dangerouslyawesome

This is not fatblogging, I swear.

The last 3 years have been good to me in a lot of ways, but I have’t been good at taking care of myself. Among my 2010 promises that I made (not so much a resolution, but really a promise) was to take some time to refocus on me.

So far, 2010 has been the year that I wanted it to be. Indy Hall has continued to grow, but also mature. As such, I’ve been able to focus on some other ventures that are fulfilling in many new ways.  I’m focused on products again, building both technologies and businesses. I’ve focused on teaching. I’ve focused on writing.

I’ve focused on my mental health. Learned what I cared about. Who I cared about.

I’ve taken time for myself.

I’m relatively healthy considering my aversion towards doctors. I only really get sick once, maybe twice a year.

But my body health – my physical fitness – has deteriorated. Recently, I dared to step onto a scale, to find that I weighed nearly 20 lbs more than the last time I was unhappy with my weight. So with 5 months left in 2010, I’ve committed to getting back under 200 lbs.

Last Monday was the “Geek Fitness” edition of Refresh Philly. I hadn’t been to a Refresh in some time, and this seemed like a topic I should pay some attention to.

I left Refresh with some new perspective on how – and why – I could make this happen. Here’s what I’m up to one week later:

Lose It or Lose It

I don’t think I’ve ever shouted from the hilltops how awesome Randy Schmidt is, which is a damn shame. I’ve actually known Randy since college, though we didn’t really get to know each other until the early Indy Hall days. Apart from being one of Indy Hall’s longest standing members (Randy’s participation and support dates back to the “Cream Cheese Sessions” of 2007), but he’s also one of my favorite success stories of complete career reorientation within the Indy Hall community.

But that story’s for another day.

Randy’s a problem solver. Lose It or Lose It was his solution to his own problem – his inability to stay motivated through losing weight. He found a pretty fascinating combination of reminders and the association of money to goals that’s not purely incentive based. Quickly, here’s how it works.

1. You choose a 10 week plan – 1, 2, or 3 lbs per week
2. You pony up an uncomfortable amount of your own money
3. Lose It or Lose It combines accountability friends, daily SMS or email reminders to you and your accountability friends), and weekly required weigh-ins to keep you on track
4. Each week you’re required to weigh in on the same day. Each time you miss your weigh in for any reason, you lose 10% of the money you put up at the beginning. If you weigh in but miss your weight goal, you lose 5%. If you weigh in successfully, you lose nothing!
5. At the end of 10 weeks, any money not lost in the weekly weigh-ins is returned, in full, including the paypal transaction fees.

There’s some neat things working here:

A set schedule with an attainable goal

When I business coach, one of the most common lessons I teach is to set realistic goals. There’s more value in setting goals that you can achieve than just achieving them, there’s also the emotional momentum of successfully achieving a goal. LIOLI gives you a reasonable schedule with a fixed end point, along with a realistic goal – just a couple of pounds per week – to set help you up for successive wins and keep you motivated.

Accountability

Randy’s Refresh presentation was actually more about how LIOLI takes on the human accountability factor that normally undermines diet partners. Unlike the person you’ve asked to keep you on track, the website is relentless and uncaring. Mostly because it, itself, isn’t trying to lose weight. But rather than remove the human element COMPLETELY, it stacks the automated (but friendly and often funny) reminders up against those human accountability friends as well…in fact it urges them to keep you on track. That’s right, your friend gets reminders to remind you to keep working at your goal.

Meta.

Money

I waited a long time to sign up for LIOLI because I had basically convinced myself that I’m not motivated by money. Then, after hearing Randy talk about it, I realized that LIOLI doesn’t motivate you with money, it helps you use your own money as a bargaining chip. That is, when you’re bargaining with yourself.

The trick to LIOLI is to put up an uncomfortable amount of money. Not an amount of money that risks you losing your home, or putting your life at risk. But an amount that you’d certainly prefer not to part with. And what you really need to consider is that the total amount isn’t the important part – but instead, the 5-10% amounts you risk to lose each week.

Basically, each week becomes it’s own mini-game. The amount at risk each week needs to be enough to force you to think, “is this decision, which is likely to hurt my chances of weighing in at my goal, worth $x?”

So I put up $1000 to lose 2lbs per week, or 20 lbs. That made each week worth $100, and each time I slipped on my weigh in target, I had $50 at stake. That’s enough to make me think “that burger’s not worth $50″. Or “I don’t need to spend $50 to have another beer”. Or “I could skip my run/ride, but that could cost me $50″.

I’m lucky to be at a point in my life and career where $50 isn’t going to break me, but its still enough money to make me associate my decisions with a value. If the outcome of decision doesn’t match the value, it’s an easy decision to make.

I’m not winning $1000 at the end of my 10 weeks. I’m using money as a bargaining tool with myself to help me make better decisions. It was my money to begin with, after all.

So, does it work?

