dangerouslyawesome

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.

I’m a heavy Gmail user, with 6 (soon to be 7) separate Gmail and Google Apps accounts. On my Macbook, I actually IMAP in to all of the business accounts using Mail.app for one reason: cross-account search. For my personal account, though, I’m extremely reliant on Gmail’s web interface. I’ve used Mailplane in the past, and really loved it…with the exception of the inability to do cross-domain search. I use that daily.

On the mobile, there’s no option for cross-account searching. Mobile Mail.app gives me some native functionality and speed, but without cross-account searching, I’d much prefer to use Gmail’s mobile web app. HTML5 support in recent releases has made it faster, easier to use, and hands down one of the best mobile apps on the internet. I used Mobile Mail to connect to my Gmail accounts over IMAP because having multiple bookmarks was clunky no matter how I configured it, but I was always looking for something better.

In all cases I use IMAP because it keeps accounts in sync; changes made on the computer, the web, and the iPhone are all synchronized via IMAP.

I never used Push for my email because, well, I get a lot of it. I rely on Push for contact and calendar updates, but for email…if I haven’t checked my mail in 10 minutes, I can be sure that there’s something new in there.

Worse are unread counts. I’m compulsive about unread accounts. Mail, RSS feeds, Campfire, whatever it is…I hate having things unread. It’s a bad behavior, because I treat unread counts like to-dos, and in all of the scenarios where unread counts keep me on my toes, they are essentially to-do lists that OTHER people can put things on to. I’m already busy, I don’t need someone else to put more things on my to-do list.

The biggest loss in using Mobile Mail.app is tags, something that I do use pretty extensively. I’ve learned to get around it in Mail.app, which has better drag and drop support for moving things into folders that represent tags over IMAP. Mobile Mail.app was just clunky, and I resolved to not do that interaction on the go unless I had to.

I know I’m not describing everyone, but I am describing a lot of people. And as more corporations move their mail infrastructures away from Exchange and into Hosted Google Apps accounts, the group with this set of needs grows more and more.

A few weeks back, Dave Martorana (of MultiFirefox, Multiplex, and Two Guys on Beer fame) slung me a prototype of an app he’d been working on at IndyHall. It was called “MultiG”, and was basically an app that did fast account switching between Gmail and Google Apps Gmail accounts. It was rudimentary, but instantly useful for me. He quickly added an “unread” count to the accounts dashboard, but then did something I had never seen in an email client. He added a secondary badge that showed how many messages were actually new. I mean, how many of your unread messages weren’t there the last time you looked.

Think about that for a second. The anxiety of unread counts has finally found its Prozac.  All I care about is how many messages are new! In casual conversation, I dubbed this feature “TrueNew”, something that I hope other developers build into their app notifications.

At this point, I was hooked. But Dave wasn’t done.

He’d also whipped up integration with the iPhone’s native address book. I haven’t gone through the process of moving my address book into Google, and again, I have multiple accounts so where would I sync my address book to? Not all of them.

Dave added a button to the chrome of the Gmail browser window in his app that let me pull up my iPhone address book and insert email addresses right into the “To:” field. Sneakily, if I turned on CC or BCC, the exact same feature gave me the choice of which field to put the address in to. Simple, sleek, lovely.

Since emails tend to include attachments and links, Dave also put in a handler that made sure that they opened without leaving the app, much like our favorite iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie.

This feature set changed the way I interacted with mail on my iPhone. It made my life better. It made one of the most painful parts of my day, dealing with email, less painful.

We realized that “MultiG” was a lousy name, and Johnny Bilotta (the other Guy on Beer) proposed “Mailroom”.

Sold.

He whipped up a sexy icon, and we were off to the races.

Dave got the app in the hands of a few other testers, worked out some kinks, processed some feedback, and with the hand of myself and co-conspirator Amy Hoy pushing him to “ship as early as possible”, got it into the App Store.

Initial feedback was mixed. People who were like me in terms of email use loved it. People who had different email workflows weren’t as convinced, and many people saw it simply as a “wrapper for Gmail”.

Technically they were right, but they were missing the progressive enhancements because they didn’t augment their workflow. The app wasn’t for everybody, and we knew that. We’d still struck a chord with a good number of our initial users, and got some great feature requests.

2 weeks later, Dave pushed out a significant release to Mailroom. We’d prioritized feedback against our desired feature set, and introduced some new ideas of our own. At the root of the new release was a settings screen.

Badge Icons were a huge part of our 1.0 release feedback. We’d been hesitant to include them by default because, without Push (which I’ll get to in a minute), the counts were largely inaccurate most of the time.

Since we wanted to encourage people to start using TrueNew, we made that the default badge icon if enabled, but gave the user the ability to turn on unread counts instead.

Another major improvement was both workflow and performance related. If you only had one account and used Mailroom, launching the app to the dashboard was wasteful. If you left Mailroom on a given account screen to go to another app, launching put you back at the dashboard again, which was undesirable. We gave users the opportunity to remember the last account used, meaning that as soon as they launched the app they were where they left off last. This immediately made my email experience more efficient.

And as a bonus, Dave gave the user the option to lock screen orientation. Not something I was particularly needy for, but a nice touch nonetheless.

