dangerouslyawesome

A couple of weeks back, one of my clients sent me to the Engage Expo and Toy Conference in NYC to study some aspects of the online virtual world industry. I admittedly knew very little, both about the technology and the industry, but I was excited about attending a conference where it’s not the same people I always see talking about the same things they always talk about to the same people who are always listening.

Among the things that really interested me was how the toy industry runs on a very interesting set of pattern metrics called “play patterns”. In short, there are massive amounts of research put into slicing and dicing demographics into popular patterns for engagement: what kinds of things do people (not just kids) like to do, what things have them come back often (addicting) or play for long periods of time (immersive). Knowing this information and who you’re targeting helps de-risk toy design. I saw some really interesting correlations to this and marketing, but that’s for another time.

One particular panel stuck out in my notes, where moderator Nicole Lazzaro showed slides and some related theses that there were 4 keys to “fun”.

From these patterns, the elements that jumped out to me as the most concise were:

Hard Fun – Reward lies in challenge and mastery

Easy Fun – Reward lies in expressions of creativity and discovery

People Fun – Reward lies in social, peer to peer interactions

Serious Fun – Reward lies in creating value

Nicole theorizes, and goes on to explain and illustrate, how balancing these keys increases the likelihood that games are popular, fun, and ultimately create experiences worth sharing. As I’ve pointed out before, experiences worth sharing are most crucial component for effective word of mouth marketing.

Motivators

The first thing that stuck out to me was that these four keys are all rewards, and all rewards based on intrinsic motivators. For those who saw my recent Ignite Philly presentation, I brought up the notion that intrinsic motivators are extraordinary, and often overlooked in business and management.

Related, it reminded me a lot of Dan Pink’s thesis from Drive, and his TED talk, of the operators of the “new workforce”, are based in the intrinsic motivation associated with autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Seeing as how I spend far more time looking at the trends of business than of play, I realized…for me (and many others), work is a type of play.

From Nicole’s Four Keys of FUN, I’m proposing the Four Keys to Business.

1) Hard Business

There’s intrinsic reward about overcoming business challenges. This is often a ‘make or break’ attribute of entrepreneurs, business leadership, and good management.

In a recent article in Inc, Omniture founder Josh James talks about highs and lows of building the company and ultimately selling it to Adobe for a buttload of money. One of my favorite quotes from Josh:

There were times when I lay down on the floor at night, close to crying, and said, “I’m done. I can’t make payroll.” Then my wife would come over and kick me and say, “Get up and figure it out.”

One time, I got a customer to prepay us. Another time, I came into the office and said, “Oh, by the way, we’re changing payroll dates.” That bought me 10 days.

That’s hard business. That’s the reward in hard business: overcoming challenges and finding solutions.

2) Easy Business

Some people would argue that there’s no such thing as easy business. Ignoring things like “savvy” and “knack”, but still considering things like “luck”, you find yourself thinking: “How do some people make this look so easy?”. The part that they make look easy is usually an ourward expression of creativity and exploration in our business. Why is this considered “easy”? Because if you’re willing to open your mind up, the sky is the limit. True creativity and exploration means you can sidestep the constraints of reality, even if it is only temporary. Sometimes, though you realize that the constraints you thought were constraints were more in your head than anywhere else.

Easy business is letting your mind wander, but always coming back to reality with whatever you’ve found along the way.

3) People Business

Not everyone is a people person, like Tom. But business success is all about people because, lets face it, businesses are made up of people.

As rewarding as social interaction is in gaming, it is among the most universally gratifying aspects of business. Think about why coworking is a most popular trend; despite what the press wants you to think, it’s not about cheap desks. It’s about the social experience in the workplace. Coworking provides a vehicle for People Business, the social aspects to business, without  giving up independence.

I think that more people are interested in People Business than any other kind of business. The evidence for this is in the vast swaths of business networking events. For some, networking is a vehicle for business and for others, business is a vehicle for networking. One isn’t necessarily right, but the more I experience, the more I know I’ve found more effective. Being a good business person has helped me build an extraordinary network, one that I’m not sure I could have built simply by going from networking event to networking event.

4) Serious Business

Often the most discussed attribute of business is still only one part of the four keys, but it needs to be there, and that is creation of value. Since ultimately the purpose of a business is to generate revenue, the most direct path to revenue is the creation of value.

The importance of serious business, creating value, is not just to generate revenue but to find sustainability. If you’re continually creating value, you will always have the resources and the opportunities to fuel the other key aspects of business and achieve them successfully.

The real key is balance

The takeaway here is not to change your focus on business, but instead diversify and balance them. I like metaphors and similes, as many people know, so think about the keys I’ve described as literal keys, allowing you to open new doors. If you’ve only been unlocking one door, opening it, and walking through, you’re not experiencing the success in business you could be if you tried each of the different doors.

Which door will you unlock first?

Did you spend your time writing about things worth doing, or doing things worth writing about?

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

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

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

I’ve identified three distinct phases to a community marketing plan. As much as I hate speaking in absolutes, I’m confident that they need to go in this order to be truly effective.