Well, over 1000 lbs have been lost by LIOLI users. Almost 70 of those lbs were Randy’s. And by years end, I’m hoping that at least 40 more will be mine. I’m already ahead of schedule, but they say the first few weeks are the easiest.

Eating Better

I’m stating the obvious, but it’s not really something I’ve ever made a conscious effort to do. Luckily, it is an easy change, because based on the fact that I eat out almost every meal, all I needed to do was remove a few things completely from my eating options and add a few new ones.

I’m using an iPhone app called Lose It to enter my exercise and estimate my calorie intake. Not knowing how poorly I ate before makes measuring the differential tough, but simply paying attention to what I’m eating is already making a huge difference. If something I’m thinking about eating is worse for me than I realized, I go into the self-negotiating mode for LIOLI. That’s not to say I can’t eat anything I want, but I know what the outcome could be based on my decision.

A trip to the farmers market on Sunday to pick up some fruit for snacks, and another trip to Whole Foods for some easy-prep meals that aren’t full of crap means I can still eat well without sacrificing too much convenience, simply by knowing that my options are better than the ones I was giving myself before.

Much like LIOLI’s weekly required checkpoints, using Lose It on my iPhone is helping me learn my eating patterns so I can make smarter decisions about what and where I eat.

Exercise

Honestly, I’ve never been one to exercise. It’s never appealed to me. Getting sweaty, grunting, being in pain? Lame. I’m also not motivated by team sports, so I’ve never been much of an athlete. So something had to change.

Knowing full well that diet changes alone weren’t going to lose me 2 lbs a week, I picked a few variations to compile an exercise routine that I could manage to keep up with.

C25k

I was honestly motivated by the Refresh talks about running, so much that I convinced myself that I could do it too! Unfortunately I was quickly reminded how hard it is on my flat feet, and that it probably wasn’t the most sustainable way for me to maintain a daily workout schedule. That said, I found the Couch to 5k program approachable, and something I’m still going to try to work through.

I’m not really interested in actually running the 5k, but I like the program from the perspective that it assumes that I’ve never run before, and starts there. The first weeks runs are actually over 50% walking. But I’m still out for 30+ minutes, sweating, and “feeling the burn”. The part that sucks is later in the day when my ankles are wobbly and sore. If I can’t recover by the next time I’m planning on running, I’ve undermined my whole plan.

There’s a sweet C25k iPhone app, though, that gives you audio cues when to switch your running and walking, and it even lets you play iTunes or Pandora in the background. If you ARE a runner and want to train up to a 5k (or a 10k), there’s an app for that (10k version).

15 miles to 30 Rock

Since running isn’t a daily option (and I decided to start this whole routine in August of one of the hottest summers in Philadelphia’s recorded history), I’ve decided that going to the gym and using some cardio equipment is completely acceptable.

Treadmills give me the same problems as running outside, except it’s boring. So I took a spin on one of the stationary bikes. A few things I really like about the bike:

1. I’m not on my feet. My arches thank me.
2. Milage motivation – being able to ride 15 miles in the same amount of time I can barely run 2 miles is just more motivating to me.
3. I don’t feel the need to stop. Unlike running, where I need to stop because my ankles hurt, I can power through a consistent 40 minute ride even up the virtual “hills” the training program provides.
4. I can watch 30 Rock

That last one’s a little weird, but I was reading about workout routines and saw someone who stopped letting themselves watch certain shows except for when they were working out. Earlier this summer I decided to catch up on 30 Rock, which I’d never seen but heard was really funny. Season 1 had me hooked.

Before I could buy Season 2, Hulu sent me an invite for Hulu Plus. This gave me full access to their catalogue (which happens to include all seasons of 30 rock), but it also lets me watch them on my iPhone/iPad.

So I promised myself that I’d get through 30 rock, 2 episodes at a time, but ONLY while I’m on an exercise bike.

Those 40 minutes whiz by. It’s like taking a 10-15 mile bike ride with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin every morning. It’s awesome.

And when I’m done with 30 Rock, I can pick another series I’ve been meaning to catch up on…I can even up the ante to 30 minute shows, and documentaries. Who said exercise equipment had to be boring!!

P.S. The music they play at my Gym is so bad. SO bad.

Daily Mile

A social network for working out. Not only did it seem counter-intuitive (social networks are places to sink time sitting on your duff, not being active), but it sounded awful. I imagined a virtual locker room full of athletes, slapping each others’ asses and shouting lame motivational chants at each other.

But Daily Mile turned out to be something else altogether. In fact, its kinda like having workout buddies without having to smell them. You can pick up tips (and even exercise routes) from other people that live near you. The amazing part to me was how many people I knew who were already on it. People I knew from Indy Hall, or just the general geek scene in Philly. I was welcomed warmly as I began to log my workout progress. In just a week, seeing miles rack up from runs and rides is pretty cool. I’ve embedded a Daily Mile widget in my blog sidebar too, more for tracking those miles than anything else.

Other relative stats, like “donuts burned” and “times around the world” are pretty exciting…while the numbers are low now they are the ones I’m kinda excited to see climb.

