dangerouslyawesome

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.

How far we have come.

There was a time where I was stepping out into the world and despite the quality of the industry connections I did have, I felt very alone. I longed for a scene. Not the San Francisco tech scene. Not the New York tech scene. I longed for a scene that embraced everything that was already great about Philadelphia. The pieces were there, but they were fragmented.

2 years later, I’ve never been more sure that we’ve succeeded in catalyzing that thing that I, and many others, so disparately wanted. How we got here is a whole other story. But I wanted to share my latest excitement.

Geeks who Give is a post-Barcamp Philly brainstorm. The principle is simple, and very close to my heart:

Everyone has something to contribute. Long term goals include idea, goods & services, and resource banks from which we can draw as well as coordinating volunteer opportunities on an individual basis and organizing large scale volunteer efforts for continued organization-based support. The vision is for this to happen organically, for those things which resonate to surface, and those which don’t to naturally recede. Everyone in the community is invited to participate at whatever level they feel most comfortable — from planning & organizing outreach to attending events — to blogging, promoting and evangelizing the cause. We are more than the sum of our parts, and together, we are capable of anything.

Geeks who Give has organized their first event for this upcoming Tuesday, December 9th at National Mechanics. They will be hosting a Food Drive & Tweetup to benefit Philabundance. The event will take place at National Mechanics in Old City from 6 to 9pm.  At 7pm, local food podcasters Fork You will be giving a cooking demo with non-perishable food items. The event will be followed with everyone’s favorite, TechKaraoke at 9pm.

Admission is a minimum of 5 non-perishable food items. The food items must be packaged in boxes, cans or plastic bottles, and should not have to be refrigerated. In addition to drink specials, guests will receive 1 raffle ticket for the first 5 food items, and more tickets for additional food items. The current list of raffle prizes includes:

• Dinner with the City Paper food critic, David Snyder, PhilaFoodie,
• Dinner for Two at Fork in Philadelphia,
• A Gift Certificate and T-shirt from Tattooed Mom’s,
• Treats courtesy of Open Source Cupcakes,
• A $75 gift certificate to the Wine School of Philadelphia.

And more prizes are being added every day.

I encourage everyone to join us for this event, bring your dontations, and help out an incredibly important cause in our city.

Back in the spring, I wrote about Dave Troy organizing Social Dev Camp East, and an address of a 37 signals blog post about building web companies outside of San Francisco.

Social Dev Camp East II

I unfortunately missed the first Social Dev Camp East, though I DID finally get to meet Dave when I was in Vienna for Amy and Thomas Fuchs’ wedding back in September. Dave’s a great east coast entrepreneur and social technology developer, and I’m excited that he’s got Social Dev Camp East II coming up in just a couple of weeks.

On November 1st, a few hundred of the east coast’s finest social technologists will gather at the University of Baltimore to for a day of exchange and creation, relationship and application building alike.

There’s WAY more info on the Facebook event, and even more on the wiki. The event is fast approaching capacity, so sign up soon. If you’re in Philly and planning on going, reach out and we’ll try to carpool.

New Work City Kickoff Party

One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to be in two places at once. In the mean time, I’m planning on driving really, really fast between Baltimore and Manhattan because later in the evening on November 1st, Tony Bacigalupo and the team behind New Work City will be having a launch party to celebrate their opening of their Manhattan community-powered coworking space. I’m so excited for this because it’s such a long time coming. Just a few weeks ago Tony remained uncertain as to whether or not it could happen. Now they’ve secured desks at an office at 200 Varick St, sharing space with consulting firm element^n.

The party goes down at 8pm until “2am”, but I know what it’s like to party with Tony and doubt we’ll call it at 2. The Facebook is the place to RSVP, and you can be certain that it’s not to be missed. If you heard about the insanity that went down at the IndyHall anniversary party, a good number of the same people will be making the trip from afar. I’m quite excited. You should be too.

I hate to add to the droves and droves of commentary and confusion around the fact that our economy is, well, not doing so well.

So I’m not going to talk about it.

What I am going to talk about is my view on how it will affect me, and my corner of the industry, my friends, and my peers.

