I’ve been in a funny spot for the last several weeks as I rock between my previous workflows of being wholly responsible for production work to being in a pseudo-management position and doing more advising, strategy, and writing. I’m still not entirely comfortable with it, mostly because I feel like I’m diluting the amount of the end product that I’ve actually “done”.

This is turning into a dangerous conundrum because every time I slip back to thinking that the only type of “doer” is the one on the production line, I get down on myself and upset about my contributions. Clearly, I know this is irrational. I’m still working. I’m working my ass off. But something felt out of sync.

Lets switch gears for a second.

Ze Frank. Internet performer (genius), educated thinker (genius), master DO-ER (mad respect).

I was introduced to Ze last year at the end of his run of producing “The Show”, his daily take on existence that he distributed over the internet from March 17th 2006-March 17th 2007. Having met Ze briefly before I knew who he was, or more importantly, what he was, seems to be a theme from SXSW Interactive 2007 (where we met at the Yahoo! Bartab). As tends to be the case, I researched him a bit after the fact and realized that I had just brushed shoulders with inspiration and didn’t know it…and that this inspiration would strike again.

And it has.

After taking a 1 year leave of absence from his community, Ze reappeared a few weeks ago on Twitter. Watching Ze emerge was kinda like watching an infant grow up over the course of a couple of days. He didn’t really understand the whys…he didn’t really understand the hows…he just asked questions, tried things, and waited for feedback.

Then he did something that was out of the norm of most developing children. He colored (PUNNY!) outside of the lines, with complete disregard for the ruler aimed intently on slapping his wrists.

Inspiration.

From speaking to my buddy Erik Kastner (internet famous CSS3 Image Hider, FlickrSpell, Befuddler, his contributions to the creation of the acclaimed WineLibraryTV and supporting infrastructure at WineLibrary, and countless other bits of awesome. Clearly a doer.), his contributions to Ze’s latest project have opened his eyes to what makes Ze “tick”.

Ze, I don’t know you and can’t pretend to, but if I had to guess, the one common thread between you and I is our complete and utter disregard for the norm. In fact, I think it goes a bit deeper than that. We strive to break the norm, in experimental, observational activities.

You see, as Ze got his legs for the twitter community, his realization that norms had developed in the first place made him uncomfortable enough to say, “EFF THIS!” and only 4 days after exploding onto the scene, turn several thousand users (including a number of the twitter co-founders and employees) into active participants in a new construct that came completely from his imagination.

Ze colored outside of the lines by starting ColorWar2008.

I’m thinking about my own childhood, and education in general. I’m thinking about the activities that education tries to push on us, and at the same time, I can pinpoint a couple of educators I’ve had in my life that with one hand, imposed rules and regulations. With the other hand, though…certain educators would smile and half-encourage my misbehavior, believing in the fact that I wasn’t being destructive, I simply had a varied perspective. Coloring outside of the lines was my immature way of exhibiting that.

One more Ze-specific anecdote before I come back to my point:

In this video from TED 2006, Ze describes being in a perpetual state of “80%”. I agree and think that most creative people are as well, and really like being there. What Ze does that’s so freaking magnificent is his ability to extend that experience to people who aren’t typically the types to color outside of the lines. Who aren’t the kinds of people who think they can just “try stuff”. The reason I think people idolize Ze isn’t because he’s funny (and he is), and it’s not because he’s smart (and he is). It’s because he’s repeatedly come up with ways to invite people inside his vision, and then at the same time…gives up a good portion of the vision TO the new participant and lets them run with it. That’s inspiring. That’s awesome.

I’ve done my best to conduct myself in the last year to do similar things for my peers surrounding me. As I’ve written about before, by coming up with simple, basic tools to let people share your vision is about as close to a sure-fire way to improve the world around you as I can think of.

I’ve gone on the record before saying IndyHall was a self serving venture in the fact that I wanted it myself. I was able to find others around me, give them their own box of crayons, and tell them that it was OK to color outside of the lines. By doing that, I created the surroundings that I wanted for myself in the first place.

Back on point

Alright. I’ve rambled enough. What’s my point. I was talking about doers, and related, doer-enablers. If it isn’t clear from the lack of structure in this post, I’ve been feeling like I’ve lost a good deal of my focus.

Remember when I mentioned the “80% complete” feeling that most creative people thrive on? Well, once in a while, that feeling sinks and you find yourself stuck in a rut of “always 20% done”. With no light at the end of the tunnel, motivation drops, productivity drops, quality of work drops, and distractions become your biggest enemy.

I’m not longer sure which of my contributions to society are most valuable, both for me and for the people around me. Am I a better doer, or a better doer-enabler? And most importantly…can I make a living (or at least not run myself into debt) being a doer-enabler?