I won’t be consistently blogging about my progress, though I will be keeping all of my records public on Lose It or Lose It and Daily Mile, etc.

Thanks to all of my friends, especially Roz Duffy and Randy Schmidt, for the encouragement, support, and inspiration to cap off my year of refocusing on me in a really important and positive way.

Last week, Cadu de Castro Alves of Bees Office in Rio de Janeiro (!!!) noticed that it was nearly the 5 year anniversary of when Brad Neuberg announced coworking at The Spiral Muse in San Francisco.

My how we’ve grown since then. Thanks go out to Brad for not only trying something, but then sharing. He took his idea and what he’d learned, and shared it. And so it began.

Other than some Tweeting, I unfortunately didn’t get to do much to celebrate this year, but plan to change that in years to come. That doesn’t mean I didn’t take some time to reflect on what it meant for Brad to recognize and propose a simple solution to a problem that many of us have experienced first hand:

Traditionally, society forces us to choose between working at home for ourselves or working at an office for a company. If we work at a traditional 9 to 5 company job, we get community and structure, but lose freedom and the ability to control our own lives. If we work for ourselves at home, we gain independence but suffer loneliness and bad habits from not being surrounded by a work community.

From Brad’s first writings about coworking, it was clear what this was about:

choice.

Most recently, Coworking Seattle (one of the first, if not the first, regional organization of coworking efforts) wrote a definition that is among the best I’ve seen for coworking:

Coworking is about making the personal choice to work along side other people instead of in isolation.

Look familiar?

It’s on days like this, through ideas like this, that I’m reminded how lucky we are to have people paving the way for us who wish to recognize that we DO have the ability to choose, from where we work to who we work with, and we’re total dummies if we’re not taking advantage of those abilities.

I’ve spent more time involved in coworking than I did in college, and I’m 100% confident that my life has improved more from being involved in this network, this community of people, than anything else I’ve experienced in my 27 years.

I’m thankful for those who I call mentors, colleagues, and friends through this process: Brad Neuberg, Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, Geoff DiMasi, Tony Bacigalupo, Matthew Wettergreen, Jacob Sayles and Susan Evans. This short list is barely representative of the number of people I’ve learned from, though.

Every day, in some ways more enjoyable than others, I learn something on the coworking google group. When I joined, that group was less than 100 people. Today that group is subscribed to by over 2700 people from around the globe.

And the members of Indy Hall, who saw their own story and vision in mine, and decided to join us on this crazy ride. From one crazy voice to over 100, the stories told by Indy Hall members about this time in our lives are stories to be cherished, as I’m confident we’re doing something unique, remarkable, special, and amazing.

And like Brad, we’ll continue to share. Our successes, our failures, our ideas, our opinions, and our insights.

On this August 9th, and every August 9th from here on out, I look forward to reflecting and remembering the history of where one of the most important groups of people in my life came from.

Thanks Brad. Thanks Everyone.

The power of coworking is not in the facilities, because those elements are commodities and have forever decreasing value. Scaling facility up is relatively easy…you can just throw more money at it. And despite how you might feel about funding your efforts, money is and will always be the easy part.

Culture, on the other hand – which is the glue of what holds a strong coworking community together – is difficult. Especially through fast growth, which is often desired to help achieve an end like scaling the space and the facility.

Culture is composed of norms, which can be established by anyone within that culture. They can be dictated – which tends to be the way offices are run. In coworking, something different can happen.

One of the things that fascinates me about coworking spaces is that we have the ability to provide a workspace, a context that most people are relatively familiar with, and actually REMOVE the rules for how it is “supposed” to work.

Ask yourself, “What happens in an office where nobody tells the workers how to act? How to interact? What to do? Where to go? Who to talk to?”.

There’s some chaos, but chaos is good.

I learned to Embrace the Chaos from early coworking founders like Chris Messina and Tara Hunt. Our human tendencies are to control chaos, and put things in order. By avoiding that, and allowing order to emerge a bit more organically, new behavioral patterns emerge. These patterns, in the context of coworking, are the things that our members love and subsequently, the things that the press likes to write about: collaboration & work exchange. Increased charity and giving. Better support for local industries. Happier people. Increased business foundation. Camaraderie and friendship. We’re building blank canvases for work patterns to emerge from, and I think that the work patterns that exist when nobody told them to are the most interesting and the most sustainable to practice.

Those elements don’t truly emerge until someone gets out of their way and simply lets them. Telling people to collaborate is a lousy way to have it happen, because it’s always dependent on you telling them. Creating opportunities for people to discover collaboration on their own terms creates a rolling effect that’s difficult if not impossible to stop once it starts.

I like to look at coworking and ask:

Are you contributing to the development of an ecosystem – one dependent on the health of its host – or a community – a self sustaining organism that while it may have a figurehead, could live on in other capacities without you?

All of that said…the question at hand is: what are the challenges to growing/scaling, and how do you overcome them?