I hope that I’m not naive in my estimations, because I’m neither an economist nor have I weathered an economic downturn like this. I’m just making my own predictions based on what I believe to be true from the past experiences I do have, and the ones that I’ve observed.

Here’s one way I see this playing out, from a couple of different vantage points:

It’s pretty well accepted that the first things to be cut from the agency side of the industry are going to be: marketing budgets, and contractors. That doesn’t mean that work doesn’t exist for contractors, or that marketing doesn’t need to be done, it means that the agencies aren’t the ones that are going to be the ones in the middle.

Let’s be clear: just because the economy is in the hole DOESN’T mean that companies are going to stop selling, and advertising is part of selling. What does change is that they’re going to need to be more efficient in their expenditures, and large agencies with big overheads and process process aren’t going to fit the bill anymore. And bringing the work in house…well…we all know how that usually goes.

So back to the agencies: I firmly believed they are going to be pinched at both ends. Their clients will be looking to cut costs, and that not only puts accounts at risk but it also puts agency employees at risk. I think that this will lead to many agencies dissolving or downsizing to a core focus that is sustainable through the downturn.

In the mean time, with talent leaving the agencies (on their own or by force), that leaves a smattering of independent talent in the same arena as the companies that recently fired their expensive, lumbering agencies and are looking for a cheaper, more agile (albeit, potentially riskier) solution.

So far, so good, right? Only the most focused of agencies stick together, and the talent that’s newly independent has plenty of work available…if they know where to look, and how to get their hands on it.

That’s where…you guessed it…coworking comes in. As communities of freelancers form, the stratification of experience in freelancing within those communities becomes an asset. The experienced independents help the newbies get better at whatever they are trying to get better at, and the newbs help the experienced weather the influx of newly available work.

If constructs like coworking allow independents to be SMARTER and MORE EFFECTIVE freelancers, to bridge the harder gaps to cross when getting your legs as an independent, they have the best chance of enduring through economic crisis. In fact, the freelance market will not only survive the trying circumstances we’re in, but I think it will actually thrive.

Unless, of course, you suck. My entire thesis is based on the fact that you are good at what you do, and you focus on that. Agency or independent, this is based on your willingness to work your face off. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s massive opportunity if you’re willing to hustle and stay focused.

On the other hand, if you’ve been riding the coattails of your coworkers, or slacking off at your cushy agency job. Then the odds are…

yes. You’re completely screwed.

This is the weekend to end all weekends.

I’ve recently turned a quarter century old, and decided that it’d be appropriate to spend the weekend with good friends and full of debauchery!

The weekend begins…well…NOW, as Tara Hunt (of Citizen Space) and Matthew Wettergreen (of Caroline Collective) are both moments away from arriving in Philadelphia. There will be wining. There will be dining.

But the rest of you can join us throughout the weekend:

STRANDUP PHILLY

In a 30-second speed-dating style meetup hosted by Strands and IndyHall, you’ll have a chance to meet some of your future party-going comrades. Led by Drew Olanoff and myself, this is bound to be a good time. Come, enjoy, make friends. 6:30-7:30pm, Saturday August 30th, at IndyHall. Let us know if you’ll be joining us with your RSVP system of choice: Facebook & Upcoming.

THE PAR-TAY: INDYHALL TURNS 1.0

This party is not to be missed. We’ve all worked hard to get where we are, and one year after our grand opening, we’re celebrating with: EVERYBODY!!! Starting at 6pm on Sunday, August 31st, we’ll be taking over Triumph Brewery at 2nd and Chestnut. There will be food. There will be drinks. There will be celebrations. This party is not, I repeat, NOT to be missed. Come meet the IndyHall community, come meet your neighbors, come meet our out of town visitors. Maybe even some celebrities. Internet or otherwise. Alexis Bledell came to the Caroline Collective opening in June, so hey…anything could happen.

We’ve got visitors coming from all over the country for this one (Matthew and Tara didn’t just drop by for my birthday, after all). Please, don’t make me beg. Come to this party.

