A Better Reason to Do Something

I’m always “preaching” about finding and having higher purpose in everything you do, especially work. It’s something I learned back in 2006 from Chris Messina and Tara Hunt when they started Citizen Agency…it was a core tenant of what they helped their clients do.

One of my side ventures is as the business manager for Two Guys on Beer. Johnny, Dave, Joe, and I have been producing this show together for almost 2 years now…Joe and I officially on the team for a bit over a year now. We’ve had some really incredible successes under our belt, not the least of which is a syndication on Philly.com’s beer page, participating in Philly Beer Week last year that resulted in interviews with beer legends Sam Calagione and Jim Koch, BeerCamp – a homebrewers summit attended by 200+ homebrew fans, fantastic relationships with a number of breweries & restaurants, and of course over 130 episodes in the bag.

The team works hard for a project that we’ve been slowly…slowly….turning into what we believe can be a profitable venture. We joke that we’re at the point where people send us beer, and that’s awesome…but the real goal is to make money drinking beer. The truth is, we have a higher purpose based on 4 core values that we think will help us make that a reality:

Even with these core values, things get tough…especially with a project that is a passion project for the whole team right now. It’s hard to remember, sometimes, “why are we doing this again!?!”.

Then, you get e-mails like this:

TGOB:
You guys are AWESOME! I love experimenting with different beers, but I can’t find good beer while the US Army has me stationed here in Korea. I download your podcasts onto my Zune and watch them as I drink some malty Philipino beers (the only thing decent you can find here), and your show makes me feel like I’m home. Keep the shows coming; you keep me from feeling homesick. You guys rock.
2LT Vandergraff
6-52 AMD, 35th ADA BDE, South Korea

Wow. That’s the kind of thing that really puts things into perspective, and how important having core values can be.

Without our core values, the product that Two Guys on Beer produces wouldn’t be what it is today, and the team probably wouldn’t keep pouring our time and hearts into the show. But most importantly, 2Lt Todd Vandergraff wouldn’t be able to enjoy beer as a way to stay connected to home.

February 2, 2010 | Filed Under 2010, business, cluetrain, community, inspiration | Tags: , , ,

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On the misbegotten “relationships” of the web

Co-author of The Cluetrain Doc Searls writes on the Project VRM blog:

You are not a human being on the Web. In fact, as Paul Trevithick put it (at one of our first VRM meetings at the Berkman Center), the Web has no concept of a human being. It is fundamentally an arrangement of files and connections between those files. Hyperlinks on the Web may subvert huaraches, especially when they are authored by human beings (such as here, in a blog, which is a human expression); but the Web itself is oblivious to that. We still lack the means, on top of the Web (and the Net) to form and maintain relationships that are anything more than a very crude, partial and highly distorted imitation of those we have out in the real, human, social world. Put another way, social contracts in cyberspace have a long way to go before they catch up with those in real-world social space. In fact, they may be two hundred and fifty years behind. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”, Rousseau wrote (in The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right(Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique), in 1762. The Age of Enlightenment followed, during which we began to work out a variety of social contracts involving governance, commerce, education and religion. I submit that we have hardly begun to do the same on the Net or the Web. “Markets are conversations,” the famous first thesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto(and later a chapter of the book by the same title) was meant to help model the social contract in cyberspace after the ones we have in meat/meet space. This has happened only in those places where the interactions are most human. It has barely happened where the interactions are most corporate. More on “Where Markets are Not Conversations“.

Don’t get me wrong, I firmly believe that the web allows us to maintain much larger bases of looser connections and there’s immense value in that. But companies placing dollars (instead of heartbeats) into social campaigns online to accomplish ANYTHING (marketing, support, recruitment, or otherwise) are missing the entire “social contract” needed to balance the operation in a sustainable manner.

January 9, 2010 | Filed Under 2010, business |

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What’s next? Tomorrow is next.

I was interviewed for a book about passion based businesses back in early 2008, and it’s finally hitting bookshelves next month. I’ll share a link once I’ve got one.

In the chapter about risk, I’m quoted saying:

“It’s all embodied in this concept of embracing chaos. Everyday something crazy is going to happen. There’s nothing I can do about it. How can I capture that energy and spin it some place positive? It’s one day at a time. What’s next? Tomorrow is next. That’s as far as I know.”