The interesting thing is that these same elements that provide a very strong cultural base for a coworking community can also pose challenges as you grow. But the results of overcoming those challenges are richer than if the barriers weren’t there to overcome in the first place.

Consider this essay by Michale Lopp (of Rands in Repose). In it, he talks about a pickup hockey game played by Netscape employees every weekend for 14 years. A game with only 3 simple rules. Unwritten rules, but understood rules.

Rather than referee every game and start by reminding everyone of the rules, they just played. If someone new joined the game, and disobeyed one of the rules, it was up to one of the other players to let them know the rules, and then they could play on.

That is, until, a larger group with its own critical mass came in all at once. In one game, more arguments and fights, occurred than ever had in the history of the game.

Its not because that group was unnecessarily feisty, but because it’s much harder to grow a group that’s built on cultural norms – like the rules of the pickup game or the interactions of a coworking space – when lots of new people show up at once.

So what do we have at our disposal within our various coworking communities?

First, we have our membership. Existing membership is the foundation of your culture, not you. If they want something to change, its best to embrace the chaos and let it change, for the better. Making sure that existing members are having opportunities to build strong relationships is key, because they’ll be there to defend the cultural norms important to them.

On the Coworking Google Group, some people have made recent mention of “Town Hall” meetings and members lunches. These are excellent for building relationships because they allow coworkers to interact with each other with the context of membership but without the context of work. That means they are not worried about interrupting or otherwise inconveniencing each other.

Every time Indy Hall has deviated from a focus on helping create these contexts, and at the same time experienced a growth spurt in membership, we have had issues. Some can be small, like a noticeable increase in people who come in, put on their headphones, work all day without talking to anyone, and then going home. Others can be large, like the introduction of a disruptive member. Truly toxic things, like poorly ending collaborations and even theft, are more likely to occur when people aren’t on the same page with what to expect from one another.

If you don’t know what “normal” looks like in a given culture, how are you supposed to know if something is wrong?

When the community grows quickly but nobody is there to introduce the newbs to the cultural norms, the “hum” of a coworking space – the thing that gets most people excited but they can’t quite put their finger on – tends to decrease in volume. I’ve seen it repeatedly times, and not just at Indy Hall. I’ve seen it happen on the coworking e-mail list as it has grown from less than 100 people to over 2500.

Consider your coworking efforts like mini-societies, and consider the challenges of scaling ANY society when looking for solutions.

In the last 4 years, I’ve come up with some pretty wacky ideas for how to get IndyHall into the brains of more people and, more importantly, the coworking concept into the mindshare of the ever-changing workforce.

I’ve noticed a relatively typical trend in that the kind folks who operate places where coworking takes place seem to struggle with how to market it and build a sustainable operation to support it.

I’ve been guilty of parroting the “build the community first” as the solution to nearly every problem that brand new coworking spaces encounter. It’s not a silver bullet, and it’s not meant to be. What it does is put the person who’s in the leadership role in the right state of mind – that of a leader and not just a proprietor - of the community space they’re about to attempt to operate. Being in that state of mind puts you in the most advantageous place to solve the typical, un-special problems that you’re bound to come across. That makes solving the weird, hard problems your focus. And if you give it enough time, they will show up.

But that’s not the point of this post. Lets say you’re doing a great job of developing the community before you’ve even got a space, and now you want to start converting those people to paying members so you can support a home for them to work in.

Freemium doesn’t work with coworking.

Free trials are an epidemic with new coworking entities.

It seems to make some sense. Coworking is a new concept, so charging a new member-potential to try something new raises the barrier far too high for them to walk in the door at all.

Except now you’ve created a new problem for yourself. That member-potential has significantly diminished value associated with what you just provided them. How are you supposed to charge them for the same thing the next time they come in?

In most cases, free coworking is being offered by prepubescent coworking spaces. Those coworking spaces lack the critical mass of smart, interesting, creative people that represent the primary attraction for most of the members they don’t have yet. Once you have that, it’s easier to diminish the value a little bit because you’re starting from a much higher offering of value.

But if your goal is to get people in the door that will stick around and help you sustain the business that will operate their clubhouse, you’ve gotta charge from day 1.

Case Study – The Free Trial of Doom

I got a panicked email from a coworking space owner who I’ve corresponded with a fair amount in the past, and I have full confidence is in this for all of the right reasons. The space was only a few months old, but she felt her runway shortening and was concerned about their member acquisition rates. 8 members had joined in 3 months (which, by the way, isn’t that awful when opening a space with 0 members). She was doing all of the things I typically prescribe: get out there and meet your potentials. Find ways to support them. Get them involved. Here was an excerpt from the email:

Many come and try out the space (we offer a one week free trial) but they dont come back, sometimes even after the first day. They all say they love it, the vibe is great, etc., but wtf. For the life of me, I don’t get it. We follow up, send emails, and even anonymous surveys to figure out what we are doing wrong, and people usually respond with either “it’s too far” or, “I absolutely love your space, and will sign up soon.” Soon. Soon doesn’t come soon enough. Rent in our area is high, and even though we got an AWESOME deal on our rent, we aren’t anywhere near break even.

