That’s Home Depot’s current marketing tag line. I’m also making it mine.

More Saving Time. More Doing Projects.

My goal: Not to feel like I’m wasting my time – whether in front of a TV or mindlessly reading information on the web or doing nothing.

As evidenced by my hiatus from this blog, I’ve been busy. I’ve accomplished a lot; it just hasn’t been in the realm of code. There’s more to life than code, but code is one of several things I love.

More Saving. More Doing. More Code.

More Saving. More Doing.

This change brings me back into the world of web development. I inhabited this world previously during my work with Lulu, so this isn’t a shock to my system. It’s good to flex programming muscles that I haven’t used in a while.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for me is that I get to work with new developers. This means new perspectives and renewed learning. It’s difficult to replicate the experience of working with someone different and having their ideas infect your thinking. I can’t imagine what it was like in the world of old with career jobs the norm.

I’ll finish with the required disclaimer: The opinions and writings on this blog are mine and are not those of iContact and anything I say here should not be taken to represent iContact’s position in any way.

Change of Employment

At the event I checked attendees and speakers in.  Due to this I missed most of the first talks, so I can’t speak to how the day kicked off. From what I did see, the talks and performances were high quality.  Some talks held my interest better than others because of the topic, but all of them were engaging.

The talks were scheduled by theme, so each block of talks had similar topics.  This made sense from a presentation standpoint, but in hindsight I’m not sure it was the best layout for the day.  The talks about relationships – generally high energy and high emotion talks – were grouped together.  It was a lot to take in, one right after the other.  These same talks also took place in the morning, giving the morning more energy than the afternoon. If we had spaced these talks out it would have spread the emotional load out over the day and giving the afternoon an energy boost that might have helped propel people through the day.

TED has an image of being sanitary and safe.  I often find it hard to disagree with TED talks I watch, but that maybe due to selection bias – I only watch TED talks I find agreeable.  If TED is to be about spreading ideas, then it can’t just spread ideas that people will agree with: it also has to spread ideas that challenge people.  TEDxTriangeNC did that.  Joel Wiggins talk has received some comment.  Joel’s talk was on missing fathers and how families would benefit from having the father in the home.  Is Joel’s idea platonic?  Yes.  He didn’t include mention of alternate family structures in his talk.  I’ve seen comment that some people disagreed with this.  Good.  We should challenge each other’s ideas; it is how we all grow.

Another talk that challenged was Dr. Mitch Krucoff’s.  He spoke on the power of prayer in healing, using specific examples from India. Are his ideas and examples at odds with a scientific mind?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Even if you don’t agree, it’s good to hear the viewpoint.

David Beaver’s talk as the finale was perfect.  Speaking on space, he pulled everyone out from the close and personal to a broad view highlighting humanity and the earth we inhabit.  It was a great cap on the event that gave perspective to all the other talks.

In between groups of talks – groups that generally ran from an hour to an hour and a half – there were twenty minute conversation breaks.  Twenty minutes felt right.  As the organizers, we debated how long the breaks should be.  At TED, they’re forty-five minutes.  During our initial planning, we had them at ten, but then lengthened them to the final twenty.  Twenty allowed people to go by the restroom if needed and to grab a drink, while also connected with those around them.  Nobody was rushed, but the break didn’t drag out so long that people wondered when the talks would start again.  We got this one right.

We got coffee wrong.  While coffee was available for the start of the day, that was the only time we had coffee provided.  We completely missed that coffee and caffeine would be needed to get people through the midafternoon lull.  The RTP staff bailed us out and brewed some coffee using their break room equipment.  Thanks goes to them for that.

We got the venue right.  The RTP Headquarters is a cool building that worked out really well for the event.  Not so small as to be tight, but not so large that you could get lost in it.  Granted, we didn’t have full capacity, but the venue still worked well.  One lesson learned for next time is overbook by some amount, because people will drop out, especially for a free event.  Some attendees expressed to me that they thought a larger building might be needed in the future, but I’m on the fence about this.  If the event were to grow too large, would we lose the intimate conversations?  The speakers were able to intermingle with the attendees and speak to everyone: if the event is larger, does it just become a line of people waiting to talk to the speakers at breaks, instead of small groups riffing on the ideas presented?

It was awesome that most of the speakers were able to stick around at least part of the day, if not the entire day, to speak to the attendees.  That enables clarifying questions and the challenging of ideas.  To often speakers are treated like idols not to be touched.  The truth is they’re no different from everyone else and they can learn as much from the attendees as the attendees can learn from them.  Thank you to all our speakers: you did an amazing job and sparked amazing conversations and were amazingly accessible.

