written post, the other as a talk.

Reversible business models

Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers.

Japanese Addresses: the opposite is also true

What made me want to sit down and write on this topic?  One was Derek Sivers.  After reading the first post he did on Japanese addresses, I’ve had the idea stuck in my head.  Then I came across a link to the Wikipedia article on Antiobjects and the idea struck me that this was a different way of programming (not an idea original to me).  What if instead of looking at the object as the fundamental building block, we looked at the space around the object?  From object oriented programming, this probably shakes out to become functional programming, but I’m not sure.

Consider: What in your world would change if you did the inversion of what you’re doing now?  What would programming with antiobjects look like?

In light of the new year: what if instead of a resolution to change something, you considered the things you wanted to keep the same?

Heard any good books lately?

So asks Neil Gaiman on NPR in a story on audiobooks.  It makes for riveting listening, thanks to Gaiman’s ability to make the mundane fantastic and because he has a mesmerizing British accent that holds me rapt.

Gaiman makes the point that audiobooks continue on, strong as ever.  The rise of the iPod has only made them more popular.  Given our information starved yet saturated world it seems the ceiling for audiobooks is limitless – until the day we can download information directly. Even then, there’s always a market for a good story.

So what is an audiobook? Gaiman wonders.

According to audio producer Rick Harris: “Well, my feeling is that it is not a book.”

“An audiobook is a separate entity that is absolutely true.  And a novel can be seen as many things, and one of the things it can be seen as is a script for an audio performance.”

Gaiman sums up: “An audiobook is its own thing, a unique medium that goes in through the ear, sometimes leaving you sitting in the driveway to find out how the story is going to end.”

As an audiobook is its own thing – separate from, but attached to, a book.

So to a program is its own thing – separate from, but attached to, code.

For what is code, except a script that is read by the compiler/interpreter?  We developers just happen to count on the compiler/interpreter reading the script we give it the same way every time, even though there is nothing that dictates this must happen.

It would be an interesting world to have a compiler/interpreter that put its own spin on the code given it.  To an extent, this does happen now, except in reverse.  You and I can write dialects of the same code and the compiler/interpreter will read it and spit back the same performance, even though it was based on two different scripts.

Code as performance.

I grew up in a world where stories were read aloud
- Neil Gaiman

What would the world be like if code was read aloud?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/playfullibrarian/3315024196 / CC 2.0

Life has picked up this week.  I’m joining the daily grind with most of the population again.  It’s strange to find myself beating the sun up in the mornings.  It’s also certain that I’ll start to flirt with sleep deprivation again.  That wasn’t a problem when I was unemployed.

I’m now a contractor with Lenovo, as of this past Tuesday.  It feels good to have meaningful employment once again.  It comes at a good time, as the coffers needed replenishment.  As for details, I’m part of the Advanced Technology Center.  I’m programming Python.  That’s all I can say.  Since my position deals with technology and software that isn’t yet available, I can’t talk about it.

The job is awesome.  I’m leaning in leaps and bounds.  I’ve been taken out of my comfort zone, as this isn’t web programming.  It’s great.  I’ve seen that there’s more to the world than the web.  I’ve been reminded that there are a myriad of problems to be solved with programming and they don’t all involve requests per second.

There are other aspects to this job, beyond technology, that are forcing me to lean.  As a contractor, I receive no benefits, beyond getting paid nicely.  This puts me on the market for health care, and as every freelancer will tell you, it’s expensive.  People don’t realize how much their employers currently subsidize  health care.  I knew my previous employer subsidized my health care, but until I needed COBRA, I didn’t know by how much.  Even with COBRA, I viewed it as a necessary short term pain.  Now I can’t ignore the cost of health care: I have to pay it fully.

Going through this experience, I think everyone should at some point have to pay the full cost of their health insurance.  It would open people’s eyes.  At the very least, it would provide everyone with more understanding of the system.  It would be amazing to see a country in which no one had to worry about health care.  Imagine how liberating that would be.  How many more entrepreneurs would exist?  To be an entrepreneur today means accepting huge risks, including risks to your health if you can’t afford insurance while you start a business.  How would the calculus of creating a startup change if health wasn’t part of the equation?  What innovations are we now missing out on, because of the status quo?

I’m lucky.  I’m in a position to be able to afford health care.  It makes me hopeful that this country passes some form of health care reform this year.  I don’t doubt that any new law will have flaws, but it’s a start, and we need to start somewhere.  I think everyone, whatever political persuasion, can agree on that.

I’ll step off my soap box now.  I don’t want this post to become an argument about politics.  I do however want to document my experiences and my situation.  I have a new job.  For that and all the blessings in my life I’m thankful.

I encourage you to look for me Monday through Friday on 540 as I head to work.  I’ll be in the crowd, slowed to a stop at the Six Forks on-ramp as everyone waits for traffic to merge.  Wave to me, if you catch my eye.  I’ll be smiling, because I have a job, and I love it.

When an investor puts their own money into a startup in return for a stake in the company it’s know as angel funding. It’s the lowest level of formal funding there is, excluding bank loans and borrowed family and friends money.

Why not go lower?

Leprechaun funding is giving an entrepreneur enough money to get a single, simple application built and launched. It is finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, as opposed to discovering a savior from the heavens. A pot of gold is good, but it doesn’t go as far as a savior.

Why leprechaun funding?

The cost of starting a business continues to fall. It’s at the point that a viable business can be built around making small applications. Leprechaun funding would allow entrepreneurs access to a small pool of cash to build and launch small applications, primarily for the iPhone and Android, but it could be any small application.

The investor gives the entrepreneur anywhere from one hundred to five thousand dollars. The point is to give just enough money to launch a single application that can then start generating revenue.  It’s not enough money for the entrepreneur to live off of, but it isn’t meant to be.  It is meant to give the entrepreneur money to cover development costs to get an application launched. The entrepreneur handles the creation, running, and other costs of the business on their own.

What does the entrepreneur give up? A portion of any revenue generated from the application up to, but no more than, 50%. Leprechaun funding doesn’t suck the entrepreneur dry or wrestle control away from them, but allows them to be creative and try out new ideas.

Any leprechaun contract would also include a buyout clause. At any point, the entrepreneur can buyout the investor and stop splitting revenue. The buyout level would be from one to two times the initial investment. The investor doesn’t lose their money if the entrepreneur wants out and the entrepreneur isn’t bankrupted getting out. The main risk to the investor is that the application fails to generate any revenue, leaving the investor at a loss.

No ownership of the startup is ever given to the investor. For funding this small, that’s a price too high to ask. Leprechaun funding should encourage innovation and risk taking while not drowning the entrepreneur with overbearing terms, but still being worthwhile for the investor. This isn’t a game of home runs, but a game of singles.

Leprechaun funding won’t generate returns like those sought by angel investors and venture capitalists. However, it could provide a decent stream of returns to an investor patient enough to give it a try. The returns aren’t as large, but neither are the risks as great.

Is this an idea worth experimenting on, or would someone be better off just sticking with mutual funds?