How many times I’ve heard this isn’t a number I care to count, and it breaks my heart.

We offer a one week free trial. Kiss of death.

My response included the following:

A one week free trial is WAY too much. In fact, I don’t believe in free trials at all. You’re devaluing your Workspace before people even walk in the door by making it free. Don’t be afraid to exchange money for goods and services. It’s the only hard rule of business You’re using free space as a “bell and/or whistle” to get people in the door, but it gives them zero reason to stick around. If you can’t get them hooked in an hour, you’re not going to get them hooked in a week.

She took my response to heart and immediately made some changes. Among them was dropping the free week trial.

A few weeks later, I got a follow up:

…over the past week and a half, we’ve gotten 13 new members!!!! I guess I may have spoke to soon… not to mention that a one day trial as opposed to one week has made a HUGE difference! People come in, love it, and sign up!

In 10 days she had more than doubled (nearly tripled) membership growth that had previously taken almost 10x that long to achieve.

These specific results are admittedly anecdotal, and your milage may vary, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of course correction.

I also included:

There’s nothing [inherently] sticky about that onboard process that you described. Show up … for free, and then a wishy-washy “I’ll sign up when its right for me”.

Not only does charging from day one give us the ability to maintain value from the moment the member-potential walks in the door, but it provides us with an extremely effective conversion point. It works like this.

Your first day is $25. But if you decide to sign up that day, we’ll happily apply that $25 towards whatever level of membership you’re interested in!

Which works nicely when our basic membership is $25, the same price as our drop in day. So you essentially get 2 days for the price of one just for signing up, and then your 2nd day lets you explore Indy Hall as a member, rather than a drop-in.

Also, because we have the aforementioned critical mass of smart, interesting, creative people, the rate that drop-ins sign up for ANY level is extremely high. We convert our paying drop-ins at a rate of 2:1. That is, for every TWO people who drop in, ONE of them typically joins at some level of membership. At our spring 2010 drop-in rates, that’s a relatively consistent 10 new members a month, and the numbers only climb as our presence grows in our region.

Other things to consider

• Not charging for drop-ins (who contribute relatively less) for the access to space that you charge to members (who contribute relatively more) is disrespectful to the people who pay their hard earned money and contribute
• What kind of people continually use something that provides value and are OKAY with not paying for it? Now compare that with people who happily pay for the things that make their lives better. Who would you rather spend your time doing business next to?

So free is bad?

Absolutely not. But it’s unwise in an early stage business to give ANYTHING away that you wouldn’t otherwise charge for. Instead, give away things that cost you nothing!

• Run free events and make them awesome and open to anyone. Work with local businesses as sponsors. Find a local bar or restaurant and make them your watering hole. They’ll appreciate you consistently bringing them customers, and you’ll love having a place you can walk into and have a good chance of bumping into someone you know.
• Partner with other local organizations and cross promote ideas, events, and opportunities when your core values align. Don’t be a logo slut: make sure partnerships are mutually beneficial, and you’re giving with purpose.
• Share knowledge. Collective knowledge is at the core of coworking and a great way to get people in the mindset of sharing is to lead by example. What have you learned that you can give away and will be interesting and of value to your member-potentials. Who else has interesting valuable things to share, and what formats can you help provide for sharing that?
• Start or support a local Jelly! Many have said that Jelly is a gateway drug to coworking, but I’ve discouraged coworking spaces from hosting Jelly in their spaces for all of the reasons I’ve outlined in this piece. Instead, participate in a local Jelly as members of your coworking space and go with the intent to meet people, not with the intent to recruit. Help a Jelly get started, but I wouldn’t run your own. Heck, even send the people who don’t want to pay for your membership to a Jelly as a free coworking alternative. Let them get hooked on a free version of coworking…there’s a great chance they may end up back on your doorstep wanting “Jelly Everyday” and decide to try out that membership after all.

P.S. Hey Alex, what about offering TOTALLY free coworking all day, every day?

That’s another post, another day.

Over the weekend, and late into Sunday night, I was scrambling to get some software put together to host ~50 people over the next 12 weeks. More on why I was scrambling another time.

Today, I want to take you on a trip. Hold on.

Rewind.

Late last year, Amy Hoy and I decided that it was long time that we sit down and actually do something together. Despite having been friends for a number of years, having supported and unstuck each other numerous times, and even working in close proximity, we hadn’t really worked together.

Amy had a landslide 2009. Setting the personal goal to “quit consulting” and live on revenue from products and services, and she nearly made it. No small feat, but she also decided to share her story on a 3 hour conference call back in December.

The feedback after her conference call from the participants was “we want more” on how to hustle our way to independence. Quite a call to action.

