Geoff and I were out chatting about some things last night and in conversation I mentioned the term “Civic Entrepreneurship”. The word came out of my mouth nonchalantly, and frankly, I’m not sure where exactly I’d heard it before, or if I was using it in the appropriate context. Either way, Geoff’s reaction to the term and what it might mean, was enough to get me to think more about it on my walk home.

Confident it was impossible that I had coined the term myself, and curious about any kind of real context, I decided to ask google for a definition.

The first result, a newsletter from the Center for Community Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin, caught my eye. The result summary contained enough information to match what I’d considered myself, so I dug deeper.

The term civic entrepreneur combines two important American traditions: entrepreneurship–the spirit of enterprise–and civic virtue–the spirit of community.¹

The article goes on to establish five important qualities in civic entrepreneurship.

1. Realistic understanding of contemporary economic realities and willingness to embrace those realities on a local level, building a foundation for larger future growth.
2. Results-driven attitude towards change. Focus on why things can happen, rather than why they cannot. Focus on mobilizing resources to an end game.
3. Collaborative leadership style, rather than leading with formal authority they lead with credibility. Strong ties between economic development and community development. Strong bridging between these two arenas.
4. Long-tail self interest. The individual leader’s end game is long term, short term and narrower goals are heavily focused directly on community involvement. “Give give give, till your face falls off”. Sound familiar?
5. Creating, and enabling, new leaders. Playing different roles within different teams. Heavy focus on teamwork and encouraging collaborative growth.

A lot of this rings so, so true to everything I’ve been immersed in for the last year and a half. But I’ve noticed something else.

A lot of “civic entrepreneurship” qualities read a whole lot like what’s evolved into this moving target people are calling “social media”. This piece, for me, is a great and humbling reminder that even new and exploratory concepts aren’t new, simply evolutions.

I laugh, often, when I (or anyone else, for that matter) are referred to as “social media experts”. How can you be an expert in something that most people struggle to define in the first place? It’s too new for there to be real experts.

Are you an expert simply by being an early adopter? I think that’s a difficult, and dangerous, thing to quantify given the connotations of “expert”.

Social Media leadership? Certainly. I know a lot of brilliant social media leaders. Social Media Innovaters? Absolutely.

Now. I’m not sure if you could call yourself a Civic Entrepreneurship expert, even though the arena is well defined, and well established. Proof? The points in the article cited above were written nearly 10 years ago.

I have to wonder how many participants of the social media space have read the newsletter. Or were they too busy suckling their RSS feeds looking for the latest trend to mimic.

Although, I have to think that there’s something intrinsically humbling, probably tied to quality number 4 above, that most “civic entrepreneurs” wouldn’t go so far as to call themselves an expert.

There’s a difference between calling yourself an expert, and being identified as one.

Be realistic. Be persistent. Share responsibilities. Be humble. Know your roots. Care.

At SXSW, during the coworking core conversation, Geoff made a point that blew my mind with it’s obviousness. That exact same point is relevant to this conversation as well:

These aren’t secrets to successful coworking. These aren’t secrets to successful business.

These are the secrets to being a good human being.

¹Reference: Civic Entrepreneurs: Economic Professional as Collaborative Leader

Last week, I asked a bunch of my twitter followers, “What does creative mean to you?”

I wasn’t just trolling for comments, I actually was curious what the notion of creativity or a creative person was to different people. As expected, there was some really great variance in the responses. The real answer (if there is one) that I was looking to glean from the responses was that variance itself. I was interested in the different definitions because of another concept that has a bunch of different definitions, as well as connotations: Agency.

I was introduced to some of these concepts, like many other things that I hold dearly, by my friends at CitizenAgency. I remember when I first read the story of how they came to decide on the name for their consultancy, which is almost entirely based around helping companies create opportunities to extend agency into their userbases. Into their citizenship. The notion of Agency in this case was philosophical, the ability to help your users make good choices and ultimately, feel empowered to kick ass.

I’ve always felt that the concept that drives CitizenAgency is incredibly special, and the results of the projects that Chris and Tara have been involved in speak to that. Recently, and leading up to last weeks question, I’ve been mulling over the combination of the two polymorphic notions of “creative” and “agency”, and the fact that many of my industry’s businesses consider themselves creative agencies. And while they may or may not be fulfilling one (or many) of the different concepts of creative that people contributed to my last post, the vast majority of them miss out on the agency part in a pretty big way.

Part One - Creative Agency for the Client:

The most typical project ownership that’s experienced goes something like this:

1. Client approaches firm/independent with project concept
2. Firm/independent fulfills request, with the end user of the project in mind

In some of the best cases, there’s a discovery phase in between to help the creators understand the client’s intent. What’s missed, more often, is client education. Client involvement. And most importantly, reminding the client why they hired the firm or independent in the first place: because we’re the experts.

My intention with that statement is not to be condescending, but the reality of the relationship is that we, as the creators, are responsible for leading the client just as much as we are leading the project and the result that the end user experiences.