And then there’s that last setting. Cache management. What’s that, you ask?

Well that brings us to the biggest quiet improvement to Mailroom 1.1. The app is now taking advantage of Gmail’s HTML5 offline storage. What does this mean?

It means that every time you visit an account, the entire interface is cached locally and a HTML5 database is created/updated with the email on your screen. Kill your connection (because ATT sucks, because you’re on an airplane, or because you’re in a meeting) and Mailroom is still useful. In fact, you can not only read messages, but you can reply to messages and even COMPOSE NEW MESSAGES without a data connection. As soon as you reconnect, your cached messages are sent while retrieving new mail.

He even made the multi-account dashboard smart, only allowing you to enter accounts that had offline caches from a previous visit.

Yesterday, all of these 1.1 features hit the iPhone App store, and already a large percentage of our users have upgraded. One of them left us a review in the app store that commended us not only on the app and how great its icon is, but on Dave’s responsiveness to feature requests. Big win for us, that’s exactly what we wanted.

We’ve already talked about feature roadmap for 1.2 and 1.3 releases, and it’s very much in the works. The plan is to continue with iterative releases, process feedback, and continue to grow the user base all at once.

Two “issues” continue to arise: the lack of Push badge updates, and the $2.99 price point of the app.

First, push isn’t as “simple” as some of our reviewers seem to think it is. Among the scaling concerns we have about people who move a lot of email. I ran some averages and my smallest inbox gets well over 24,000 emails a year. Those numbers aren’t staggering, but across the customer base we’re targeting, that becomes a LOT of notifications to deliver.

The real technical challenge is more complicated though. In order to accurately update badge icons over push, we’d need to store email addresses and passwords on a server somewhere, and that’s a HUGE security risk that we can’t figure out how to justify. I know I wouldn’t want that info out there, and I have to imagine that our users wouldn’t like it either.

So until we come up with a more elegant way to support push, Dave has built in an app-specific URL handler. Calling mailroom://username@domain.com from another iPhone app or even from a mobile web page launches Mailroom, and even jumps straight to the account if there’s one in mailroom that matches the email address in the URL. We’re hoping that other push services like Boxcar and  Prowl can build in support for our app. We know it’s not the best solution, but given the infrastructure for Push provided by Apple, we’re pretty limited in what we can do. We don’t want to deliver a half-assed experience, so until we figure this out, Mailroom will not support push. If anyone has suggestions for how to overcome this hurdle, our ears are WIDE open, so please, sound off in the comments or via email.

And about that price point. Some customers seem to think that $2.99 is too much for an app that’s “just a webkit wrapper”. I won’t do more than touch on the fact that it’s not just a webkit wrapper for the right users and workflows since I’ve already explained here. But why $2.99? First, we’re targeting business users and we know it. They’re more comfortable spending more money on apps because in most cases, businesses equate cost with quality. But more importantly than that is the fact that this is, in most cases, a high-touch app.

99 cents for an app that you’re most likely going to touch at LEAST once an hour, if not several more times in a given day, feels undervalued. Like Tweetie, which I launch several times a day, I feel like I get an immense value for the $2.99 I spent on it.

Fact is, our first release might not have been worth $2.99 for everyone and you could say they got pegged with an “early adopter” tax. But since we’re not charging for the updates, and plan to roll them out often, we don’t think its really a tax at all. It just means that you will continually get more value from the app you already paid for.

We’re confident that future releases in our roadmap will continue to win people over the price point and even the “it’s just a webkit wrapper” theme. Mostly because, we’re listening. We hear what people like, don’t like, and how they are using the app. The more people feed back, the more they help to shape the future of Mailroom.

If you haven’t already, please consider heading to the App store and picking up a copy of Mailroom for your iPhone or iPod Touch. We’d love your feedback, and absolutely appreciate you supporting independent software development. You can also follow us on Twitter for app updates, or send us ideas and feedback there as well.

Gatekeepers are the leading cause of confusion, dissent, and ultimately their own demise.

Don’t be a gatekeeper.

Instead, find every way possible to help people say “yes” and allow them to execute.

The outcome is world changing.

Permission is a highly underutilized leadership skill. Let’s see if we can’t change that.

Mission #1: Try saying “yes” to something trivial that you would normally say no to, and watch what happens.

This post is actually a slightly adjusted version of a comment to this thought-provoking commentary. I thought it was a compartmentalized thought enough that I wanted to post it here for my own record.

The prompt, from Ashley’s essay, is:

“We’re taught what to think, not how to think”.

Therein lies a problem. The education model being experienced today (K-12 & much of higher ed) has been built on top an old process designed to produce two things: workers, and more academics.

If we’re willing to put aside the “more academics” part and focus on the “workers” part of the product of education, we need to consider what’s changed. Through at least one lens, changes exist in workplace and the expectations it has.

Rather than go down the road of “I paid six figures for a college education and now I can’t get a job, EFF YOU America” that many young professionals are doing right now, there’s a huge, huge, HUGE missed opportunity to improve the educational system using mentorship, and refocusing on learning skills instead of just the learning of skills.