While visiting Amy and Thomas over new years, we postulated how we might finally work together, taking the call of “we want more” and blending it with my year of Unstick.me sessions, and came up with a course.

Rewind.

I’m a college dropout. I don’t hide this fact, I’m not proud nor ashamed. It was a decision, and I stand by the fact that I made the right one. College wasn’t the right fit for me, mostly because I had different aspirations. I didn’t want a job, I wanted to work. I didn’t believe in the business theories that were being taught. I couldn’t stand 10+ year old technology courses. I couldn’t handle apathetic professors (and misdirected students). I couldn’t operate in the bureaucracy. I didn’t understand theory without application and context. I valued fun over anything else.

Drexel University just wasn’t the place for me at the time.

That said, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for education. Mostly, alternatives.

See, I love to learn. And I’m lucky as a duck that I’ve got a bunch of crazy-smart friends, mentors, and peers to learn from.

Fast forward.

I’ve long believed that there’s a better way to educate than piling ideas on a person, than filling a person with facts. One of my best friends in the world and one of the smartest dudes I know, Matthew, is an actual professor at Rice University.  At SXSW, he expressed concern that the world was quickly filling with people who knew ABOUT a lot of things, but didn’t know a lot of things. Information vs. Knowledge. The Wikipedia generation, if you will.

I have to agree with the sentiment.

A generation of people who are full of good ideas, but lack the skill to synthesize, to make the rubber meet the road.

That skill is teachable, though.

Creating these people is the job of education, formal or otherwise.

Rewind.

So in Vienna, Amy and I talked about what specific powers of synthesis we might be able to help people with. We’d both launched a number of products, services, efforts, etc over the years prior, and found ourselves often mentoring first time “shippers” on getting from an idea to an actual viable product worth their time creating. And the “Zero to Launch” course was born.

Covering the walls of their home office in Vienna, Amy and I storyboarded out a number of our experiences, and the lessons we’d learned. We crafted the story arc, the consistencies across experiences, that helped us succeed. We refreshed our notes on what had inspired us. On how and what we’d learned.

And we put together the a 12 week course to help others do the same.

The Pragmatic & Profitable Approach to Ideas (like therapy for your dreams)

Dig Deep: Doing the Research (get real, learn what ideas to steal)

Your Idea’s Darwin Test (will it get kicked off the island, aka go broke?)

Define Your Shippability (how to determine your minimum viable product)

Create your Roadmap (without one, how could you drive forward?)

Look for Shortcuts (they always pay off)

Carve out Your Audience (do it now!)

The Price is Wrong (and how to make it right)

Maintaining Momentum (with a “day job”; without strangling yourself)

Talking about Yourself (you gotta do it)

Keep Your Cool (again with the no strangling)

Your First Launch (how to run it, & the aftermath)

Fast forward.

This week, we kicked off that course with just over 50 students from around the world. We’re conducting the course 100% virtually, with a composite of weekly lessons, workbooks, reviews, conference calls, and forum discussions. Already, its clear that we have an incredible 12 weeks ahead of us, and I’m beyond excited to be involved in education again.

The Future

It would be arrogant of me to think that what we’re doing is the future of higher education. But I think what we’re doing is a part of it, not replacing it.

Thinking back to University of the Arts’ President Sean Buffington’s Ignite Presentation about making (art)work that matters and “what does it mean to educate an artist”. Sean theorizes that there’s a need for education to update itself to for the medium it is attempting to teach. Most importantly, Sean suggests that you can equip students with the ability to learn for themselves.

That’s the entire approach to helping the students taking Amy and my Year of Hustle: Zero to Launch course: guiding our class towards the rubber meeting the road, with the outcome being not another information-saturated member of society, but instead, a knowledgeable and empowered  contributor to society, and hopefully, a life of success.

For the last few months, I’ve been quietly been working on a new project. Actually, I’ve been working on the contents of the project for over 3 years now, but recently, I’ve been plugging it into a new framework.

Back in the fall, I was approached by David Hauser from Grasshopper with interest in helping him set up a new coworking space in Boston. David’s whole “empowering entrepreneurs to change the world” value statement for Grasshopper is clear alignment with coworking, far beyond the business proposition. Furthermore, on a very personal note, he might be the only person I’ve met in business who harps on core values as an operating model more than me.

I dig that.

David and I quickly made it past the superficial conversations about coworking spaces and got to talking about community, people, empowerment, higher purpose, and the big questions like “why” we do things the way we do them at IndyHall. David’s eyes went wide and I watched him “get it”. He said, “more people need to hear this, why haven’t you written it down?”

Fact is, I have written it down. Most of it, in fact. The problem was that it was all over the place. Blog posts on this site as well as IndyHall.org. Literally hundreds of posts to the Coworking Google Group. But no cohesive story arc unless you got me in a room and put a beer in my hand.

So we decided that it was valuable enough for David to get behind the project, not just for himself, but with the goal to create something that would help many others kick ass. The end result of the project be something with larger value.

And so, I began writing The Coworking Book.