WEREWOLF

It’s been promised that there will be at LEAST one game of Werewolf this weekend. If at no other time, it will take place AT IndyHall after the party at Triumph. Why are we playing Werewolf? Because Geoff is addicted and it’s a sure fire way to attract a certain Vaynerchuk.

SEE EVERYONE THIS WEEKEND!

Somehow, the month of September has gotten pretty nuts, and it hasn’t even begun yet. Since some of you follow me, you may be interested in my whereabouts. So here’s the plan:

August 31st: IndyHall Birthday Blast

This one’s a year in the making. If you’re on or near the eastern seaboard, you should probably check this out. Sponsorships are still available, too.

Sept 4th-9th: @amyhoy and @madrobby get hitched

I’m flying to Vienna, where I’ve never been, to enjoy the company of two very good friends wedding. I will also hopefully have some time to tool around Vienna. Are you nearby? Perhaps we can meet up. Vienna twitter meetup while I’m in town? That’d be badass.

Sept 12th: I’m going to the dentist

This wouldn’t be worth announcing except you can be sure that I’ll be tweeting from the dentists chair. Last time I did that, the tweet ended up getting printed in the Orlando Sentinal. Lets see if I can get some national press this time.

Sept 16-18th: Web2Expo/Web2Open in NYC

I anticipate that I’m going to be sharing a presentation about coworking in the Web2Open with some of the NY Coworking champions. I’ll also be tooling around the conference and catching presies from some of the folks in the industry that inspire me the most. Interested in joining me? My friend Janetti hooked me up with some coupons for $100 off. Just use the code: webny08bd24. Look out for my name on the Web2Open grid, as well.

Sept 19th-21st: BlogWorldExpo

Leaving (possibly straight from) New York, I’m heading to Vegas for a reprise presentation with my buddy Jake “community guy” McKee. Jake previously was the community development manager for LEGO (how cool is that!), and last year we shared the stage at a pre-conference session at BlogWorld hosted by B5 Media about our community building efforts.

This year we were asked to return, and this time, as part of the conference’s “Bleeding Edge” track. I’m stoked about this event as it was a great time, and I made some fantastic connections.

Plus, I get to hang out with the B5 crew (read, Darcie) which always rocks.

I also want to give a major shout out to conference co-organizer Rick Calvert for helping Jake and I through a potentially confusing situation that may have comprimised our ability to attend. Without getting into details, Rick went above and beyond, and I can’t thank him enough for being such a rock star. I hope to bring that same degree of rockstar, and then some, to our presentation in Vegas.

Catch us on Saturday, 9/20 from 12:15-1:15. Our session title is: “Taking Smart Risks with your Online Personality”

“Blogging opens endless doors for exposure and growth of your identity and your brand. But someone has to forge the path to determine what might constitute too much exposure. Jake and Alex talk about some examples of openness and identity online and share some tips and examples of taking the *smart* risks when blurring the line between your work and your life”

I have discount codes available for up to 5 other registrants, 20% off. Leave me a comment or contact me if you are interested.

September 25-28th: BlogOrlando

Back for only a few days, and then back out the door again: this time, to BlogOrlando! Also a reprise event for me, Josh Hallett asked me to return and to run a session about keeping endurance in community-powered initatives. I had a BLAST at this last year, and was totally blown away by the Orlando scene. Looking forward to seeing a lot of friends again, and some crazy shenanigans with Alex Rudloff. If there are universal bucks to be had, we’ll be sure to make the most of them.

Some sort of hibernation

Holy crap. I’m tired just thinking about this. Plus, I’ve got client work along the way.

I hope to see many of you at these events, and have lots to bring back and write about on the other side.

IndyHall’s office is almost 1 year old. We signed our lease on August 10th, 2007, began occupying the space on August 13th, and over the next 2 weeks, built out our intial office. At the end of August, we threw our inaugral party.

It’s August 2008. That means we’ve been at this for a year, which still blows my mind. It’s time to celebrate.

There are 31 days from today until the end of August. In the next 31 days, we’re going to put our birthday party together, but we’re not going to do it alone. Just like IndyHall came together as a community, so will our first birthday party.

So here to explain what we’re doing is…well…me!