When the industries with the highest demand were focused primarily on manufacturing, someone who came out of school not only had basic skills, but had the proficiency to learn some more basic skills in order to accomplish a task. Manufacturing and the industrial workplace provided a very specific, guided ladder to continue learning skills, leading to promotions, opportunities, better pay, hours, so on and so forth.

Times be-a changing.

Now, with another industrial shift fully swinging away from manufacturing (sorry Detroit) and towards knowledge work, the ability to just learn new tasks isn’t enough.

You’re expected to synthesize new, unmarked tasks.

You’re expected to create, not just produce.

If you can’t create, you’re going to have to try a LOT harder to get a great job. And that thesis ignores the increased likelihood that you’ll work for yourself, start a company, be a great leader of your industry or workforce. Maybe more.

And speaking of great leadership, mentorship seems to have been lost almost everywhere with the exception of artisans, and craftsmen (craftspeople, for the gender sensitive). And even there, art schools are stacking students high with skills, and until the last minute, very little REAL WORLD practicum.

Take a look at this video from IgnitePhilly I, where University of the Arts’ President Sean Buffington eloquently explains how as a university administrator he KNOWS that things are fucked up, and even how, but doesn’t know to go about making steps in any new direction.

From IgnitePhilly2 (4 months later), Chris Lehmann of the Science Leadership Acadamy talks about how schools need to stop being run like businesses, find new metrics for success, and a general lack of responsibility and accountability in the system despite the quality of the educators. Science Leadership Acadamy is an empowerment-based educational system, experimentally created in partnership with The Franklin Institute. One of my favorite points he makes is: you can’t learn when you feel the subject is more important than you are.

“What happens when school is real life, and not just preparation for real life”.

This week I’m included in Technically Philly’s sponsorship thank yous as their first “philanthropist level” sponsorship. It’s no secret that I’ve been a long time supporter of what Brian, Chris, and Sean do, and that’s not because they’ve written about me and IndyHall a bunch of times. I think they’ve identified a real need for covering the emerging technology community in Philadelphia with an honest, authentic, and approachable candor that is still backed by true journalistic ethics and execution.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about their announcement of NewsInkubator, their Knight News Foundation grant application, that I’m still tuning and molding, but I think that it’s important that Technically Philly is able to sustain itself without the NEED for those grant resources.

They have a phenomenal community of readers, and an increasing number of those readers fall into the category of “we like what you do and want to do something about it”. My decision to sponsor is not to get a link or attribution every week…quite frankly I’d be just as happy without it. The reason I decided to sponsor TechnicallyPhilly was to lead with my actions rather than just my words.

I attended their first Technically Philly Happy Hour earlier this week and the ~30 people who also attended came from all corners of the technology scene in Philadelphia. My favorite part about the people who I met was that it was my first time seeing many of them. The fact that Technically Philly is able to act as a hub, as a connector, between disparate but related industries in Philadelphia is something that they recognize as valuable, and I’m thrilled that they’re able to find ways to execute with that connectedness.

Things like this, among many others, inspired me to put my money where my mouth is. $50/month isn’t nominal, and there’s of course a tradeoff. Think about $50:

It’s 3 dinners cooked at home instead of out at a restaurant (average $20). Homecooked food is better for you anyway.

It’s 5 walks (or even buses) across town instead of jumping in a taxi (average $10 from old city to 30th st). That walk will not only make you feel better, but you’ll see the city from the sidewalk instead of the street.

It’s 3 CDs or DVDs you wait to add to your collection (average $20). What’s the last good thing Hollywood put out anyway? Except IronMan and its impending sequel. I want to be Tony Stark when I grow up.

It’s 13 coffees brewed yourself instead of going to Starbucks and getting a $4 latte.

It’s 8 cheesesteaks (average $7). Ok, I hope you’re not eating 8 cheesesteaks a month. That’d be absurd.  http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/. ‘Nuff said.

And speaking of fat…you’re not even using that gym membership but you pay $40+/month for it. If you’re gonna toss that money at something, why not something that actually has value?

You get my point.

$50/month isn’t a subscription to Technically Philly, and I don’t think it should be thought of that way. It’s a way of supporting something that I hope becomes an institution in Philadelphia, and continues to grow with this community.

“We’d love to wait for you to come on board and help us, but fuck it, we’re gonna do it anyway.” – From Scene but not Nerd, January 2007.

The sentiment hasn’t changed for me, it won’t change anytime soon, and this past weekend’s events illustrate a very important part: the sentiment is shared by more than just this angsty technologist.

DIY, or “Do It Yourself” for the uninitiated, means more than just “bottom up” for this town.

It means that people have a true sense of ownership, and a true sense of pride, in what they make, and why shouldn’t the city that they live and work in be a part of their portfolio?

BeerCamp Philly was more than a party (and believe me, there ain’t no party like an IndyHall Party, cuz an IndyHall party don’t stop), but a framework for achieving many of the important aspects normally not achieved by DIY.

First, the notion of doing it yourself seems to imply two things:

• Do it BY yourself
• Do it FOR yourself

BeerCamp debunked that in a big way, and put a stake in the ground for an fast growing, almost entirely underground community of homebrewers.

Among the takeaways I heard as the night played out, two important ones were recurring, and I believe the most important.