Now before I go on to post the excerpt, I’m sure you’re asking,

“But what about everybody else that’s written about their experiences? Who the hell are you, one guy, to tell this story by yourself?”

If you’re not asking that question, you should be, because I asked myself the question long and hard before deciding how this project would take form.

Instead of thinking I could take on that task, I instead set out to write the framework. That’s it. I’m building a framework that we can hang ideas from, and to guide people in to coworking from whatever vantage point they are coming from.

I’m writing what I hope is a cohesive story arc that makes the content interesting, valuable, and somewhat linear. And I’m telling it from a single lens: my own.

That’s version 0.1. The alpha. My version. That’s what I’m releasing this week at SXSWi. I’m going to be taking time out of my schedule while in Austin to put the finishing touches on the work I’ve done so far, and to follow my own advice - just effing ship.

Beyond alpha

My plans for next steps are to begin something that begins to look like the communal composition of some of the oldest texts in history. I’ve decided that within the margins of each paragraph of each chapter of version 0.1, I’m inviting people to tell their stories.

Through their own lense.

There are going to be holes that need filling in. I need you to patch them. There are going to be disagreements on points of execution. We need to discuss them.

But in the framework I’ve constructed, there are always decision-guiding tools to make resolving disagreements simpler and to remove ego, including mine, from the end product.

All of the discussion that goes on in the margins will then be folded in to the primary text with some guidance and support of others. What others? My hope is that some people step up from the margins and want to become co-curators.

Addendum: For the coders in the room, think of the main text as the trunk, the commentary as patch submissions/pull requests, and the curators as “core team”. And lets not forget the ever growing user base that ultimately will want to use this tool because it helps them kick ass.

The tool we’ll be using to collaborate is actually built on top of WordPress, it’s called Digress.it. It’s a plugin + a theme, and while it’s not perfect, it’s pretty badass. This sort of interface was largely inspired by the DjangoBook, the official book for the Django Project, a framework for the programming language Python. What’s important to me is that people can comment with accountability and attribution on every post AND every paragraph individually, and this tool gives exactly that.

On Curation

Dave Troy has been talking about a “curatorial economy” on his blog, and its an idea that I like. Curatorial is not inherently exclusionary. It does, however, push for people to step up to plate and act. The ones who are considered are the ones who act. It’s not the same as a “do-ocracy”, where those who do get to make the decisions. This is about guiding but not imposing.

Curation is about making a choice, but with shared and articulated vision.

And that is my hope for the final product of The Coworking Book. That through a number of iterations, and communal curation, the work product that emerges is a clear, high value, extremely accessible utility for people interested in the past, present, and future of work.

Lots of commas in that last sentence. Sorry about that.

About the content

This part is important: forever, each version of the text, and the related comments and discussions in the margin, will remain online for free. Searchable. With 100% attribution.

At some point, we’ll need to “release”. Versions will each have a roadmap, with a set of goals that it needs to accomplish. When we achieve those goals, the book will be released.

When we reach a 1.0 version, we’ll only have a snapshot. It won’t be the bible, because it will continue to evolve. But we’ll have a snapshot, something that’s missing from the history books for our movement and our community.

The important part is this: we don’t stop at version 1.0. We don’t ever stop. We keep telling this story, and evolving the text. The growth and change in the sphere of coworking has changed immensely in only 3 years, and the change is accelerating. Lets snapshot things now so we can continue to measure that growth moving forward.

And without further adieu, I present you with an excerpt from the chapter “Finding your Coworkers”.

FIGHT CLUB

If you’ve seen the movie “Fight Club”, the main character who’s known as “Jack” is a hypochondriac who attends self help groups to feel better about himself. Demented and selfish intentions aside, something interesting happens to Jack: he meets Marla Singer, another self-help group junkie. In order to not appear awkward in front of their group members, they decide to split up the nights.

There’s a good chance you’re going to find a similar situation along your journey of community exploration. Except this time, this works to your advantage instead of being a detractor like in Jack and Marla’s relationship.

When you start recognizing people at multiple events, or on multiple lists…you’ve found another connector.

Connectors are the most important people in any community building effort because they are catalysts for speeding up your process. If a person is already dedicated enough to be participating in multiple events and groups, it’s not a reach to think they might want to team up with you to more efficiently map the topography of events and activities going on. They might even be able to help find more connectors.

These connectors tend to also make great leaders, and are critical to the mobilization efforts you’ll be embarking on very soon.

Over time, you will find yourself building a map of the existing communities and the active pieces of your region. Coworking can augment many of them, and they can all provide channels for potential members for your space.

More mature communities may already have these maps established, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go through this process on your own. You may uncover something that hasn’t received as much exposure as it deserves and it will go on to be one of your greatest assets once you open a space.

Hijacked shamelessly from The Middle Finger Project here in Philadelphia, here are Ashley Ambrige’s guidelines for living life instead of just living a life. It goes without saying that I believe in and adhere to all of these, with or without Ashley’s say-so.