My problem in this part one discussion is that so many “agencies” do at least one of two things wrong. They ignore client education, or even worse, they roll over to client whims for the sake of avoiding confrontation. Without naming names or pointing fingers, this was the number one complaint I had with both of my full time jobs with interactive firms. They lead and executed amazing production work. And maybe it was simply because of where I sat in the ranks, but I never felt like the client had involvement in the project where it counted.

In another one of my (ramblier) posts, I talked about the notion of doer-enablers, and creating an experience where a non-creative person can feel the creative process. In as many projects as possible, I’ve tried to put just as much focus on my experience with the client as I did on the experience we were creating together for their end user. And most importantly, I did a good job of engaging with clients who would be receptive to the education. I always let them feel that it was appropriate to push back on my suggestions, but at the same time, if I could take that push back and turn it into an opportunity to teach them something new and stand my ground, I would. Maybe I’m lucky to have had some really rad clients and partners. But I really think it was more about setting that precedent early and committing to carrying it forward.

Part Two - Creative Agency for the Talent:

The other thing I started to think about when I was analyzing “creative” and “agency” next to one another was the fact that most creatives are so busy “thinking outside of the box” (that one’s for you, Mike Propst) that they’re not particularly good at looking out for themselves. The horror stories I read on FreelanceSwitch about people getting taken advantage of blow me away. I understand that some folks simply lack the business savvy, but that leaves a big open hole for people really put focus on perfecting craft, which I have an immense amount of respect for. So what can we do for those people?

You’re probably surprised I got this far in a post without mentioning coworking, and here’s the part where I live up to your expectations. I look at the interactions at IndyHall and other coworking communities that I observe from a distance and think that we’re in a fantastic position to help with this other type of agency, the one that borders on the far ends of the philosophical version I spoke about before. The type I’m thinking about is more along the lines of talent agency, where someone with the business savvy that a creative might lack is able to represent, mentor, and advise the creative in decision making. The difference in this type of agency (which, in my mind, plays out a bit like the talent agencies of Hollywood, but without the likes of Ari Gold and his extreme antics) is that it puts heavy focus on helping and representing talent, and the client interaction mentioned in part #1 of

this post is the responsibility of the talent themselves. Think of it like an advisory board for hire.

One of the most exciting parts of my contributions to discovering the model we’ll be using at ChoiceShirts on our t-shirt designer community is this same concept: designers that not only work together, but support one another with their independent strengths. The model goes even deeper in the fact that ChoiceShirts itself will be extending its business, marketing, production, fulfillment, and distribution facilities to the artists it represents. This is creative agency, as I see it..

So how does coworking fit into this? Well, the problems in traditional talent agency models are, in my best estimation, rooted in greediness. Something amazing and empowering to me about the coworking community at large, and the culture it breeds, is how un-greedy it is. The contributory sentiments of all of our members at IndyHall, and nearly every interaction I’ve had on the coworking list or with members of another coworking space, lend themselves greatly to the concept of advising other creatives.

Generosity does not equate to poverty. William Hurley (Whurley, to friends across the universe) wrote some time back about how being an open source software developer does not, and should not, condemn ones self to a life of poverty. If we can apply those ideals (of give and take, and community moderation) to a Creative Agency for talent representation, we might be onto something special. And that’s the kind of “special” stuff I expect from my coworking cohorts.

Who’s game for watching one another’s back? Oh wait. We already are.

I’m on the plane back from SXSW Interactive 2008.

I’ve slept a total of 14 hours in 6 days.
I’ve eaten about 3 actual meals in 6 days
I’ve been to 3 panels/sessions throughout all of SXSWi08.
I’ve now heard the phrases: “@alexknowshtml, right? I totally follow you on twitter! *high five*” and “someone told me I need to know who you are”. Weird.
I’ve known who the unicorn was all along.
I’ve had more ah-ha moments than I can count.
I’ve jumped the line. More than once.
I’ve rick-rolled an RV full of people.
I’ve hugged people in real life that I’ve only ever interacted with online.
I’ve rolled up on a larger-than-life town with a larger-than-life posse from Philadelphia.
I’ve experienced a real world meetup of the global coworking email list
I’ve disagreed with people, and was disagreed with.
I’ve sucked (like, pathetically sucked) at bowling while the entire IndyHall team kicked an incredible amount of ass, all along showing serious IndyHall pride. In the form of a can-can dance to bohemian rhapsody.
I’ve consumed so much caffeine that I literally began to vibrate.
I’ve been inspired, and I had opportunities to inspire.
I’ve successfully completed the co-leadership of a core conversation about coworking.
I’ve exercised my undeniable ability to throw one hell of a party by taking over an empty bar called the Mooseknuckle, and filling it with a couple hundred of my closest friends + Robert Scoble. 2 nights in a row.

Accordian at Mooseknuckle IndyHall Party
Originally uploaded by bmenoza.