• Listen – Turn the bullhorn around. Social Media isn’t traditional marketing with a new set of tools. Despite the fact that these tools are effective for broadcast, they’re even more effective for monitoring and listening. You need to do that first.
• Engage – First contact. This one is critical. The line to be walked is a fine one, between jumping into conversation uninvited and actually introducing yourself. Again, it’s not the fault of the tools that they are designed to encourage brief messages. Most importantly, you need first contact to come from a human, not a robot.
• Share – Now that you’ve built up some social capital by listening and then reaching out in a relevant manner, your chance to help, share, or otherwise help the community member totally kick ass comes. Don’t blow it by sharing nothing but marketing material, share things that are truly helpful. Don’t be afraid to link off site, or even better, off topic. Continue to engage as a human, while sharing an experience with a community member.

Following these three steps will help you build honest, valuable relationships with your community members, customers, and frankly…make new friends.

This process isn’t just for business, it’s for real life.

Are two words that have been bastardized into near meaninglessness (or at least misunderstanding) by marketing drones. Thank goodness Tara Hunt, in her brand new book (just released today!) “The Whuffie Factor“, has this to say:

“Openness and transparency is a great first step, often beyond what your competitors are doing, but it is equally important to take the results of that openness – the feedback and the market research – and integrate it into your product itself. This is more difficult than opening yourself in the first place because there will be a great number of conversations to respond to.”

My insanely talented (and insanely geeky) friend Bre Pettis, along with Kio Stark, drafted 12 bullet points that might help explain to you how, and more importantly why, I’m always working on something (and in most cases, more than one thing).

From Bre’s blog:

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

This is “Agile” for everybody else. What are you getting done?

I’ve had a fair amount of travel in the last 2 months, but really only one public speaking event of note. Starting now, things get crazy.

First up,

IndyHall Town Hall.

From the IndyHall website:

We’ve come a really long way in just a year and a half. We’ve connected with so many new people in so many new ways, and welcomed lots of new friends to our community. The physical space, the clubhouse, for IndyHall has been at 32 Strawberry Street for 18 months and recently we’ve found ourselves running out of desks. Unlike a gym or an airline, who can oversell and bump users, we care about our members more than anything, and are going back to our roots to figure out how to deal with this issue. Next Tuesday, March 3rd, we’ll be meeting at 32 Strawberry St at 6pm to discuss what the future of the IndyHall workspace is. Geoff and I have been working really hard to distill this issue into some key points, and talking to a lot of people about it. But we didn’t get here without everyone else’s hard work and we certainly can’t see how it makes sense to continue to grow without you. This town hall meeting is open to all IndyHall members, but also the community at large. Are you on our waiting list? Don’t miss this meeting, we want you to come be a part of our next steps. Are you someone who’s been watching us all along and wants to see what our next move could be? You’ll want to be there. Please RSVP on Facebook or by leaving a comment. We hope to see you at IndyHall. Bring your A-game. This is going to be a fun night.

This event is really important to me, and to the community, and I hope to see a lot of our supporters there.

Philadelphia Facebook Garage

The Stuzo Group is hosting the second Philadelphia Facebook Developer Garage which will focus on methods to drive sales and brand interaction for companies within Facebook.  The Philadelphia Facebook Developers Garage will be held on March 9, 2009 from 6:00 to 10:00 PM at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, 1426 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.   This event is open to the public and attendees are asked to RSVP at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=62898818432

Talking to Olivia and Gunter from Stuzo, I found out that the event is meant to be useful to agencies, developers and businesses alike. They’re going to be featuring case studies and presentations around Facebook Platform projects and businesses. There will be some news surrounding Facebook Platform (and I have to imagine Facebook Connect) from some folks from Facebook. The event is free.

Where do I fit in? Olivia and Gunter asked me to come in and be the closing keynote. The entire day will be very Facebook-focused, discussing techniques and tools, and they’ve asked me to come in and help zoom out after the day and talk about the large scope of social technology in business. I’m pretty stoked for this.

P.S. The venue at Del Frisco’s is a Bank Vault converted into a Wine Cellar. I hear it’s sick. The event will be worth coming to if only to see that, and let my awesome closing keynote be a bonus.

Watch out, Austin

It is nearly March, and that means SXSW is coming. This will be my 2nd year as a speaker at SXSW. I’m currently leading one core conversation and on one Panel.

Core Conversations: Working Alone Sucks: Join the Coworking Revolution – Saturday March 14th – 11:30am-12:30pm We’ll be holding a round table conversation with some leaders and members of the coworking community. If you’re a veteran, or a newb, this is going to be a great session to meet some folks and learn from them. Also, don’t miss the coworking meetup at the Hotel San Jose being organized by Julie Gommell of Launchpad Coworking in Austin.

Panels: You may also be interested in… – Monday March 16th – 5:30-6:30pm Drew Olanoff from Strands asked me to join Mike Hudack from Blip.tv and Trevor Legwinski from Strands on stage to talk about how recommendations online are changing how we make decisions offline. I didn’t know how I’d fit into this panel, but now that I’ve seen some of the talking points, I’m pretty excited about it. Plus, I finally get to meet Mike.