1. True living is more than just keeping your heart beating and a roof over your head. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that is “just how life goes.” There’s way more possibilities, and, yes, IT IS WORTH GOING AFTER. Be daring.
2. Stop blowing yourself off; we get so upset when others blow off our ideas and desires, but we have no problem doing it to ourselves. Take your ideas, feelings, wants, wishes, yearns & urges seriously–those are your only true guide. Other people have no idea what’s best for you, so stop seeking their validation. Do what you need to do for you. Be confident.
3. Stop doing everything by the book. It’s time to start drafting your own revised edition. Rules don’t always exist in the name of the greatest good; more often than not, they exist because someone wants to establish or maintain power. And that’s just not a good enough reason. Be inquisitive.
4. Life is a series of choices. You choose every single direction that your life takes. Use it to your advantage. Be deliberate.
5. There will be people out there who won’t support what you’re doing. Who cares. Trust yourself more, trust others less. That includes significant others. Be brave.
6. Figure out what you value, and make the necessary changes to align your life with those values. If you value time more than money, stop working 60 hour work weeks. The only way you’ll get more time, is by doing less. It’s simple math. Be introspective.
7. Speaking of money, IT ISN’T AS IMPORTANT AS WE’RE TAUGHT TO THINK IT IS. Money comes, and money goes, and it provides little value itself until you actually exchange it for something that is valuable to you. So, ask yourself that question. What do you value? That’s where the majority of the money you spend should be going. Be prudent.
8. Having good intentions doesn’t yield results. Get off your ass and make it happen. Be zealous.
9. Life isn’t meant to be taken so seriously. In the scheme of things, if you’re going to be late to work, it doesn’t really matter. If you don’t get an A, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re proven wrong about something, it doesn’t really matter. If your house isn’t as nice as your best friend’s, it doesn’t really matter. Relax, and enjoy the ride. Think big picture, not details. Will this matter in 100 years? Be panoramic.
10. The world is not judging you as much as you think they are. Most people are too wrapped up in themselves to even notice what you’re doing. Drop the pride and have a little fun. Be lighthearted.
11. Perhaps one of the greatest goals we can seek for ourselves is exhilaration. Are you exhilarated by your life? Be stimulated.
12. When making decisions, always ask what’s more important. Thinking about canceling on an invitation to a friend’s baby shower or birthday party because you have too much work to do? Get your head out of your ass. Your friend is more important; work can always be done later. Nothing is that urgent. Relationships, however, are your foundation and you’d be lost without other human connections, so value them. And show it. Be thoughtful.
13. You don’t just need to love yourself; you need to respect yourself. You’ll garner that respect by accomplishing things you’ve set out to do. Be relentless.
14. Being content with your life and being proud to call it yours are two different things. Strive for the latter. Be courageous.
15. Last but not least, wine should be drank with meals. Preferably Argentinian Malbec. It’s freaking delicious. Be delighted.

This isn’t a new trick, but since it didn’t occur to me until just now I figured there’s a chance I’m not alone.

You know how much of a pain it is to add all of your Facebook friends to an event or page invite? Facebook seems to have done this on purpose, but nonetheless, all of my friends invite me to random stuff. Really, really random stuff.

Well, it was finally my turn to push all 969 of my facebook friends, regardless of their location, to the page for GigabitPhilly and suggest their fandom. Should be easy, shouldn’t it?

Well, if you drag this link => Annoy All Facebook Friends <= to your bookmarks bar and click it next time you’re on a screen that looks like this:

And it’ll select all of your friends, thusly:

Now, wasn’t that easy?

Some really good thoughts on Social Capital(ism) and related investment by Roger Ehrenberg came from a panel in NYC sponsored by Philly’s Goodcompany Ventures. Goodcompany CEO Garret Melby, who I enjoyed meeting after my presentation about organic team building at Entrepreneurs Unplugged back in December and spoke at Ignite earlier this week, also commented.

The full post is worth reading, but two quotes stood out to me:

…It’s an issue of how you define capital and return.

My hypothesis is that we need a whole new regime for quantifying the value of businesses that have goals other than strictly financial profit. We need hard numbers – real metrics – to demonstrate the value of initiatives that create value for society beyond the payment of staff and the generation of profits for shareholders.

But the “R” [in ROI] – the return – isn’t simply financial profit: it’s economic utility, real benefits being enjoyed by society.

This leads me to something else that I always find hard to articulate: the ROI of IndyHall, or even coworking in general.

We’ve been running IndyHall for nearly 3 years as a business for a reason, and a profitable one at that. But the metrics for ROI aren’t salient, since most of the investment has been in human, knowledge, and time capital, and the return doesn’t show up on our balance sheet. As such, Geoff and I don’t take a draw, at least not in terms of cash…because that’s not what’s we’ve invested. If there was a balance sheet for the social capital we’ve invested and seen in return, though, and we had metrics for it, we’d be able to far better express and share what we’ve accomplished.