January 8, 2010 | Filed Under 2010, business, consulting, inspiration | Tags: ,

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The “R” Word

Coworking is growing, and there’s no question about that. New spaces are opening to the tune of a few a week, and press coverage is anything but limited.

We’ve hit “trend” status, it seems, and a number of publications are taking notice.

Trends don’t just include positive growth, though, they include negative growth as well. While spaces are opening up and the coworking google group is humming with activity, I’m concerned about a number of spaces that are struggling to find break-even between their membership and their expenses.

Moreover, nobody is talking about the big R word that is normally saved for corporate human resource departments.

Retention.

Coworking spaces are jumping through all kinds of hoops to get people in the door. But are those people staying? Are they contributing? Are they collaborating as is suggested by most coworking literature?

What things are people staying for? Why are they leaving?

I’m currently working with our intern Parker on sifting through our 2009 numbers to produce some concrete numbers and data related to our retention rate. I’ve gone on record to say it’s been good, but have never been able to say how good.

My goal is to find concrete numbers relating our growth and our retention directly, and to interview people who’ve left or lowered their membership level to find out why. I hope that we can produce numbers for 2008 and the 2nd half of 2007 (while we were open), but our recordkeeping methods might make that difficult.

We need data.

This post is an open call for participation from other coworking spaces to do the same. In order to participate in my research, I’d like the following:

  1. A month-to-month assessment of membership counts, and what level of membership they pay for (full time, flex, etc).
  2. A month-to-month assessment of member exits, and any insight into what those exits were related to.
  3. A month-to-moth net gain of membership.
  4. A count of drop-ins that returned, and how often they’ve returned.

To speed things up, I’ve created a very basic one-year worksheet to get you started. You can download it as an .xls here.

The number of spaces that have been open for over 12 months is small, so I’m hard pressed to limit these responses to spaces that have made it beyond their first year. Instead, I’d like to suggest that you have at least six months of active membership under your belt in order to submit your statistics. The more data you have, the better, but I won’t turn anything down.

You can send your space’s stats using this handy dandy form.

Then what?

I’ll be publishing all of the results, along with our own results, openly and licensed under creative commons for mashing up, sharing, and inclusion in other coworking materials.

Thanks for your help and participation.

January 6, 2010 | Filed Under 2010, business, coworking, indyhall | Tags: ,

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Welcome 2010. It’s good to be home.

Wish I were with you but I couldn’t stay
Every direction leads me away
Pray for tomorrow but for today
And all I want is to be home


Stand in the mirror you look the same
Just looking for shelter from the cold and the pain
Some want to cover, safe from the rain
And all I want is to be home


Echoes and silence, patience and grace,
All of these moments I’ll never replace
No fear of my heart, no absence of faith
And all I want is to be home


All I want is to be home


People I’ve loved, I have no regrets
Some I remember some I forget
Some of them living some of them dead
And all I want is to be home

Home, Foo Fighters

January 1, 2010 | Filed Under 2010 |

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Why I’m Supporting Technically Philly

This week I’m included in Technically Philly’s sponsorship thank yous as their first “philanthropist level” sponsorship. It’s no secret that I’ve been a long time supporter of what Brian, Chris, and Sean do, and that’s not because they’ve written about me and IndyHall a bunch of times. I think they’ve identified a real need for covering the emerging technology community in Philadelphia with an honest, authentic, and approachable candor that is still backed by true journalistic ethics and execution.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about their announcement of NewsInkubator, their Knight News Foundation grant application, that I’m still tuning and molding, but I think that it’s important that Technically Philly is able to sustain itself without the NEED for those grant resources.

They have a phenomenal community of readers, and an increasing number of those readers fall into the category of “we like what you do and want to do something about it”. My decision to sponsor is not to get a link or attribution every week…quite frankly I’d be just as happy without it. The reason I decided to sponsor TechnicallyPhilly was to lead with my actions rather than just my words.

I attended their first Technically Philly Happy Hour earlier this week and the ~30 people who also attended came from all corners of the technology scene in Philadelphia. My favorite part about the people who I met was that it was my first time seeing many of them. The fact that Technically Philly is able to act as a hub, as a connector, between disparate but related industries in Philadelphia is something that they recognize as valuable, and I’m thrilled that they’re able to find ways to execute with that connectedness.