• Many of our participating homebrewers don’t get to taste their beer with anyone outside of the group of friends with whom that they brew. That’s a lost opportunity for creating a feedback loop to learn from.
• Many of our homebrewers don’t get to taste other homebrewer’s beer, and compare notes. Yet another lost opportunity to accelerate their learning process, and continue to experiment.

I should point out that it is my intuition that homebrewing is a social activity, and very few people do it 100% solo, but I’m not sure about that.

In one night, we connected 11 brewers to each other, and simultaneously introduced them to our sold-out attendance of well over 200 beer-lovers.

Brewers shared notes about process, junior brewers learning technique from a senior generation (and not surprisingly, some of those newer brewers had some things of their own to teach).

The act of “doing it yourself” for these brewers took something they did for craft, became a shared experience with a much larger audience, many of whom were new faces to our community.

In those series of moments, everything accelerated. Not just during the event itself, but with lasting effects that have yet to be seen unfold.

That’s the difference. Lasting effects because they have skin in the game from here on out.

During BarCamp Philly II, which was probably the dozenth’ or so “unconference” event I’ve attended in the last couple of years, something similar occured.

These people, and the dozens more that are out of frame and that came throughout the day, seized an opportunity to take 7 hour schedule and make it their own.

At 8am, there was no conference schedule. At 10am, 12 rooms had organized into over 50 sessions. The schedule board was full, and the organizers reacted by adding a 13th track, making room for up to 6 more presenters.

For all of the energy put into carefully crafting a conference schedule that’s ideal for an event’s agenda, I think this one came out pretty well.

Note the diversity, by the way. BarCamp Philly has begun to leave the realm of “geeks only” (only a couple of Twitter/social media sessions, and a healthy smattering of tech-oriented sessions), and is now also strongly trending into business, communication, education, law, art, music, and culture.

Back to Doing It Yourself.

For many attendees (I’d estimate well over half based on a show of hands at the beginning of the day), BarCamp Philly II was not only their first BarCamp, but their first exposure to the broader community of people moving and shaking in Philadelphia. At every event since the 2007 BlogPhiladelphia I co-organized with Annie Heckenberger, I’ve heard the same phrase over and over:

“I had no idea so much was happening in my own back yard”

And that’s just it. There is already so much going on in our own back yard.

Much of it, without the traditional focus on “What resources don’t we have and how do we get them?”, and with more of a focus on, “What can we accomplish with what we’ve already got?”.

Also, while it’s a little bit hard to be sure from session titles alone, I think you can deduce (and others can confirm) that BarCamp Philly was much less instructive, and far more interactive and conversational.

It wasn’t just about getting people to share ideas (which is fine, but not intrinsically productive), but about finding ways to help ideas connect.

That’s the difference between being told it’s a good idea to share your ideas, or having ideas shared with you, and having some skin in the game yourself.

Receiving pre-synthesized information leaves out all of the opportunity for self-discovery, idea branching and merging, and ultimately, innovative thinking becomes unidirectional.

Presenter->Audience.

Kung Fu Master->Grasshopper.

Yoda->Luke.

Mentor->Mentee.

Those relationships are valuable and important, but it’s not the only way to do things.

We’re doing this a little bit differently, we’re doing it ourselves.

When the participants of BarCamp Philly come together to decide what’s important enough to talk about, and dialogue about it, serendipity accelerates in a big way.

And because they have skin in the game, the lasting effects are strong, and most exciting for me, yet to be seen.

So these events were a success, right?

Well, yes.

The organizers totally dominated in putting together an incredible event framework, and worked their asses off to make sure that participants of the events could be effective. Roz Duffy, JP Toto, and Kelani Edmondson are quickly becoming master event planners and organizers. Kara LaFleur joins them as an extraordinary volunteer who just gets things done, and even more, coordinates volunteer efforts in force, allowing big things to happen when all you’ve got is a bunch of willing hands.

That said, as I titled my unusually somber and introspective session with Geoff, “We’re not done yet”.

If my personal goal was to be able to travel the country sharing and learning along with other people working to improve their cities, I’d be happy saying I’ve achieved that goal.

If my personal goal was to generate press (for better or for worse) around our efforts, more than once gracing the front page of established print and digital publications around the world, I’d be happy saying I achieved that goal.

If my personal goal was to be surrounded by, and work with (but not for) some of the smartest, most driven, talented, and incredible people you can possibly imagine, I’d be happy saying I’d achieved that goal.

Luckily, those personal goals are all being achieved as the first chapter of a much longer story is being written. There are a lot of characters already (rivaling a Tolkein novel at this point), and the cast is only growing.

I’m not writing this book, we all are.

We haven’t even finished the first chapter, Philadelphia.

The fun is just getting started.

It almost feels like a dirty secret I’m confessing. I joked in an e-mail with a colleague tonight, who pointed out that he was impressed that I was watching a sporting event, not to tell anybody because it’d ruin my street cred.

Ask any of my friends, and they’ll tell you, I’m not a sports fan.

I’ve explained it all kinds of ways:

I don’t like sports.

I don’t like sports fans.

I don’t understand the rules.

Watching on TV is boring.

I’m allergic to sports.