Gary V and his brother AJ fanboy me almost as much I fanboy them.
I’ve shook hands and shared passions with my peers.
I’ve was reminded how smart my friends are.
I’ve was reminded how lucky I am.
I’ve brainstormed.
It thunder-stormed.
I’ve drank wine from at least 4 different types of containers. Only one was really meant for wine. One of them was the bottle the wine came in.
I‘ve slept on a ranch with goats. I mean, the ranch I slept on had goats present. You know what I mean.
I’ve put my foot in my mouth. Sorry.
I’ve found some emotions that I’d ignored for a long time.
I’ve reminded myself of the perspective I’d been searching for.
I’ve been stunned, absolutely honored, by a comment on my previous post from Kathy Sierra.

Uh oh.

What I DON’T have, is the ability to speak out loud. I spent so much time engaging in reality that I completely blew out my vocal chords and have lost my voice progressively over the last 2 days of the conference. In fact it was gone on the 2nd to last day but that did not stop me from continuing to connect with people, despite the pain of what felt like having swallowed a hedgehog. The spiky blue kind, no less.

Where I lost one voice, I discovered more about another voice. Not the one in your throat (though that voice plays a very large part in this other voice), but the one in your heart.

4 cornerstones of the heart-powered voice:
Voice is passion.
Voice is inspiration and being inspired.
Voice is not asking for permission.
Voice is ownership. And not the singular kind of ownership that we don’t like.
(note: I’m interested in how else you define voice)

One of the reasons I love this industry so effing much is because of the voices that my peers have. The ability to do all of the things I listed above were things I did in the last 6 days, but they’re things that almost anyone can do, as well, assuming they have the properties of voice I listed above.

Again, I consider myself beyond lucky to work in this community (the internet in general, as a community). I work in an industry of peers. Business hierarchy and “internet celebrity-dom” aside, the “rock stars” of my industry are, as I’m quickly learning, people who share the same types of voice that I do. That we all do. Rather than have the Talent:Fan::Leader:Follower relationship of film, music, and many other creative communities, there is a mutual relationship in which everyone simply respects what one another are working on.

Most of the time. (more on that later)

There is the “compete with rather than compete against” type of interaction where there is enough room for multiple properties in the same space and as a result, people force one another to improve their craft (and the craft around them, as a result) rather than force one another entirely out of the realm of competition.

Most of the time. (again, more on that later)

The events of the last 2 weekends have me setting out to inspire as much as I’ve been inspired. To do as much good as has been done for me. By sharing my voice with so many of you, in real life, on this blog, at SXSW or any other conference…I feel like I’ve been privileged to further this goal faster than ever before.

If you have a voice (the 4 point version, again, not the kind that I lost because I don’t know when to call it quits), I want to hear it. I may not have a specific interest in whatever it is that drives your voice, but I’m interested in the fact that the people around me HAVE voices in the first place.

I realize that I lost my voice this weekend because I spent 6 days sharing my voice with everyone I came in contact with. You know what happens when you share all of the slices of pizza in your pie? You end up not having a pizza yourself.

All I’m asking of you is to share a little bit of your voice with me to help my recovery.

Video comments rule, by the way, because they let me hear your voice. Both kinds.

Tags: sxsw, sxswi, sxswi08, voice, passion

Om nom nom nom

Originally uploaded by Judxapp.

I spent this weekend in beautiful South Beach Miami attending FOWA (Future of Web Apps), one of the most acclaimed conference events in our industry at this point in time. Not only did I have a fantastic time taking in the familiar sights of SoBe, but connecting with old friends and new on the most pressing, important, and interesting issues that we’re facing today. To all of the old friends that I got to catch up with, it was great to see you and don’t be such a freaking stranger. To all of the new friends that I made, I look forward to seeing you again (many of you in Austin in just a few days) and continuing to inspire and be inspired by one another.

Before I go any further, I want to give thanks ONE more time to Alex DeCarvalho and his team for organizing Barcamp Miami, and to Ryan Carson, Mel Kirk, and the whole Carsonified team. All of these people worked their ASSES off to give us all an opportunity to engage over the last few days. I’ve spoken to Alex and Ryan individually about this and their organization and involvement are clearly crimes of passion, and the results of their respective events show how valuable their passionate contributions are. I told Ryan how impressed and inspired I am by how and what they do, and that I was even more impressed by the vote of confidence FOWA being in Miami was for the new and very exciting Miami tech/social/web community. I hope that some day I have the ability to give they way Ryan and his crew do.

Thanks out of the way, and on to the meaty stuff.

I don’t really care to give a run down of each and every presentation, or every presenter. I’ll just hit a few key points in my mind,

I will say that I was honored to have Brad Neuberg present for my coworking session at BarCamp, and having his input and conversation was out of this world awesome. Brad’s effectively the godfather of the movement that I pour my heart and soul into, and while he’s since stepped out to openly trust a couple of new ambassadors including myself to carry things forward, hearing how appreciative he is of our work was wicked cool, and hearing his view on how things are going based on where they came form was unique and I’m grateful for it.