Things like this, among many others, inspired me to put my money where my mouth is. $50/month isn’t nominal, and there’s of course a tradeoff. Think about $50:

It’s 3 dinners cooked at home instead of out at a restaurant (average $20). Homecooked food is better for you anyway.

It’s 5 walks (or even buses) across town instead of jumping in a taxi (average $10 from old city to 30th st). That walk will not only make you feel better, but you’ll see the city from the sidewalk instead of the street.

It’s 3 CDs or DVDs you wait to add to your collection (average $20). What’s the last good thing Hollywood put out anyway? Except IronMan and its impending sequel. I want to be Tony Stark when I grow up.

It’s 13 coffees brewed yourself instead of going to Starbucks and getting a $4 latte.

It’s 8 cheesesteaks (average $7). Ok, I hope you’re not eating 8 cheesesteaks a month. That’d be absurd.  http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/. ‘Nuff said.

And speaking of fat…you’re not even using that gym membership but you pay $40+/month for it. If you’re gonna toss that money at something, why not something that actually has value?

You get my point.

$50/month isn’t a subscription to Technically Philly, and I don’t think it should be thought of that way. It’s a way of supporting something that I hope becomes an institution in Philadelphia, and continues to grow with this community.

December 18, 2009 | Filed Under 2009, community, journalism, philadelphia, tech | Tags: ,

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Cluetrain-a-Day 2009: Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

Hang on a second. Cluetrain-a-Day? We thought you’d abandoned that, Alex!

Well, it’s true, I went on haitus. My last post from mid-February marked an exciting, but time-consuming shift, where I (and many others) invested a great deal of time into the expansion of our coworking community and space.

While we’ve accomplished a lot in 2009, one of my primary goals was NOT met…more writing. This series was designed to drive that, and ultimately, I really wanted to start writing a book of my own.

Well, discontent with myself I did the only thing I could…I decided to at least attempt to end 2009 the same way I started….helping make sure you’re getting your daily does of having a clue. So without further adieu…

This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2009. Read more about the series in the introduction post. And check out the rest of the series!

Thesis #31: Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

Not only CAN they change suppliers (or employers) overnight, they will.

In terms of commerce, the disappearance of intrinsic brand loyalty from the scope of consumers (at least in America, but abroad as well) is only accelerated by the fact that entire NEW brands are existing purely as aggregates.

Think about airline travel, which we’ve talked about before. Along with credit card rewards systems, Airline “Frequent Flier” programs are among the prominent commerce systems designed to reward you for your attention. In the 80s during their popularization, Airlines had a clue and were simply rewarding their most traveled customers with additional benefits, like first class upgrades and other priority statuses.

Then, the industry began to network in the 90s…literally. Formation of airline alliances and code shares made it easier for their most loyal customers…to fly with other airlines. It came at a cost, though: inconvenience.

Then that pesky internet came along. Be it airfare aggregation tools like Kayak.com or Expedia.com, or points-sharing hubs like AwardWallet and most recently TripIt.com’s point tracking tools, it was no longer nearly as inconvenient to grab the cheapest fare no matter who it was from, jump on their awards program, and let the web track your “loyalty” for you.

Despite these advances, the airline points industry is still a multi-billion dollar contribution to air travel revenues. But the point remains:

The customers are largely migrant, thanks to tools online that help them distribute their loyalty.

In terms of employment, there’s an interesting shift taking place, and it’s generational. A couple of months back I was speaking at a Human Resources conference about remote workers & telecommuters in respect to worker communities and recruiting opportunities (i.e., how recruiters COULD get involved with coworking communities and spaces). The speaker following my panel, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, strongly re-inforced a number of the things that I’ve come to understand about the non-monetary incentives that drive modern workers in two generations: Gen-Y, and Baby Boomers.

She discussed 5 bullet points of these non-monetary incentives:

That first bullet, Odyssey, is what we’re talking about here. Workers of Generation X (and baby boomers, up until recently) were taught career planning. Graduate college, get a job, you’re in it for 30+ years, accruing retirement savings, etc.