I don’t know the answer. I just needed to get this stream of thought out of my head and out into the world rather than cryptically being frustrated by my own hesitations to execute. I’m not a hesitant person. I don’t know why I’m hesitating now more than ever.

I still haven’t found the focus I’m looking for, but at least this clarity helps me reassure myself that I’m on a path to look for it. This post is an early step to opening myself up to new roads to travel down while searching for that focus.

Here’s to finding my 80% again.

UPDATE:

Another way to look at all of this is finding balance between two sub-types of social capital: bridging and bonding. As if by magic, one of my good friends and mentors, Tara Hunt began twittering about this balance right around the same time I made this initial post. See:
Tara on detecting bridge vs bond
Tara on balance
Tara on the exhaustion from balancing them
Tara on creating mentors

Thanks for accidentally pitching into the mindshare, Tara!

Reed’s message is touching and accurate: donating blood is such a simple act that can make such a huge difference. I know, lots of people don’t do well with needles or are afraid of blood. But think about it this way: what’s the last thing you risked something of yourself for someone else?

As an entrepreneur, I discover daily the ways which not only I, but other people assess risks. Most of the time, the risks people are taking are self-serving. Regardless of the outcome (positive or negative), they are the only person that benefits. I read about and see people make really terrible risk assessments all the time. Donating blood, however, has a KNOWN positive benefit with practically no risk at all.

I can’t think of a better place to dominate your fears while being surrounded by people who support their peers and their risks every day: IndyHall.

We’re having a blood drive here next Saturday, March 29th, from 9am-3pm. We’re only at about half of the donors we need so PLEASE consider committing to a spot and donating.

You need to reserve a spot, and since this is nearly an entire month in advance, setting aside a time should not be difficult. The Red Cross makes it easy (yay! webapps!) to register and select a slot ahead of time online. You can visit our donor registration page to find out more.

One of our friends who’s afraid of needles and knows her risk of passing out has stepped up to bat to be an excellent example for those of you still on the fence: Ruth Kalinka not only jumped up and registered, but she’s also coordinating an ice-cream after-party at the Franklin Fountain afterwards to reward everyone for their bravery. THAT’S awesome. Thank you Ruth!

A big thank you to Reed Gustow for not only helping coordinate this drive, but for helping recruit people as well. I really, really appreciate it.

When:
Saturday March 29, 2008
9am-3pm
Where: IndyHall
How: register here.

Tags: indyhall, indpendents hall, red cross, blood donation, reed gustow, ruth kalinka

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

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

I don’t consider January 1st the official start to the year because for myself, like many many others, it’s more like “national hangover day” and not really how I want to represent the beginning of the year. So effectively, for me, January 2nd is the beginning of the new year.

That said, my upside-down sleep cycles from the last several weeks of whirlwind have been making for some rather interesting dreams (no, not the naughty kind). I don’t usually remember them, but last night’s was vivid, odd, and stood out to me as trying to deliver a message to me.

I don’t remember ALL of the details, but the general sentiment was that I was back in my high school. Much like most of my high school experience, I was late and hadn’t done my homework. Where things got weird were, I found myself surrounded not by my high school teachers, but instead by various faces from today’s social media/new media/tech/geek scene that I’ve become so fond of. Instead of my stat teacher, I saw Allen Stern from centernetworks.com. Instead of the Bodeys (a mr. and mrs. pair of english teachers, for those of you who didn’t go to high school with me), Mr. Messina and Ms. Hunt. Hall monitor David Blumenstein had a watchful eye on me as I ran to my locker when I was late for class. Junto-master and IndyHall co-founder Geoff DiMasi was there as the social studies teacher. I’m sure there were more injections from my current reality to my actual past that I don’t remember as vividly, but you get the picture by now.

I’m not usually one for analyzing dreams, but I thought it was interesting that at the turn of the year, the turn of a year where I have so much more that I want to do and so much more that I want to grow, I have a dream like this one. I’m going to think of it as a cue that I need to remember to never stop learning, or think I have to stop learning. I’m going to think of it as a cue that the people around me are the best teachers there are, and part of the reason I look up to them so much is that I hope to be as good of a teacher as them.

2008 is, for me, a year of growth. That was my response on New Years Eve to a tweet that Chris sent out with a “themeword” meme. 07 was a year of experimentation and leaps of faith. I had just quit my job, started attending conferences, building my clientbase, adopting all kinds of new best practice techniques that made me more efficient. Nevermind the leap of faith that IndyHall would not only be successful, but becomes so integral into a community here in Philadelphia.