Every great event, even if it has a script, eventually has a mistake and improvisation is required.  Zach Ward, our MC, reminded us of this and showed how improv skills can save the day.  Zach did a great job stitching the day together and making the transitions flow.  He and his troupe also provided comic relief from the serious talks of the speakers.  Laughter is humanity and thanks Zach for providing it to us.

Thanks also goes out to Sherlock: his improv near the end of the day, in spontaneously standing to thank Zach, was much appreciated and showed everyone what rewards we can reap from reaching out to others.

Thank you to our sponsors for making the day possible, to our speakers for sharing their ideas, and to the attendees for being willing to give it a chance and experience something new.  The day wasn’t perfect, but it went amazingly well.  I hope everyone got as much out of it as I did.

Don’t let the ideas from the day die: continue the conversations and convert the ideas into action. Ideas are no good unless action is taken upon them.

TEDx Retrospective

A TED Conference is expensive: expensive to put on and expensive to attend.  But why should TED corner all the great ideas?  To this end, they started TEDx. TEDx is a TED conference put on by a group independent of TED, but following TED guidelines.

I’m a part of such a group, which you most certainly know if you follow me on Twitter.  Going back to last year, we’ve been planning TEDxTriangleNC, a TEDx day long conference for the Triangle.

The relevant details:

Date: March 6th, 2010

Time: 10 am to 6pm (Doors open approx. 9:15)

Who: You and a long list of North Carolina speakers on a broad range of topics

Where: RTP Headquarters

Cost: Free

Coffee and Lunch provided.

Registration open soon.  There will be enough room for about 150 people to attend.  All this info and more is available on the TEDxTriangleNC site, including the list of speakers.  Take a moment to look it over.

I hope you can make it.  If not, the plan is to tape all of the talks and make them available online, while also live streaming the event.

Beyond TEDxTriangleNC, there are three other information sharing events going on in the Triangle in March:

March 3rd: Ignite Raleigh

March 8th: FizzledDurham

March 23: Pecha Kucha Raleigh

With all of this going on, you don’t have an excuse not to be intellectually challenged.

TEDxTriangleNC

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.

Linchpin: My Review

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?

Thinking in Opposites

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.

New Employment

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?

Leprechaun Funding

My presentation was titled Self Marketing: An Adventure in Jazz

I thought it went well: the crowd was receptive, especially given it was a non-technical talk for a technical audience.  Never sure how people will react to that.

Matthew Bass has updated the Raleigh.rb page with the slides from the talk in PDF format and under the Podcast section of the page you can find audio.  Below I’ve embedded the slides from Slideshare, as well as a link to the slides as a PDF and included a link to the audio file.  It should be easy enough for you to follow along at home if you so desire.

Slides As PDF

Audio

The presentation also featured a playlist of various jazz songs.  With almost every slide I played about thirty seconds of a song.  Thanks goes to Matthew Bass for capturing a screenshot of the playlist:

After the talk there was plenty discussion and I solicited opinions of the talk.  Talks are rarely perfect, but sometimes it is difficult to get people to offer criticism.  After some questioning, I received several critiques I’ve very glad to have received.

Ways my talk could have been improved:

• Smoother music transitions
• Include specific examples of good self marketing
• Don’t play music and attempt to talk over it

All of these are very valid points that I, as the presenter, wouldn’t have noticed.  Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback, as it will help me make the talk stronger in the future.

Please look over the slides and take a listen to the audio and let me know what you think.  While I realize it won’t be the same as watching the talk live, the change in format means you might find something I can improve that got overlooked while the talk was given live.

Also, if you have any examples of great self marketing (from individuals or small companies) let me know in the comments: your examples might make it into a future version of the talk.

Thanks to everyone who came to the talk – I appreciated you being there and hope you learned something from it.

Self Marketing: An Adventure in Jazz

Full details:

7:00 pm

September 15th

Red Hat Headquarters, Centennial Campus, NC State

Parking and Event are Free; Parking can be found in the Red Hat parking deck

I’m speaking on the non-technical topic of self marketing.

My talk is called: Self Marketing, An Adventure in Jazz.

You’ll have to attend if you want to find out what Jazz has to do with Self Marketing.

Further information:

Raleigh.rb Meetup Page

My previous preview post

I hope to see you there!

Raleigh.rb September 15th Meetup