Also worth checking out is my partner-in-crime Geoff DiMasi’s panel, “Building Regional Whuffie” on Sunday, March 15th from 3:30-4:30pm. The panel ALSO features some of my other partners in various other crimes, including Tony Bacigalupo (karaoke crimes), Matthew Wettergreen (Sriracha crimes), as well as Susan Evans (from Office Nomads) and Julie Duryea (from Souk).

And that’s all in the first 2 weeks of March. Holy shit. Here goes nothing.

Last night I was at National Mechanics for the PANMA spring social, and fashionably late as usual. That didn’t keep me from staying late and having some great discussions. One of them was with Aaron “Shaggy” Hoffer-Perkins. Shaggy (best nickname ever. jinkies.) is a partner in a new startup here in Philly, and studying entrepreneurship at Temple. Turns out, Shaggy isn’t just an entrepreneur, he’s a geek who rivals my own geekdom: he’s part of a program called “The Wayfinder Experience“, which is basically a kid’s “gaming camp” that teaches team building, leadership, and communication skills through role playing games and improvisation. His tagline is “building community through play”.

LARPing meets summer camp, with a purpose. It’s ideas like this that are crazy enough to work.

Finding out more about Shaggy, he explained his background in theater, specifically improv, and that he teaches an improv class as well. I’ve always wanted to take an improv class, not that I think my communication and improvisational skills are poor, but I think it’d be a lot of fun. This is when things got interesting. Shaggy told me the 3 guidelines for improv, and how they’ve shaped him as an entrepreneur.

• Accept and Build (yes, and…)
• Make your partner look good
• Dare to be average

Accept and Build: The “yes, and…” principle is something I think I heard first from Jason Tremblay during a brainstorming session at IndyHall. The concept lets you get all of your ideas out in the open, without worrying about them being shot down or flopping. If everyone in the circle is using the “yes, and…” principle, you can be fairly confident that someone else’s riff can pick up your dud of an idea and make it a stud. This ties into the core value of openness and sharing: don’t be afraid your idea isn’t good enough to share yet. Every time I hear someone share an idea while being open to feedback, that idea comes back 10x better.

Make your partner look good: there’s a pretty obvious tie to guideline #1 here. In fact, one really doesn’t work without the other. Your partner needs to be open to being made look good, and you need to always be looking to utilize them as an out in a way that helps them look good. I also see this as a small but crucial social capital deposit: be it for your business partners, your vendors your clients, your new leads…everyone.

I don’t get the “sabotage” mentality in business. If you’re working to make everyone else look good instead of just yourself, you end up inherently look good and at the same time open the door for others to make you look good, too. Never point fingers.

Dare to be average: This one’s a bit tough to swallow, considering my mantras include “do epic shit” and “go big or go home”. But that’s not what this is about. This is about finding uniqueness in yourself, rather than going for the obvious thing that you’re 100% sure will get the laughs (or, the users, the funding, etc). By not waiting for the “perfect idea”, or for it to be “fully baked”, you let down your guard and expose some of yourself. People are mortified of having a piece of themselves in their business, and so they are reluctant to have this kind of fundamental bond with their idea. But it’s these ideas, the “first thing in your head” ideas, that will be unique because it’s you, your voice, based on your background and your experiences.

The counter-intuitiveness is that by letting yourself “be average”, you open the door to being extraordinary.

I’m a week behind on Cluetrain posts. I know. My bad.

Things have been pretty wacky at IndyHall the last few weeks, us hitting capacity on a regular basis and ultimately stressing me out about growth in a pretty big way.

I’ve been burying myself in work, partially to cope with that stress but also to get a bunch of things done, so I’m admittedly behind in the Cluetrain series again. I’ll binge again soon and get caught up, there’s no doubt about that.

In the mean time, I wanted to share a post that I wrote last year for Centernetworks.com’s Startup Tips Month. Allen had asked for some of my perspective on startup as an independent, and I got the chance to share some of my core philosophies that were born while forming and growing We Know HTML and have carried over into subsequent projects.

Allen is re-featuring the e-book he created from the month’s worth of posts from entrepreurs I’m proud to be featured among, including Tara Hunt, Pete Glyman, Shawn Ward, Ted Rheingold, and David Weekly. You can download the whole ebook, or just read my post about how to get started as an indie.

The tips I expound are:

1. Bootstrap
2. Organize and “polish” your resume and portfolio
3. Start Blogging
4. Get out in the field
5. Don’t underestimate the value of word of mouth
6. Stay horizontal for as long as it makes sense

While a lot of these tips may feel obvious, as I’ve lived them so long, I’m sure many people can benefit from my tips and the others in the series, so I’m glad Allen is re-publishing the ebook. If you’re “recently liberated”, “newly independent”, or considering a small entrepreneurial venture, I think all of these tips still apply.

Oh, and subscribe to Centernetworks.com if you dig honest, high quality content about technology and startups beyond the usual echo chambers. Allen doesn’t pay me to say nice things about him, I truly really appreciate his approach to tech journalism. Keep up the good work dude.