Kathy Sierra goes one step beyond her blog “creating passionate users” by creating people who create passionate users. Her words are consistently brilliant and inspiring, and as I’ve said many times before, there’s nothing cooler than hearing someone you respect reciting the mantras you live your life by. One of the biggest takeaways from Kathy’s presentation, for me, was the notion that real (physical) world interaction is the only place where real problems get solved. The fact that our brains are tuned to read faces, body language, and other nuances that the internet obscures makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us as software creators to deal with unless we prepare by talking to the actual users before we build the application. This sounds a whole lot like my constant reminder to the coworking community, and other community-driven ventures, that you need to be building your community before you build the construct that they will eventually spend their time in.

Furthermore, Kathy spent time on of the idea that the realest problems that our users face are social, and far less technical. As geeks, we do the thing we understand best and work our faces off to reverse engineer social problems and base our applications around them. I think the important concept suggested here is a very simple and obvious cycle that I’ve been unintentionally living. When a geek converts a social problem into a technical “solution”, its for the purpose of using the tools that we know best to generate metrics and optimize the problems with the social situation. In the best situations (and the best apps), the new solution that comes from the optimization done by the software has a very real and measurable effect on the real life problem that was initially identified. The circle is closed when a good online community surrounding the digital problem/solution pair spends time interacting with its community offline as well. This could be something large scale like attending and interacting with conferences like FOWA, or it could be something like hiring a community evangelist whos entire job is to work FOR the community members and listen for more real world problems.

At the root of all of this is the fact that technical problems are easy to solve. Social problems are the bitches of it all. But they’re the most compelling, and that’s why we’re all here.

Taking this idea one step further, we can jump to the end of the day of conference speakers to my good friend Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary’s presentation was the first of the day to not include any slides because, well, Gary just doesnt roll like that. Gary’s presentation was about community building in the future (though I’d argue its how we need to build communities NOW), and building a personal brand around a product or service, but where I think he did a good job of allowing me to connect the dots back to Kathy’s talk in the beginning of the day because he talked about the importance of giving, giving, giving until your effing face falls off…and then giving just a little bit more…to your community.

One of the things this got me thinking about is that despite the fact that there is a notion of giving online (think Facebook “gifts”, think Ma.gnolia “thanks”) that do a VERY good job of simulating the effects of giving, there is nothing that can replace a tangible exchange. Someone who I spoke with last night asked me if I thought that was why people still send informal letters via the postal service when e-messaging is free and faster, and I my response was a very enthusiastic yes. Much like you lose the ability to read a facial expression online, you lose the ability to exchange a certain unmeasurable but very important energy when ideas, information, or tangible goods exchange hands in physical space.

So lets connect some more dots.

The internet has given us a great deal of ever-improving tools for collaborating and exchanging information online. Its easier now than ever before to work in distributed teams, to keep everyone in synchronization with the information that they find most valuable for a given need.

What the internet hasn’t done, and what I’ve heard many luddites say, is that it doesn’t do a very good job of reminding us to “get out of the pool” once in a while and remember what its like to be involved in one of those real world giving exchanges.

Drew Olanoff posted on his tubmblr last week after we went to see Foo Fighters together and had a really great opportunity to catch up, all because he saw a tweet of mine saying I had a free ticket. Twitter is, in my opinion, a product that does an exceptionally good job of closing the circle that I discussed before. What’s even cooler about twitter is that it closes the circle of real world problem->online solution->real world solution in different ways for different people (more on that soon).
This goes beyond software, and I think Gary’s presence isn’t they only example of that. Coworking is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to get the effects of some of the best online communities in an offline format. I almost view our office as a brick and mortar version of a really fantastic forum-style community where people are there, within a given topic (or skillset) to get something done but a constant and persistent “off topic” channel allows them to slip out of their usual comfort zone, or even better, into someone else’s comfort zone. The “accidental education” and “acceleration of serendipity” that occurs in these types of formats is wild and amazing, and why I think people are drawn to online communities because they have a very low barrier to create and join.

Which brings me to my final point (for now). I’ve talked to a LOT of people in a LOT of different places all over the world about their desires to set up coworking, participate in coworking, etc. Over and over, I hear something like, “I want this here but we have this problem that’s really unique to our area”. I’ve asked many people to explain their problems that they face or fear that they will face if they were to attempt to fire up a coworking community, and I have a secret.

You all have the same problems.

Your problems are not special.

If all you do is focus on your problems, you’re not special. In fact, I think they call that “complaining”.

The most common issues I’ve heard are those of real estate costs and availability, physical location accessibility (no one place is ever central enough), not enough people are around to pull it off, local cultural implications, “someone is already kinda doing it nearby but it doesn’t really work for me”, or everyone spends more time talking about doing it than actually making any forward motion.

Thats only about a half of a dozen problems, and they are nearly all technical. The exact problems that I’ve discussed may vary slightly, but ultimately, a great deal of the problems can be boiled down to one or a couple of these factors.

Thats literally hundreds of times that I’ve heard about the same 6 problems. And every time, “well in location x…..its hard because…”.

If this doesn’t illustrate that you’re problems arent what makes you special, I don’t know what will. Everything offline has a barrier to entry. What sets your community or potential community apart isn’t your problems, it’s how creative you can get with your solutions. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do, think about what you do have that no other place in the world does. Use that as your base, use that as your solution.