1 year later, it’s time to take all of the good habits and lessons that I acquired along the path of experimenting in the last 12 months and put them to use in a growth phase. Putting together a more formal team of talent is at the top of my list of “to-dos”, and we’ve already started formulating how that will work. Splitting my time between being the talent, and evangelizing best practices to new ears is also a priority. It’s about personal growth, its about industry growth (our industry, effectively our home), its about knowledge growth.

Instead of just attending conferences, I’m hoping to speak more. Instead of just building web sites, I hope to build web apps. Instead of just inspiring and managing myself, I hope to have a team to manage and keep inspired. I have some personal goals for IndyHall, but I’m going to save them for myself for now because I’m more interested in seeing how the community that we have here continues to hit a stride and take advantage of the resources we’ve created. That giving up of some control, for me, is part of my personal growth as well. I’m learning to practice what I preach!

I’m really excited about this year. Really, really excited.

Tags: 2008, dreams, growth, outlook

Original Photo by Jill Greenseth

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of me having gone independent.

Wow.

A year. Really? I go back and forth between “that’s it” and “that long”? In some aspects, I feel like it was only a couple of months. In other aspects I look at all that I’ve managed to accomplish everything I’d set out to do, and much much more.

I partnered with some amazing talent, many of whose work has earned us opportunities to work together more than once. I worked with some amazing clients (many of whom are brands that I really, really love).

I’ve co-built a couple of funny little apps that got a fair amount of attention, which was never the plan…the plan was to have fun building them.

I co-founded our own little version of a much larger movement that, in it’s own right, has paved the way for more opportunities for myself and countless other people. That’s one of the most gratifying and exciting accomplishments of my life, and I’m SO happy and grateful to have been a part of it and have made all of the friendships and connections I have along the way.

One year in, I’ve learned a lot about making choices and how to learn from the choices that I, and others have made.

The Next Chapter

It’s only appropriate that my newest client not only has choice in their name, but is excited to learn what happens when you give a community some opportunity to make choices.

My newest venture is a new kind of building. This one is less about building a website site and a lot more more about building a community. Learning from the wonderful community building experience we’ve had here at IndyHall, I thought it’d be great to take the model to the road and allow others to benefit from it. This next foray into community building is with a company called Choice Shirts, just outside of Philadelphia in Pennsauken, NJ.

The new project is called The Choice100 and it’s first incarnation as a blog has launched last night. It’s simple and direct, but that’s by design. The whole goal of the project at this stage of the game is to facilitate asking a potential community of design talent what they think about the proposed community model, and feed back as to what would benefit them the most.

This project has me really excited for a number of reasons. One, it’s a really fun opportunity to have conversations with the folks who work in a field that I’m closely tied to (design, that is) but from a whole new angle for me; graphic design for apparel.

Even moreso is that a company with a fairly traditional (and well established) business model is just as amped as I am to listen to their customers (who, in this case, double as their product creators) and be so open about the process.

In the preliminary research on who to have in the loop for this, I got some really positive feedback from designers that have worked in other t-shirt “contest” and “designer community” scenarios. Of course, they’ve all had thoughts as to what was good and what was bad. What’s really great about ChoiceShirts and The Choice 100 is that the company has a history spotted with creative evolutions of existing and established business models, and that they are embracing a conversation within a community to help model the next steps for their company.

Sounds wonderfully Cluetrain to me. What happens when you stop selling and start conversing. ChoiceShirts is not only embracing that, but they’re excited to embrace that. That’s immensely energizing and inspiring for me.

We’re going to be starting from the ground up. This blog is out there to announce the existence of this new evolutionary process for ChoiceShirts, and gather the interested parties in a place where they can converse. Next steps will include some real-world brainstorming, which we’ll facilitate at IndyHall much like the first brainstorming session we held back in August.

Check out the site, leave some comments, and subscribe to the blog and twitter feeds if it sounds like something you’re interested in participating in. Remember, this project is about us hearing what you have to say!

Originally Uploaded by ducttapeavenger

First off, you should know about a blog that was started during BlogPhiladelphia. Literally, in the 30 minutes of me running an open grid session, a blog was created from scratch (domain purchase to live) as a response to Scott McNulty’s “Group Blogging” session. You can keep an eye on it’s evolution at PhillyGeeks.net. The most recent post by Viddler’s Colin Devroe, has elicited the following response from me. It’s sort of to Colin, sort of to myself, and sort of to you, the reader. Some of it requires reading his post first, which I suggest doing. In the end, I’ll likely end up taking it elsewhere, since this is effectively a brain dump.

So I apologize for any confusing direction of a message, or the language used. This is direct from my brain to your screen.

Here goes.

Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

Just a quick thought from my attendance of my sister’s high school graduation tonight. Before I go any further, I’ll send out a congrats to my sister, since I’m very proud of her surviving the shithole of a hometown I grew up in, coming out normal, and moreover, taking the plunge and moving away to DC to go to American University. Way to go Leah!

The salutatorian’s speech spoke about how she was rejected from a bunch of the schools that she had applied to. I’ll skip past the fact that someone 2nd in their class was able to be rejected from multiple universities..because that’s not the good part. The good part is the fact that she was able to spin her rejection in a way that will get her very far in life.

This girl was able to, as Chris and Tara say, “Embrace the Chaos”. She was able to describe the freedom she felt by realizing that for the first time in her life, she didn’t know. For the first time in her life, the supposedly pre-ordained future was tossed to the wind and rather than seeing the single closed door in front of her, she looked around at other opportunities that she prior hadn’t even realized existed.

I almost silently hope that this girl realizes that college is not the place for someone like her, does something incredible with her life.

Tags: graduation, embrace chaos, citizen agency

i saw these on some blog in my newsfeed the other day, but Whitney Hoffman reminded me.

Reactees are customized t-shirts printed with a slogan and a keyword that can be sent to a shortcode, and then the sender gets a message back to find out more about the message that they saw on the shirt in the first place.

I was inspired, and created a shirt for Coworking:

http://reactee.com/COWORKING to get your own, they’re only $25. I’ve updated the link to use a referral code. We receive 20% of every shirt sold, and that will NOT be going into my pocket but instead into an account that will be used to help fund Independents Hall.

Currently the keyword is set to kick back the first line from the coworking wiki:

Coworking is cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents http://wiki.coworking.info

Who knows what kind of conversation we can start with these kinds of walking billboards zooming around the place. I’m really excited to wear mine!

You can try it without a tee!

Just SMS ‘coworking’ to 41411 to get the intro text, or ’sub coworking’ to 41411 to subscribe to future sms messages. It ain’t twitter, but twitter might want to take some cues on groups from these guys. They set up a pretty flexible admin!

also, I don’t make a dime off referral sales (or sales of the shirt i made). I don’t think I do, anyway.
Again: We now receive 20% of every shirt sold through this link only, and that will NOT be going into my pocket but instead into an account that will be used to help fund Independents Hall. Thanks for your support!

Tags: reactees, coworking, sms

I’ve been spending a lot of time going to and organizing meetups as I gather information, resources, and recruits for Independents Hall. I spend a good amount of time meeting people and DOING pitches (I don’t cognizantly pitch anymore…it’s become a bi-product of conversation). What I HAVEN’T done is been able to spend a ton of time listening to other peoples’ ideas and providing ideas and input on them.

This past week I got to participate in my first “Purple Cow Brainstorming Circle”. The Purple Cow, by Seth Godin, inspired the event. Seth is known as a “change agent”, and it makes sense to me that his type of thinking would inspire this type of event. This local group is organized by Mimi Somsanith and Jen Antonio-Lim, both of whom I met a few weeks back at CreativeCamp.

So what is a Purple Cow Brainstorming Circle? We’ll…it goes like this:
Each participant gets 3 minutes to pitch an idea. At the end of the pitch they cite 3 things that they need in order to reach the goal of the pitch, as well as 3 skills that they have, as an individual, to offer back to the group. Then there is a 3 minute Q&A session. And on to the next pitch-er. Once everyone has gone, the entire group gets to spend time talking with each other, extending conversations from ideas that came to them during the pitch-sessions. The ideas, which have been written down and posted on the wall by the moderators, also provide a venue for comments from people, and even a place to stick your business card if you want to help the person achieve their idea!

This “Idea-Pitch Open Mic night” allows for a rapid-fire version of what I’ve seen go on at the Barcamps I’ve attended. Ideas fly back and forth, but without a structure…one discussion may get stomped by another, and that original idea may get lost into an abyss of good ideas. This lets everyone get their stuff out, really fast, and save the “good stuff” (some may view it as side conversation or cruft…but thats where the real value in these events is) for last.

At any rate, the event was a TON of fun. I met some cool people who were totally into Independents Hall, and got a chance to hear some other peoples’ good ideas. It’s so great to see that other people are cranking out good ideas here in Philly, and a venue like the PC Brainstorming Circle encourages people to follow through on them.

I may suggest that we try some of the rapid-fire Idea Pitch stuff at Junto next week, depending on who shows up and where the conversation goes. I encourage people to check it out and come visit the next one (I’ll post the date as soon as I know about it), and if you’re not in Philly, try out the format in your city!

Technorati Tags: conference, conversations, Independents Hall, purple cow, seth godin