At the end of the day, I’ve just never been into competitive sports, because I’m a different type of competitive. I’m much more into competing with myself, so I like solo sports like rock climbing and snow boarding.

Even when I’ve watched sports that I do like, I’ve never followed them. I never memorized player stats, or knew where a team stood in a given championship.

I had nothing to personally gain or lose from knowing, or not knowing any of those things.

So why, on earth, would I take the risk of blowing my “personal brand” as a sports luddite?

I love the vibe of Philly pride.

Philly’s sense of pride is something special, and I’ve made mention of it on this blog in a negative light.

It’s fickle, and our city’s pride in our sports teams is a blister of an example for it.

But when its good, when it’s uniting, it’s a beautiful thing to be a part of a city that is proud.

I’ve been watching sports because right now, Philadelphia is proud of something for the right reasons. I wish that pride of being a Philadelphian permeated more than just the sports season. I’m watching Philadelphia sports so I can understand what about it makes us so proud, so it can be applied elsewhere in our daily lives.

Hopefully, I’ve still got my street cred.

It’s hardly a secret that I’m a karaoke fan.

I’m a regular at a handful of the best karaoke nights in Philadelphia, not the least of which is the regular Tuesday Night Crowd with DJ Joe H at National Mechanics (which we’ve lovingly dubbed TechKaraokePHL), and more recently, the Skeletor Karaoke Gong Show at the Trocadero.

I toured across the US with 4 friends in a Winnebago that we converted into a mobile karaoke lounge.

I competed (and placed 3rd) in the first annual Happy Cog Cogaoke Karaoke competition at SXSW09, singing “Fight for your right” by the Beastie Boys. The result? Long time inspiration and mentor Jeff Zeldman approached me in the hall the next day to tell me I “f*$king rocked”.

I’m a bit of a microphone whore to begin with, but when it comes to belting out tracks, I’ve been known to sing until my vocal chords give out.

I even wrote, nay, CRAFTED the ultimate karaoke playlist for the blog Nonpretentious.

I’m not the only one who’s obsessed though.

Raina Lee, who I met during Whuffaoke in LA, wrote a book called “Hit Me with Your Best Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Karaoke Domination“. Epic, right?

And one karaoke mentor, who I’ve yet to meet but have been dying to, is Brian Raferty, author of “Don’t Stop Believin’: How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life“.

I truly believe that Brian’s thesis is right, and having completed the Whuffaoke tour, I firmly believe that Karaoke CAN change a person’s life…and quite possibly the world.

I think that karaoke has some of the most important qualities of an event that, as a society, we need now more than ever before.

Karaoke is empowering.

Karaoke is a form of creative expression, musically and theatrically.

Karaoke helps build strong bonds between people.

Karaoke makes people smile.

I’m super stoked that Philly’s First Person Arts Festival has brought Brian in from Brooklyn for an event this Friday at the Painted Bride, called: Karaoke Obsessed. First Person Arts is notorious in Philly for bringing some of the best events centered around story-telling to life, including the extremely popular Story Slam.

Tickets for Karaoke Obsessed are $15 for FPA members, $20 for non-members. If you’re a karaoke fan, a story telling fan, or you want me to sing my BEST new track (and hear why I love singing it), I recommend joining me this Friday, November 6th, from 9-11pm. Tickets are available online.

The Summit is officially underway, and there’s a possibility that if you’re reading this…that you’re already at the Philadelphia Convention Center, or you’re on your way there.

There’s still a massive amount of distortion in the continuing debate about my posts, mostly circling around the assertion that “bottom up” is better than “top down”. That wasn’t the point, unfortunately. My two attempts to articulate what I was feeling were largely misinterpreted, thanks to fragmented conversations.

Someone will inevitably make the statement that if I’d participated in the summit, the fragmented conversation could be unified.

In the words of Billy Joel,

You’re may be right. I may be crazy. But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.

My point was to make some observations about concerns that I have based on things that I see in front of me, through my own lens. My goal was to encourage people think for themselves, not to agree or disagree with me.

That’s a hard thing to do without a little radical expression.

I’ve had conversations like the one on my  blog at least 50 times in the last 2 years with various members of the community. Many times with different conclusions, often times resulting in more questions than answers. Rather than continue having it behind closed doors, it seemed like it could be helpful to discuss things in the open.

I’ve spoken with a LOT of people about the posts, and the resulting discussions, in private. It seems that’s where a lot of people are more comfortable having difficult conversations. I understand why, but I think it’s a damn shame that people aren’t comfortable being honest in the open. Smart people. People I respect.

I’ve had some of those people tell me I am an unreasonable douchebag. I’ve had some of those people tell me they are happy that I spoke up. I’ve had some of those people tell me that they don’t really understand what all of the fuss is about.

I’ve had moments where I said to myself, “Why’d you even bring that it up?”. Then I remember, “because nobody else would”.

I guess there’s another Billy Joel song worth remembering. For all of the ego I slung in the “controversial” essay I wrote, I hope those of you who know me realize how reality tempers my words.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks.

Today is day one of the Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit, and I’m still not attending. But a lot of you are, either as a presenter or an attendee. Or a sponsor. Or a volunteer.