I think there’s a great deal of value in prototyping your solution using online tools, but don’t lose sight of the fact that the end goal should be an offline interaction.

I’m speaking specifically about coworking because its one of the things that I hold closest to my heart, but once again, I think that this construct of thinking can be overlaid on top of lots of other social problem->technical solution->social solution transactions.

I plan to revisit this topic, but that’s the majority of the dot-connecting that went on for me this weekend.

A few other takeaways from FOWA Miami 08:

• Kathy Sierra’s use of light profanity and cute puppies in her presentation are based on her understanding of what things our brains are tuned to. You should use those things to your advantage, too.
• Matt Mullenweg continues to impress me as a speaker and visionary (and a dude who’s even younger than me). His notions about scaling are very interesting to me, especially a this point in my life, my career, and all of the things I’m interested in. The fact that scaling people and communities is much harder than scaling business and applications further reinforces the fact that technical problems are easy, social problems are the ones that kick our asses.
• Tantek and Brian Oberkirch are two of the smartest people I know, and two of the nicest people I know, and two of the geekiest people I know. A really fantastic conversation I had with Brian the morning after FOWA helped me reassure myself in some decisions and conclusions I came to this weekend, and an exchange with Tantek at the beach party last night also reinforced some of the techniques that I will continue to use to interact with the communities I care so much about. Thanks to both of you for helping organize the content of this event and for being such great people in general.
• Blaine Cook, who talked about how you get your app to the masses, took a bit of a beating (a friendly beating with a feather pillow, of course) as his phone rang and twitter crashed while he was on stage talking about it. Blaine is clearly shockingly, shockingly intelligent and more importantly, capable of keeping things on the level. If I had the kind of responsibility he has towards twitter, I’d be WAY jumpier. The most valuable thing I think Blaine said though was regarding their decision to stay with Ruby on Rails. The fact that more mature development platforms have had the same stumbling blocks that Rails has now, and have simply had more time to mature, doesn’t mean that Rails is less viable. What it does mean is that RoR needs someone to find the stumbling points and be prepared to fix them for generations of Rails developers to come, and Twitter itself and the practices of Blaine and the team at Obvious are doing a very good job of rapidly discovering those stumbling blocks. Twitter is more than just a service, and more importantly, in my opinion, Twitter isn’t about Twitter.com. Again, more on the Twitter topic later.
• As always, hallways at conferences have some of the coolest interactions with some of the smartest people. Remember, not all smart people are comfortable on stage, but in a one on one setting, they will blow your mind. If a presenter doesn’t make you swoon, go out in the hall and meet someone new. It’s ok. You’ve already paid for the conference.
• Cal Henderson from Flickr is a unicorn of technical knowledge and impeccable presentation skills. I’d love to talk to him more, if for no other reason that I love the style of slides he uses (similar to what Tara Hunt uses), driven by large words overlaid on pictures to illustrate points. I’d love to master that technique to supplement my speaking skills.

And finally, in general, you don’t have to be big to be big. You don’t have to be big at all. Be honest. Be transparent. Don’t pitch me, bro. Engage me. Do cool stuff, stuff that makes you happy. Do it from your heart, not from your wallet or your PR deck.

And don’t even get me started on PR in social media right now. I’m a bit of a fireball on the topic, so I’m going to try to calm down before I spit out anything I don’t really mean.

Thanks FOWA Miami 2008 and all of its attendees for kicking ass. 4 more days until SXSWi08.

Ahhh…crap.

Tags: fowamiami2008, barcampmiami, community

They say (good) things happen in 3s

A few months back I marked the 1 year anniversary of my independence. Along the way I’ve made contacts and friends across this wide and amazing industry, and even built a home for some of them to spend their time during the work week.

I’ve alluded to, in various places, a new project that I’ve been working on since not that long after that 1 year announcement. Not that it’s been much of a secret but as of today, there’s one more tangible piece to the puzzle in my hands, and those would be my new business cards for Round3Media that you see above.

Over the last year, the types of and scale of the projects I’ve gotten involved with has changed dramatically. Lucky for me, there’s always opportunity for growth when you’re willing to take some initiative and be challenged. Through the year, I’ve had the privileged of working with a number of extremely talented folks, and in an effort to scale things properly, we’ve formed Round 3.

The Name

We kicked around naming and branding for quite a while, and as I expected, the one we fell in love with was the one we least expected.

Ken, Bart, and myself (founding partners of Round3) have all started multiple companies. For all of us, Round3 is our 3rd company. There are 3 of us (supplemented by a well rounded talent pool). There are three phases (or rounds) to most web projects: discovery, design, and development. Round3Media just made sense.

There are some strangely exciting coincidences that have happened while we’re starting up surrounding “threes”, so we’re pretty sure that’s a sign we made the right decision.

The Team

Round 3 is comprised of myself on the technology front, Ken Rossi on the design front, and Bart Mroz on business and project management. Ken’s designs and clients combined with my code have comprised a large portion of my portfolio in the last year. Frankly, Ken was the designer who convinced me that I had what it took to go out on my own in the first place. Bart’s been a huge part of day to day operations of IndyHall and continues to run a successful freelance project management operation.