OK! So you have 1 week from today to give us your best connections to the raddest venues in Philly.

The constraints are:

• Hold lots of people
• Serves alcohol
• A stage/sound system would be really helpful for some of our other ideas
• Outdoor is cool, but remember the weather is unpredictable!

Send your venue connections/ideas to me or leave us comments here or on the IndyHall blog.

You have one week to complete this challenge, if you choose to accept it. Let’s make this the best birthday party ever by open sourcing it and powering it by the community that makes Philadelphia a place we love to call our home!

The meta/double negative jokes ran wild yesterday, when Philadelphia became home of the first successful FailCamp (again, with the irony).

Joining a wonderfully diverse Philly contingent were some of my best friends from around the world, including Tony Bacigalupo of New Work City in NY, as well as co-organizers Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs (in from Vienna via DC).

And for those of you in Philly and those who planned on coming from afar, but didn’t, consider yourself a successful participant of a meta-fail for failing to attend failcamp. There were a lot of you, so you weren’t alone.

When Amy and I put ourselves on the hook for this event, Amy promised that I wasn’t going to have to do much besides agree to host it at IndyHall. Honestly, she kept her promise. This event was the least work I’ve ever done to pull off a successful event, and that’s not to say that Amy did more work than I did. The fact of the matter is, the beauty of the BarCamp model meant that we could totally wing it and let the participants drive the event.

The Format

Amy and I discussed briefly the night before (yes, you read that right) a loose format for FailCamp. We started with that, and let the day take us for a ride. Since all of the participants seemed to consider the event a success, we wanted to share it for future FailCamps to spin off.

Step 1: Invite everybody. NO discrimination of business, personal, or any other kind of fail. Everyone has made mistakes, so don’t be exclusive. If your RSVP blows up, just find a bigger space. That was our plan, anyway. We had almost 40 people RSVP on upcoming, and ended up having about 60-70% of that show up over the course of the day. I think that’s a reasonable expectation from your RSVP list, so you can use that for basing expectations on. As I mentioned before, many people failed to comply with their RSVP, so account for that, but don’t hold it against them.

Step 2: Set the tone, and lay down the one and only rule Which is, “this is about your failure”. No finger pointing, no blame. We suggested, but never got to execute, on a whistle-blowing technique where if someone was finger-pointing, you shout “FAIL” as loud as you can to interrupt them. It might not be necessary, but it got the room to chuckle.

Step 3: Brainstorm/Icebreaker, or “Lend me your fail” We kicked things off by brainstorming categories within which fail tends to occur. In a matter of minutes, we kicked off with:

• Personal
• Business
• Financial
• Romantic
• Technical
• Spiritual
• Health/Physical
• Education

There were some other failure categories, such as Military and Government, but we felt they were going to be difficult for people to apply to their OWN fails.

From these categories, we asked people to jot down one failure from one category, identify the category as well as the lesson that was learned. We asked people to keep their failures anonymous, to attempt to elicit some of the more emotionally jarring ones. After collecting the anonymous fail-slips, Amy and I read through them, poetry-slam style. After each one, we opened up the room for some discussion around them. Something pretty cool happened: nearly every failure we read was openly admitted to, and discussed with the group. Lessons were learned. Laughs were shared. It was a really positive direction to point the day, and carried us up until lunchtime.

Step 4: Failcamp becomes HelpCamp, or Entreprenur’s Anonymous Some group feedback pre-lunch pointed us in a new direction after lunch. Two specific pieces of feedback, from Christine Cavalier and Blake Jennelle, significantly shaped the rest of our day. Blake pointed out that while he was learning a great deal, he hoped that the takeaway at the end of the day would be uplifting and positive. That brought us back to Christine pointing out how the room got very animated while “coaching” her through some issues with the completion of a novel she’d been writing.

We took that feedback and, on the fly, spun out a new format to try. We set a 10 minute timer and asked people to share a problem/failure they were experiencing at this current period of time, and then within the same 10 minute window, gave the room an opportunity to speed-coach.