Things changed for Generation Y. Employer loyalty, even industry loyalty, has gone out the window completely. And it’s probably not helped by watching our parents get screwed out of their retirement that they worked their entire lives for.

And as a generation, we’ve illustrated that it’s possible to climb a different ladder, despite it not being the one planned for us by the human resources department at your local bigco.

The career has become about journey. The odyssey. The perpetual search for finding the next great opportunity.

And it becomes easier to find that next opportunity every day.

December 15, 2009 | Filed Under 2009, business, cluetrain-a-day-2009 |

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We’re Not Done Yet

“We’d love to wait for you to come on board and help us, but fuck it, we’re gonna do it anyway.” – From Scene but not Nerd, January 2007.

The sentiment hasn’t changed for me, it won’t change anytime soon, and this past weekend’s events illustrate a very important part: the sentiment is shared by more than just this angsty technologist.

DIY, or “Do It Yourself” for the uninitiated, means more than just “bottom up” for this town.

It means that people have a true sense of ownership, and a true sense of pride, in what they make, and why shouldn’t the city that they live and work in be a part of their portfolio?

BeerCamp Philly was more than a party (and believe me, there ain’t no party like an IndyHall Party, cuz an IndyHall party don’t stop), but a framework for achieving many of the important aspects normally not achieved by DIY.

First, the notion of doing it yourself seems to imply two things:

BeerCamp debunked that in a big way, and put a stake in the ground for an fast growing, almost entirely underground community of homebrewers.

Among the takeaways I heard as the night played out, two important ones were recurring, and I believe the most important.

I should point out that it is my intuition that homebrewing is a social activity, and very few people do it 100% solo, but I’m not sure about that.

In one night, we connected 11 brewers to each other, and simultaneously introduced them to our sold-out attendance of well over 200 beer-lovers.

Brewers shared notes about process, junior brewers learning technique from a senior generation (and not surprisingly, some of those newer brewers had some things of their own to teach).

The act of “doing it yourself” for these brewers took something they did for craft, became a shared experience with a much larger audience, many of whom were new faces to our community.

In those series of moments, everything accelerated. Not just during the event itself, but with lasting effects that have yet to be seen unfold.

That’s the difference. Lasting effects because they have skin in the game from here on out.

During BarCamp Philly II, which was probably the dozenth’ or so “unconference” event I’ve attended in the last couple of years, something similar occured.

These people, and the dozens more that are out of frame and that came throughout the day, seized an opportunity to take 7 hour schedule and make it their own.

At 8am, there was no conference schedule. At 10am, 12 rooms had organized into over 50 sessions. The schedule board was full, and the organizers reacted by adding a 13th track, making room for up to 6 more presenters.

For all of the energy put into carefully crafting a conference schedule that’s ideal for an event’s agenda, I think this one came out pretty well.

Note the diversity, by the way. BarCamp Philly has begun to leave the realm of “geeks only” (only a couple of Twitter/social media sessions, and a healthy smattering of tech-oriented sessions), and is now also strongly trending into business, communication, education, law, art, music, and culture.

Back to Doing It Yourself.

For many attendees (I’d estimate well over half based on a show of hands at the beginning of the day), BarCamp Philly II was not only their first BarCamp, but their first exposure to the broader community of people moving and shaking in Philadelphia. At every event since the 2007 BlogPhiladelphia I co-organized with Annie Heckenberger, I’ve heard the same phrase over and over:

“I had no idea so much was happening in my own back yard”

And that’s just it. There is already so much going on in our own back yard.

Much of it, without the traditional focus on “What resources don’t we have and how do we get them?”, and with more of a focus on, “What can we accomplish with what we’ve already got?”.

Also, while it’s a little bit hard to be sure from session titles alone, I think you can deduce (and others can confirm) that BarCamp Philly was much less instructive, and far more interactive and conversational.

It wasn’t just about getting people to share ideas (which is fine, but not intrinsically productive), but about finding ways to help ideas connect.

That’s the difference between being told it’s a good idea to share your ideas, or having ideas shared with you, and having some skin in the game yourself.

Receiving pre-synthesized information leaves out all of the opportunity for self-discovery, idea branching and merging, and ultimately, innovative thinking becomes unidirectional.

Presenter->Audience.