To supplement our “core” team, we’ve brought Johnny Bilotta and Jason Tremblay on as contract-to-hire associates. Johnny’s designs have appeared ALL over the place recently, from the initial creative for the IndyHall website and business cards, to a number of branding initiatives we’ve done together. Jason’s been active in IndyHall since early on as well, and has been behind the technology for a number of local projects including www.wcdish.com and some of the tech behind the West Chester Restaurant Festival. We’re excited to have these two incredibly talented individuals who are interested in joining our mission.

As far as structure of the team, it’s our goal to keep things as flat and low to the ground as possible. There are three “disciplines” we’re representing (design, development, and business/project management). Beyond that, project and company goals will be discovered together. For as long as we have the ability to keep communication open and not end up with a super-tiered ultra-mega-globo-corp type mentality that I’ll get into a bit later, this seems like a step towards an ideal working situation. Why? Well there’s some problems that need fixing.

The Mission

What’s the mission, exactly? The way we see it, there’s a huge gap between the independent contractor and the agency. And don’t get me wrong, they both have their place. What I’m interested in experimenting with is the space between them.

Working as an indie is great. You have freedom, you have flexibility and agility. You have independence. You can keep your overhead low, and deliver high quality products for a great value.

On the flip side, it’s difficult to be held accountable by larger clients for larger projects. Also, if there’s a need to collaborate, there tends to be some scrambling to get things together and unify the communication for the ad-hoc team. It’s doable, and it’s a very powerful thing (i’ve done it for a long time and we do it every day at indyhall). It just takes more time and energy than most are willing to put out.

Agencies have a high level of accountability and structure. To their credit, the additional organization necessary to pull off larger projects and accounts are absolutely necessary as a supplement to the talent they employ. Certain clients and project types simply cannot be handled by a solo talent.

On the flip side, that additional organization adds cost (both time and money, as projects become more expensive and take longer to execute as information moves through the ranks). This also means that there’s a rather large amount of “whisper down the alley” between a project coming in, and the person executing the tasks.

Finally, as an indie, you rely on collaboration. There’s very small group of superheros who are actually good at hybrid skillsets. You may KNOW HOW TO wireframe, design, build XHTML/CSS/Javascript, as well as back end data driven architecture, but the odds of you being REALLY, REALLY good at all of them are much lower than the chances that you’ve lied on your resume and listed every piece of software you’ve ever heard of as a “skill”. It’s OK. I’m not chastising you. I’m encouraging you to pick a skill to be a rockstar at, and find other complimentary rock stars to work with. If you put 3 rock stars together, you’ve got the makings of a band. That’s what I want to see on a project: less drum solo, more collaborative singing/songwriting/performance pieces. And a little cowbell never hurts.

So really, what’s the mission?

Its our hope that over the next several months, Round3Media will give us an opportunity that a number of other very talented groups have begun to explore. We’re going to dig deep and find out what can be done in the space between indie and agency. Rather than scramble at each project to figure out who’s working on what, and what pieces we need to pull together, we have some stable business process that over arches over our individual indie “practices”. Its a step towards unity, but not so far away from the individuality or freedom we crave.

To follow the band metaphor from above, think of Round3 as a jam session for talented ‘artists’. The session is always at the same place at the same time, but what happens at each jam session is totally unique and special. We’re going to create a construct for business to take place in, but the creative side of web production and marketing will all be more like a pick-up “jam session”.

At the core, for me, this is all about scaling indie methodology.

Process vs Results

When the NotAnMBA guys were in town a few weeks back, they were inspired by the culture at IndyHall and similarly, speaking with Tony from CoworkingNYC. They made a post about a common theme that came out of our conversations and that the majority of us put much higher value on results than process.

Rather than caring when you get to work, where you’re working from, or that you’re “following the rules”…we’re actually more interested in people who are willing to bend or break the mold, try new things, innovate, and get to the highest qualty end result by “any means necessary”.

That openness and freedom for the people that we’ll be working with as Round3 grows is key, I think. It’s the type of process that an indie works on, because they don’t have a boss to answer to. Instead of worrying about the process that I had in mind when I delegated a task, worry about the end product that I had in mind. How you get there, how you meet or exceed my expectations (as an employer or a client)? So long as communication stays open, I’m a happy camper.

So where do we go from here?

Up, is our best guess. We’ll continue to work at IndyHall as we have been, and honestly, not much is going to change. Individually, we’re bringing some really interesting client work to the table that we’d have turned to the talent that sits around us every day for collaboration.

There’s going to be some transitioning of our existing client bases as we try to bring as many of them on board as we can. We’ve all worked hard to build client relationships over the course of our careers, and nothing would make us happier than seeing them served by the results produced by Round3 talent.