My honest to goodness hope hope is that this discussion over the last 3-4 weeks has heightened your senses about what you might, or might not experience in the next two days.

I’m not a fortuneteller, so I don’t know what you’re in for. Nobody does. But if you’re reading this, that means you’re paying attention.

If you’re a presenter, I congratulate you, and hope that you’re met with a welcoming audience and an opportunity to make an impact.

If you’re an attendee, I implore you, to look around at the people and their actions and interactions as they are happening around you.

If you’re a volunteer, I hope this experience proves valuable experience and you take lessons learned and organize your own events as well. This city is ripe for them.

If you’re a Philadelphian, I hope you show our out-of-town guests what makes Philly truly awesome.

If you’re visiting from out of town, I hope you enjoy your stay, and you get to see more of our city than our Convention Center. A lot of us like it here, and I hope you get a glimpse into why.

And everyone who is participating on any level, I hope you spend more time those two days listening than talking. There are a lot of great voices here. I hope you spend more time building new relationships than slinging business cards. I hope these relationships tighten (or begin to form) your bond with Philadelphia.

I look forward to hearing from everyone who IS attending the event about how it went.

Final thoughts, Billy Joel? Who started the fire is still up for debate, but when we’re gone, it will still burn on, and on, and on.

Disclosure: neither Billy Joel nor any of his staff actually supported this post. My lyrical references were for only effect. As far as I know, Billy won’t be at the summit either, but not because he’s angsty about it. I’m sure he’s just busy.

Last week, I shared publicly why I chose not to be involved with Innovation Philadelphia’s Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit.

Response was mixed, to say the least. In a dozen comments, views ranged from surprise to support, from dismay to disgust, from confusion to confederation.

I also had some offline conversations with friends, peers, and mentors, and the majority of the things discussed in “meatspace” are what led me revisiting the topic to this post.

I appreciate all of the feedback, from everyone…in my mind, anyone who takes the time to feedback at all cares one way or another, even if we’re not on the same page.

A part of me likes the debate, too. I think disagreement is important. As much as I preach alignment = execution, unique viewpoints involve new perspectives. That’s what leads to growth, evolution, diversity, and richness of culture.

The most dangerous thing in the world for me would be to think I operate in a bubble.

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I’m not sure what I expected, to be honest. What I am sure of is that my post probably did not have came across the way I really wanted it do, mostly because I was trying to play the hand diplomatically.

I had help refining and honing my thoughts, and I was pleased with what came out…if it was for somebody else. I re-read my post and I can’t hear my own voice. That’s a problem.

So I’m trying again, and taking some risks. I’m drawing some lines in the sand, and I’m sure that I’m raising some eyebrows. I may burn bridges. I will alienate individuals, even some that I know and care about.

My goal is not to be destructive. It’s to open peoples eyes to what I see going on around me. If I’m completely off base, I expect to be told so, and I’ll be better off knowing that. If I’m not off base, and I cause someone to look at the world around them in a new light, then we’re all making that progress together.

Those of you who’ve been around me for more than a few minutes, you know that’s the true blue Alex Hillman.

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Let’s go back to the beginning. How far? Pretty far.

3 years.

Almost to the week.

I put out a very specific call to action that I’ve been riding ever since.

Dare to be great. Together.

Please read this post from 2006 before moving on, it provides a ton of context for my conclusion.

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Re-reading this post in light of my self-removal from GCECS2009, I realize that I strayed from that call to action for the first time that I can remember. Much like reading my own blog post and not hearing my own voice, straying from that call is a problem.

My post framed the discussion as “top down” vs. “bottom up”, and I essentially boiled it down to “you can’t be both”. I still stand by that, but I was making the wrong point.

I’ll circle back to 2006 in a moment.

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The real point I was ineffective at making in my last post is:

I don’t believe that Innovation Philadelphia has been, or can be, 100% effective at its mission of “working to establish the Greater Philadelphia Region as a national leader and world-class destination for Creative Economy industries, businesses and talent”, because Innovation Philadelphia itself has an identity crisis. It doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do, so it does whatever it can to make sure it looks busy (pdf available in case it asks you to log in).

I want to be clear that what I’m about to share is my personal opinion. Not that of any organization I represent, partnership I share, or otherwise. I know that I’m not the only person that shares this viewpoint, but other people are tied to organizations and partners in ways I am not. I respect their desire to keep our conversations behind closed doors, unless they themselves decide to speak out.

I see Innovation Philadelphia as an under-used and over-produced attempt at being a regional resource for a good cause, the betterment of Philadelphia’s creative industry.

I see Innovation Philadelphia as an entity that thrives primarily by associating itself with lots of goings-on, effectively looking busy without necessarily contributing to the things it is associated with. It doesn’t serve its own purpose well, so it places itself alongside everyone else’s.

What bothers me is that this organization hasn’t been involved with these communities that they’re claiming to spotlight until now, when they stand something to gain from it.

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For the last year and a half, since our new mayor was elected, Innovation Philadelphia has been reacting to significant budget cuts. In fiscal 2008, they received $2.5 million from the city of Philadelphia. In fiscal 2009, they were not even included in city budgets and pleaded for $1 million of city dollars for the year.