This was intensely awesome, as the problems approached ran the gamut of the categories listed above. Furthermore, EVERYONE’s problem that was brought up was coached thoroughly and by a room full of high quality people who had great diversity in their experiences. I really believe that everyone who had an opportunity to share, got to take something away as well. And those who didn’t share still got to learn a great deal by hearing their issues in other contexts. It was EXTREMELY cathartic and holistic.

This went on for another 3 hours or so (all of which zoomed by), at the end of which we were excited, exhausted, and ready for celebration of a day of successful failure, which landed us at our local haunt, National Mechanics.

Overall, the response from the participants as well as those who joined us on our uStream channel, was overwhelmingly positive. We look forward to continuing the “Entreprenur’s Anonymous” event with the help of PhillyPreneurs, so stay tuned for that.

And of course, our sincerest hope is that some other groups can benefit from what we learned during our FailCamp, and help your local scene benefit from your own FailCamp.

Special thanks to everyone who came out, the event would have been NOTHING without you! For me personally, events like this are a great reminder of how brilliant many of my peers are, and how lucky I am to be surrounded by them in order to be able to pull off an event like this.

Viva la Failure!

Brian Oberkirch is one of only a few people in this world who’s every word I hang on. Brian is a thought leader, in it’s truest form. I’m proud that Brian even knows my name. Enough fanboycrap. On to the thoughts that Brian stirred up for me.

Brian just wrote a post taking a jab at conversational marketing, clearly pointing his pointer finger at the “Misbegotten & generally borked offspring of Cluetrain“. His point is something that drove me to create a Flickr group over 6 months ago, tounge in cheek renouncing the phrase “Join the Conversation”. I ended up not following through with the Flickr group because all that happened every time I looked at it, I got angry.

I hate the phrase “join the conversation” because it encourages the worst thing that conversational marketing could have: dilution of valuable, community contributed information.

“Join the conversation” encourages a poor signal to noise ratio.

“Join the conversation” has bred an entire movement that’s forgotten what the social in social media means.

“Join the conversation” doesn’t mean “listen to me, me-me-me-me-me”.

Conversational marketing doesn’t mean “talk about it until they can’t help but listen”.

Conversational marketing DOES mean that your pitches don’t sound like pitches. Conversational marketing means STOP PITCHING.

Guess what. If you are still trying so hard to be conversational, odds are, it’s coming across as far less genuine than if you aren’t trying at all.

Stop, collaborate and listen (yeah, i went there)

How about listening for a change? Rather than spending all of your time talking about what your customers/partners/vendors/markets/employees/members, whatever might want; ASK THEM.

So what does this boil down to?

I think that you should take a good hard look at your “conversational marketing” techniques and exercise the side of the conversation that most people aren’t terribly good at:

listening.

Amy Hoy and I have been talking about an event for long enough, it’s time to put ourselves on the hook and make it happen.

The idea behind FailCamp came from a proposal for LoserCamp.

There’s a whole lot of people talking about their successes, because it’s easy and glamorous and interesting. OK, well, maybe not interesting. But it is easy and glamorous.

Talking about failures is a whole other ballgame. It requires you to let your guard. It requires you to not point fingers and take responsibility. It’s humbling. And most of all, it’s educational.

There’s not a whole lot to be learned from success, really. The vast majority of successful people are very hard workers who got very lucky. Or, more often, they’re hard workers who got lucky after many, many, many previous failures.

We should learn from our failures…but wouldn’t it be nice to be in a safe place where we could let down our guards and in a trusted environment, admit to our f*#k-ups, large and small. Colossal and miniscule.

And thus, FailCamp.

We all make mistakes. The best of us learn from them. The best of the best help others learn from their mistakes.

These can be business failures. These can be life failures.

We want your fail.

Amy and our friend Patrick Ewing (the developer, not the basketball player) are kicking in with the legwork/planning.

We’ve set a date for Saturday, July 26th. Unlike many other weekend events, we’re not going to FAIL and start early. It’s a Saturday. So plan on 10am.

We’re unsure on the final location right now but it will be somewhere in Philadelphia, likely near IndyHall.

We’re limiting the RSVP for now, and we may raise the limit depending on demand and interest. So please, visit the Upcoming page and RSVP.