For me, personally, I’m going on the road. The next few weeks are travel heavy, as I attend Future of Web Apps in Miami this upcoming weekend and SXSW Interactive 08 in Austin, Texas at which I’m presenting (more on that soon). All along the way, I’ll be showing off not just the cool stuff that I’m directly involved in (IndyHall, Round3, etc) but will be spreading Philly love in any way that I can. I’m so excited to get to show the world, even in these two venues alone, what the talent in Philadelphia is up to. If you see me at either of these events, ask me about what’s going on in Philly. I’ll give you an earful of excitement, for sure.

The IndyHall community is one of my proudest accomplishments of my entire life. Round3, though only at its inception, is yet another moment in time that I’m insanely proud to be a part of, and I’m so excited to see grow from the seeds we’re planting.

Tags: alex hillman, bart mroz, business process, creativitiy, indyhall, jason tremblay, johnny bilotta jr, ken rossi, round3media, scaling indies

Because in-browser recording is just too easy…

Comments encouraged!

“We’re a community of workers, unified by the fact that we all make a living doing things that we love” - Dave Speers

I consider myself lucky that I really, really enjoy the work that I do. Recently, my passion has been poured into the coworking project, Independents Hall, and being involved in various other community building events. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I had to force myself to return to reality and face the facts…in order to pay the bills, Alex Hillman is a developer.

Coming back from Orlando I faced a pile..one of the most daunting piles of work I’ve ever felt myself under (far worse than any string of exams I felt while still in school). To be fair, the pile was my own fault. I hadn’t done a very good job of ramping things down right before swinging into “IndyHall Mode”, where I spent most of August and September. But, I had committed to clients, who had paid for services, and I was definitely pushing the limits of the relationships I have with my clients.

On the record, THANK YOU, to all of the clients I have that were patient and proud of the stuff we did with IndyHall, and understanding while I got back in the saddle and found my way back into my development routine.

That said…2 weeks of hell, 18+ hour days, juggling stacked and overdue deadlines (again, all my own fault)..and there’s finally some light at the end of the tunnel. If I could bottle the refreshing feeling I had as I started crossing things off my to-do list, and sell it, I would. I’m pretty sure that the government would make it a controlled substance, it because the feeling was that good. Ahem. Anyway.

I realized something. These working conditions I put myself under were taking away from one important part of what I did. I develop, because I love to. I was developing these projects, because I HAD to, and the situation I got myself into was leading me towards a burnout. Understanding that my commitments and promises are what drive business and growth, and my loyal customers could have left weeks ago but instead stuck it out with me, helped. But emotionally…the realization that I wasn’t enjoying myself was a little damaging. I did not want to burn out this quickly at doing something that I enjoy so much.

Then, one week ago today, a screenshot came across my desk from one of the sharpest interface designers I know, Amy Hoy. At the top of that screenshot, I saw this:

My good friend Gary Vaynerchuk, recently soaring into the stratosphere with his 300+ episodes of a wine-tasting video podcast, was staring me in the face from the “laid back friday” couch and pointing at me as if to say, “yo man, this one’s for you”. Amy asked if I knew anyone who could build this out for a wordpress template for Gary’s new side project, and something in me said “you’ve got other stuff to do, but this one will be good for your soul”. So I agreed to spend last Saturday banging out this template.

I’m still not 100% sure what about this project set it apart, and realistically, it was only about 3 hours of work, but it was able to zero me out. I didn’t do it because I had to, I did it because I wanted to. Yesterday, I spent part of my afternoon with Gary and WLTV Producer Erik Kastner, at the Wine Library (holy crap, you have to go the place is nuts) talking about some of the things clunking around in my head. We’ll see what materializes from those conversations, I think it’s some good stuff.

I guess the whole reason I started this post was to stress the need to do things that you love. It’s energizing, and it’s healthy. I remember being in grade school and having assigned reading and pleasure reading. At the time, assigned reading may have been something from a composition book, or a textbook…but either way I read it because I had to. On the other side, I’d pick up something I wanted to read (at the time, I remember R.L. Stein “Goosebumps” series was a popular choice).

The act of reading was the same. Eyes scanning pages for letters forming words forming sentences, paragraphs, pages, and ultimately some story. But the book I picked, I had an emotional gratification from. I think this goes for the work I do, too. The act of building out this page for Gary was no different, but seeing Gary’s site live was a different reaction than I had to any of the other project’s I’ve wrapped in the last few weeks.

So where does this realization leave me? Well, I’m still processing that. I’ve got some exciting new things on the horizon, opportunities and events. I have a dream that is being realized day by day. I have some of the best friends in the world that I’m so happy are around for all of this, and many more friends that I’ve made because of the events of the last several months. I’m glad that I have them to turn to at this point in my life as I’m putting all of the pieces together and figuring out the next move. Big or little, something’s brewing.

The only thing that’s certain is that I’m going to love it.

update: seems gary and i were reading each others thoughts and he did his 120 second video today on a very similar topic, his “big picture patch“. A good reminder to put things into perspective, no matter your situation.

In my years on the internet, I’ve dealt with a number of mainstream ISPs…back in the dialup days, I settled on a local company who was good at supporting even things that they didn’t have to. I had a habit of janking up my local lan settings as a kid…their support staff was kind enough to walk a younger, savvy but inexperienced me through fixing whatever I had mucked up.