I don’t know where things ended up after that. In fact, a big part of my hesitation to even bring this up publicly is that I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m not an investigative journalist.

What I DO know is that IP’s news site is a reblog of everything else that’s going on in the region. Google searches for “Innovation Philadelphia” budget turn up very little, positive or negative, since mid 2008.

In light of that, GCECS2009  feels like a landgrab for where the real activity in this region is, in an effort to justify existance. They’ve admitted to co-opting a number of other successful formats from the community, including things that mimic Ignite Philly and BarCamp Philly.

Kelly Lee’s persistence over the last 3 months towards my involvement with the event leading up to (and even since) my declination also supports my instinct.

Without my support and involvement, there’s a void in the honesty of how this event represents Philadelphia. Comments on my original post support that.

From the Philadelphia Business Journal:

The conference format combines a mix of structured and informal meetings, panels and presentations with DIY elements borrowed from the tech sector’s bar camp model. For example, “unconference sessions” will be free and open to the public for sharing best practices. There will also be pecha kucha sessions, which are fast presentations kept to under seven minutes to allow a lot of people to showcase their work. Free meet ups will be held throughout the city to give the public opportunities to network and brainstorm outside of the conference format. Twitter and blog feeds will provide live feedback as the events unfold.

Let me be clear: “Free” isn’t the distinction between their events and ours. When we, the grassroots, plan and execute an event, we aren’t doing it to justify budget spending or even our existence. We plan them to satisfy a human nature to share, and the mutual benefit of the members of this community. When corporations hold the same type of event, free or not, their gain is different from that of the participants.

Like it or not, intent affects the execution.

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Even the way that speakers were placed into panels for GCECS09 feels dodgy. I was asked to speak on a panel about alternative workspaces, along with two other people from outside of the region and one local. The fact that these people were from outside of the region wasn’t what had me puzzled, in fact I think that balance may have been beneficial. When one of the other panelists e-mailed me before I confirmed involvement saying, “Hey, I heard we’re going to be on a panel together”, I turned to some people who’d been involved with my deliberation and asked, “What’s up with that?” The other two non-locals happen to be people I know through my own network. Given the way that the first candidate approached me, I have to wonder if Innovation Philadelphia led them to believe that we’d be on a panel together, and if that had any influence on their decision to participate? I don’t know. I haven’t asked them. I hope they speak up in the comments of this post.

The outreach into other grassroots organizations has felt awkward as well. The inception of NxtUp Philly ties a bunch of independently operated events into a unified calendar of creative stuff to do for the first 2 weeks of October. Once again, whose logo shows up on the “partners” page? You guessed it. Innovation Philadelphia.

I was surprised that even the pre-party event was copy-catted. There are hundreds, into the thousands, of bars in Philadelphia. Why would they choose National Mechanics, a known hotspot for our community’s social events, as the location for their party?

Part of me says, “Well, why wouldn’t they?” I think National Mechanics is a phenomenal venue and their continuing support of community projects has been instrumental in the social side of our community’s growth. We are the way we are, largely in part, thanks to National Mechanics. Business is business, and I don’t expect their management team to have made a different call.

But why, when there are dozens of great bars and venues closer to the Philadelphia Convention Center in Center City? Doesn’t it seem strange to host a bunch of people to the Philadelphia Convention Center, one of the most bureaucratic (not to mention expensive) event venues in Philadelphia (compared to the likes of University of the Arts, or Johnny Brendas), but first haul them 10 blocks to another part of town place just because there’s a local hangout for the geek crew? Do they expect to recruit us as conference attendees while we’re hanging out with our friends and enjoying our veggie burgers and Yards IPA?

I’ve taken my parents to National Mechanics and they love it, so I know that this place most certainly can cater to any age range. But lets put the bacon vodka and weekly karaoke aside, consider the context, and think about how odd choosing this venue seems unless it’s a blatant ripoff of a significant number of events put together by our communities.

I’m not very good at arithmetic, but even I can tell things don’t add up.

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I stand by my biggest concern about GCECS2009, as an event hosted by Innovation Philadelphia, is that it’s positioned itself as a platform for the often underproduced but highly energized grassroots movement that’s taken Philadelphia by storm over the last 2+ years. The energy of the grassroots that has impacted more than just the local community, but outside of Philly as well. The energy of the grassroots that Innovation Philadelphia has had nothing to do with.

I travel a fair amount, for business and pleasure. In every city, I’m meeting the leaders of their local “creative economies”. Emerging creative regions like Omaha, Des Moines, Salt Lake City, and dozens of other cities I’ve been to in the last 3 months alone cite Philadelphia’s metamorphosis over the last 2 years as not just an inspiration, but as having turned Philly into a potential destination for them to come and grow. Even established cities like New York have begun to interact with Philadelphia closer to equals in the creative/business world than ever before.

Consider this exchange between three New York independent creative business people:

“I like Philly a lot. That’s my Plan B.” “Me too. I would totally live there.” “Sigh, me too”.

Things have changed. A lot.

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Just this week I received an e-mail from a journalist in Berlin. He asked me one of the hardest questions I’ve ever been asked:

You’re not the first coworking space, nor the biggest, yet you’re often referenced by start-ups all over the world as their point of inspiration. Why do you think that is?