Kung Fu Master->Grasshopper.

Yoda->Luke.

Mentor->Mentee.

Those relationships are valuable and important, but it’s not the only way to do things.

We’re doing this a little bit differently, we’re doing it ourselves.

When the participants of BarCamp Philly come together to decide what’s important enough to talk about, and dialogue about it, serendipity accelerates in a big way.

And because they have skin in the game, the lasting effects are strong, and most exciting for me, yet to be seen.

So these events were a success, right?

Well, yes.

The organizers totally dominated in putting together an incredible event framework, and worked their asses off to make sure that participants of the events could be effective. Roz Duffy, JP Toto, and Kelani Edmondson are quickly becoming master event planners and organizers. Kara LaFleur joins them as an extraordinary volunteer who just gets things done, and even more, coordinates volunteer efforts in force, allowing big things to happen when all you’ve got is a bunch of willing hands.

That said, as I titled my unusually somber and introspective session with Geoff, “We’re not done yet”.

If my personal goal was to be able to travel the country sharing and learning along with other people working to improve their cities, I’d be happy saying I’ve achieved that goal.

If my personal goal was to generate press (for better or for worse) around our efforts, more than once gracing the front page of established print and digital publications around the world, I’d be happy saying I achieved that goal.

If my personal goal was to be surrounded by, and work with (but not for) some of the smartest, most driven, talented, and incredible people you can possibly imagine, I’d be happy saying I’d achieved that goal.

Luckily, those personal goals are all being achieved as the first chapter of a much longer story is being written. There are a lot of characters already (rivaling a Tolkein novel at this point), and the cast is only growing.

I’m not writing this book, we all are.

We haven’t even finished the first chapter, Philadelphia.

The fun is just getting started.

November 15, 2009 | Filed Under 2009, business, community, philadelphia | Tags: , , , ,

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“In our mechanistic greco roman western reductionist linear fragmented compartmentalized disconnected democratized individualized parts oriented thought process, we never think about the whole.”

However,

“If we devote ourselves to sacredness in our vocations, the world will rise to meet us” – Joel Salatin

This is why I harp on the little stuff. This is why I care about the people who are “doin’ it wrong”. I believe so strongly in the sacredness of my our vocations, that I find it mentally and physically disruptive to see someone misconstrues, misinterpret, misinform, or completely misses out on the potential of their own vocation.

I have a lot to say about TEDxMidatlantic, its contents, its inception, and more.

In the mean time, my favorite presentation from the day, Joel Salatin:

Do you understand the essence of your eggs? Do you understand what it means to explore your own chicken-ness?

November 7, 2009 | Filed Under 2009, inspiration | Tags: , ,

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I’ve been watching sports

It almost feels like a dirty secret I’m confessing. I joked in an e-mail with a colleague tonight, who pointed out that he was impressed that I was watching a sporting event, not to tell anybody because it’d ruin my street cred.

Ask any of my friends, and they’ll tell you, I’m not a sports fan.

I’ve explained it all kinds of ways:

I don’t like sports.

I don’t like sports fans.

I don’t understand the rules.

Watching on TV is boring.

I’m allergic to sports.

At the end of the day, I’ve just never been into competitive sports, because I’m a different type of competitive. I’m much more into competing with myself, so I like solo sports like rock climbing and snow boarding.

Even when I’ve watched sports that I do like, I’ve never followed them. I never memorized player stats, or knew where a team stood in a given championship.

I had nothing to personally gain or lose from knowing, or not knowing any of those things.

So why, on earth, would I take the risk of blowing my “personal brand” as a sports luddite?

I love the vibe of Philly pride.

Philly’s sense of pride is something special, and I’ve made mention of it on this blog in a negative light.

It’s fickle, and our city’s pride in our sports teams is a blister of an example for it.

But when its good, when it’s uniting, it’s a beautiful thing to be a part of a city that is proud.

I’ve been watching sports because right now, Philadelphia is proud of something for the right reasons. I wish that pride of being a Philadelphian permeated more than just the sports season. I’m watching Philadelphia sports so I can understand what about it makes us so proud, so it can be applied elsewhere in our daily lives.

Hopefully, I’ve still got my street cred.

November 2, 2009 | Filed Under 2009, community, philadelphia |

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