Since being responsible for my own utilities, I’ve dealt with almost every major telecom provider…Verizon and Comcast for internet, and I’ve had an account at almost every cell phone provider. Bottom line: the customer support at every single one of them absolutely positively sucks.

When we opened IndyHall a couple of weeks ago, I made a conscious decisions NOT to utilize Comcast or Verizon for our commercial internet install. My members’ usage was priority, and a quick, stable connection was a must…but I’ve been without service for unacceptable amounts of time in the past due to awful, awful customer support.

I started asking around, and a lot of people recommended SpeakEasy(referral code included). I called to get some clarification on their commercial line plans, and settled on the top speed commercial DSL: 6meg down, 768k up. For our office, this would be perfect, and I was told that should I need to grow into a T1 it wouldn’t require any downtime. The service rep helped me schedule our installation, and we were slated to have everything in fairly close (within about a week) of our first day in the office.

The two part installation was painless. On the first Monday in the office, someone came from the phone company to install a loop in the basement of the building. The tech showed up on time, had worked in the building before, and was very friendly and got right to work. A few days later, I called Speakeasy to confirm that his installation had been completed successfully, which I was told was correct. I also confirmed our final installation date, which at the time was for the following Tuesday.

At that point, I shot in the dark, asking the phone support “Is there any chance of moving up the final install date? It’d be really great to provide your service to our members sooner…”. Quickly, he came back, and moved up our installation to Friday instead of the following Tuesday, buying us 4 extra days of service! I was so pleased, I thanked him, and moved on.

The final installation was also great…the tech once again arrived right on time, and diligently worked through some really tough, old wiring in the building. He updated me regularly on the progress, and we tested the line together before he left.

1 week later, my phone rang, and it was Speakeasy. “Hi Alex, we’re just calling to see how your first week of service was?”.

Wow. Proactive customer support. That was new to me, in the realm of internet providers and telecom. I was honest with the guy and told him that while the speed was acceptable, it was a LITTLE slower than we had hoped, but that was mostly likely due to the old lines in our building. He agreed, and said that if we wanted that I could call back at any time and they would come back to test and, if necessary, replace the lines.

At this point I told him who we were, what we do, and how I value customer support so much. I explained to him that this was one of the most pleasant experiences I’d EVER had with customer support, let alone within the telecom industry, and that I really, really appreciated it.

So this post is an open THANK YOU to the folks at SpeakEasy for proving that customer support isn’t dead, and I highly suggest to anyone, based on my experiences, that you should consider using their services for your next business venture.

Tags: internet, commercial DSL, speakeasy, verizon, comcast, customer support

Or whatever gift-giving holiday you choose to participate in :-)

This is reposted from the IndyHall blog for those of you not following over there yet.

Here’s the scoop:

Months ago, I was introduced to a contact at Belkin by IndyHall supporter, and my good friend Chris Messina. It turns out that for many Barcamps, Belkin provides power and networking gear. They were interested in partnering with some coworking initiatives, and were looking at us. Jory (the contact) and I spoke a few times while IndyHall was in the “growth” period, and he said “keep me posted, and let me know when you’ve got an office!

Months passed, and quite obviously, we found ourselves at the aforementioned crossroads. I dropped Jory a line to see if they were still interested, and he said absolutely. We talked about the approximate size and number of desks, and together put together a list of things, mostly focusing on networking and power strips.

The next thing I knew…boxes started arriving. Lots, and lots, of boxes. The first box was a teaser…a couple of extra useful toys that Belkin tossed in, including a wireless USB print server, and some USB hubs. The next delivery was the motherload, though!

Includes:

5 x Slim Power Strips

15 x Clamp On Power Strips

6 x 14′ snagless ethernet

3 x 8″ cable ties (MUST HAVE!)

3 x 25′ ethernet patch

1 x Wireless N Router

1 x wireless networking USB hub (for printers and hard drives)

2 x 7 port USB hubs

2 x 4 port USB hubs (nest on the 7 port…sweet!)

We can’t thank Belkin enough for this contribution to our new space. In return, along with evaluating their cool gear and giving them feedback, we’re going to be helping them put together packages on a per-desk basis. Essentially, they’ll be able to sell a “coworking special” for a certain number of desks, providing all of the gear that a coworking space would need for that number of desks. Way cool, and a way for us to give back to Belkin and the coworking community!

And a special thanks to Jory, also, for coordinating this for us. We really, really appreciate knowing that you get what we’re doing here!

Tags: belkin, coworking, independents hall, power strips, networking, usb, sponsor

isn’t for the lack of interesting things going on. Quite the contrary, in fact. I have a MILLION things I want to write about. Among them:

• The opening of Independents Hall on 32 Strawberry Street
• The power of building the community before the product or service
• My own discoveries about balance and time management
• Neat new development projects
• A summary of what I’ve learned so far along the path of building IndyHall
• and much more…

In the mean time, to tide you over, you can read this piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about IndyHall.