In other cities, they’re looking to Philly as a model. But none of these have ever heard of Innovation Philadelphia. All of them have heard about our meetup community, Refresh, Ignite, Junto, and without letting my head swell too much, IndyHall.

Given Innovation Philadelphia’s identity crisis, I’m concerned about it appearing as if Innovation Philadelphia has in any way contributed to that grassroots until now.

It’s not just gut instinct. While the business journal makes it clear that they’ve co-opted formats from the DIY culture, other releases make it seem as if the format was something “innovative”.

New Topics, Innovative Format and More Speakers Highlight 2nd Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit

The language they chose makes things really scary for me. DIY activity IS usually pretty innovative. Innovation is not necessarily transitive. That is, co-opting something innovative doesn’t make you innovative.

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The odd ball amongst my criticisms: The GCECS keynote presenters.

Well, they did something right.

There are 4 keynotes lined up that bookend each day. Three out of four of the keynotes, I’ve seen speak (in person or online). I’ve watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ted Talk on genius, and had my breath taken away. I’ve saw Jane McGonigal speak at SXSW08 and she brought the house down. I’ve read a bunch of Peter Shankman’s blog, and if I remember right, my first introduction was a HARO livestreamed giveaway he did celebrating the 1 year anniversary of Help A Reporter Out. The 4th keynote, Randall Kempner I’m not familiar with, so I can’t say much.

But the other three, though, I can verify with my own experiences as winners.

Presenters worth seeing.

In fact, the prospect of Elizabeth Gilbert, Jane McGonigal, and Peter Shankman being in Philadelphia alone had me glamoured when Kelly told me they’d signed on. I realize that now, and have to imagine I’m not the only person to have felt that effect.

I don’t think that the keynote speakers have anything to lose for participating in this event, though, since they’re effectively hired guns to motivate and inspire. They have a different set of responsibilities that, quite frankly, I do understand. Their individual impacts are larger than this conference itself, and that perspective is helpful for all of us.

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While others haven’t been nearly as verbose, or had so many points to reference related to a single event, I’m not the first person to express these opinions:

Innovation Philadelphia has been relentless in getting its message out. I’ve probably received more newsletters, studies and e-mail updates from it than any other economic development agency. Perhaps Lee will raise the money she needs. But if July 1 spells the end of Innovation Philadelphia, I won’t miss it.

For a long time, I’ve shared this sentiment. This is the honest explanation of my previous post was charged with “top down” vs. “bottom up”, and quite frankly, any tone of “us” vs. “them”.

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So back to my call to action, 3 years ago.

“Swallow your pride. Dare to be great. Do it together.”

And yet, considering the statements and observations above, I’m conflicted.

I know, I understand, I believe that the message that I can bring to this conference is positive and constructive.

I know, I understand, I believe that the perspective that I can share with people who I haven’t met is important.

I know, I understand, I believe that I need to swallow my pride, dare to be great, and do this together.

That means us.

That means them.

That means the entire city of Philadelphia, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, industry, employment status, living arrangement, preference of Pepsi vs. Coke, consumption of decaf or regular. Top down. Bottom up. Upside down and inside out.

The big picture is just that. Big.

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Unfortunately, things became cloudy in my last post because of a poor judgement call on my part to use speaker compensation as an easy out. Luckily, there are digital paper trails and verifiable discussions to back the fact that my motives have been consistent prior to this judgement call, and that I’ve never been comfortable being involved with this event. My busy schedule this summer provided a front for the time it took me between correspondence with Innovation Philadelphia/GCECS2009 planners, and in that time, I spent a lot of time deliberating my involvement with both. I’ve been hesitant and cautious since first contact back in early June.

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If I’m sure of anything, it’s my desire for Philly to continue to evolve, gather momentum, and for the hard work of today will live long past tomorrow.

In order for Philly to win, I need to figure out how to stand my ground and swallow my pride at the same time.

But this isn’t like walking and chewing bubble gum. It’s more complicated than that.

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Mark Naples asked me,

If you were offered an editorial board with the Wall Street Journal, would you decline it because that organization is “too top down” for you? Doesn’t that sound silly?

First, I don’t like my values being called “silly”. But given the context of this conversation, I’ve swallowed my pride. Mark doesn’t know me, and I don’t know him. Mark doesn’t know about my motives because he hasn’t felt the effects of my actions.

What this comment illustrated to me, though, was that an ever-increasing part of my role in Philadelphia needs to be a part of closing this gap.

I don’t exactly know how, though, so I’m looking for input.

Is it possible for me to speak at this event while still expressing my concerns? What sorts of things do people need to hear from me in order for my presentation to be effective? What kinds of takeaways can I provide the larger community, the one beyond the grassroots, while not compromising my integrity and values, speaking openly and freely?

The comments and discussion that follow this post will be important. I don’t know the answer, because it’s not simple. I won’t find clarity without your help.

Please, share this post with others, and be honest in the comments. When I sat down to write this post, I committed to being honest and open, and if you’re planning on responding I ask the same of you.

That includes commenting with your name. While I haven’t disabled anonymous comments, I place a whole lot more stock in comments from real people.