dangerouslyawesome

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about different marketing techniques and for the most part, those essays or rants usually amount to “try doing this” or “please, stop doing that”. Today, I want to document something a little bit different.

Selling software commercially is something that prior to the last 2 years, I had almost no exposure to. I had worked in retail where we sold other peoples’ titles, shelving boxes of discs for anywhere from $0.99 jewel box bargains to hundreds of dollars for operating systems.

It was always interesting to me that people would walk into a store and buy a physical piece of merchandise in order to put it on their computers. Obviously, before bandwidth got fast and cheap, there wasn’t really the option of distributing yourself, but even still…LOTS of software gets sold on the shelves. Even funnier, there are now online places where you can buy boxes of software, have them MAILED to you, and then you can install them. 

Let’s pause and think about how silly that is. That’s right. Pretty silly.

The other exposure to selling software I had was as a service provider: writing code to spec, and then someone else reaped the benefits of that ongoing.

These days, working with the crew at IndyHall Labs, I’ve gotten exposure to something completely different: independent software development and distribution.

Much like the music industry is experiencing, the tools are cheaper and the resources are more readily available for individuals to create, market, sell, and distribute their product, be it a 12 track rock -n- roll album or a useful piece of software, without the overhead of “mastering”, the complication of customers losing license cards, the struggle of controlling your shelf price, and more.

This week, the Multiplex team and I are experiencing something new and exciting for us, and that’s the inclusion in a software bundle being promoted and sold through MacUpdate.com‘s promo property, MUPromo.com [ref link]. In short, 11 apps are sold over a 2 week period with buckets of blitz marketing, and each of the software developers get a small cut of the sales of each bundle. The remainder goes into covering MacUpdate’s expenses, and the rest is profit for them. 

Bundles like these are increasingly common, and some other notable ones besides MacUpdate include MacHeist and MacZot. “Bundleware” is an old concept, a technique was often used to move old inventory. I’ve often used the lewd (but accurate) “Porno 3-pack” model to describe how it worked in the past: the vendor puts two “dud” flicks alongside a headline title, with a total price reduced to less than the total value of all 3 movies. Even if you don’t end up watching the duds, they got sold for more than zero dollars in revenue for the vendor.

What’s interesting is how MacUpdate and the others have successfully turned the bundleware model on its head. Most importantly, the new dynamic here that’s important to recognize is that the cost-per-copy of software trends to zero, since the software production costs are already sunk into the design and coding of the app. Since no copies need to be “mastered”, the cost to “produce” additional copies for sale isn’t zero (web host costs, for example), but it’s getting there. The largest cost that increases based on an increased customer base is customer support, which usually scales slower relative to the app’s sales.

So, with no “inventory” to worry about, bundle-dynamics leap ahead into something new, different, and pretty exciting. I want to talk about 4 key functions that I think have made this bundle work, and why we decided to be a part of it.

Dynamic #1: The Headliner Not totally unlike the “Porno 3-pack” I mentioned before, most bundles end up with at least one headliner app. Many times, that headliner’s retail value is greater than the bundle cost itself, making the deal a no-brainer for most potential customers. What’s neat, though, is that the volume of high-quality independently produced apps available to bundle-designers means that there are often MULTIPLE headliners, where nearly every app has the chance to be a headliner for someone… allowing the bundle to cater to a wider audience.

In the case of MacUpdate, there was more than one headliner depending on who you are, what your interests are, and how you as a consumer perceive value. 

Working down the promo page, headliner #1 was the “two bonus apps” for early purchasers… initially the first 15,000 bundle customers, and then later the limit was bumped to the first 20,000. There’s been some discussion on the bundle forum that maybe MU shouldn’t have moved that threshold, as some early-adopter customers feel that it “cheapened” the bundle for them. While economically the bundle value didn’t change, the value perception did and that’s important for someone who’s motivated by bargains, early adoption, and exclusivity. In this case, the cost to MacUpdate for providing those apps to an additional 5000 customers was zero.

Note: I’m not aware of the details of the deal between MacUpdate and the two “early bird special” apps, Jets n Guns Gold and CuteClips. It’s entirely possible that those titles only received a revenue share on bundles that included them, so they MAY have gained additional revenue with MacUpdate’s decision to move the bar. That’s pure and wild speculation, and a curiosity of my own.

The second headliner, that I believe many bought the bundle for, was the inclusion of two apps whose values individually exceed that of the bundle cost: Parallels and TechTool Pro are well known commercial use applications with extremely wide customer bases to begin with. Why would they lower their price-per-copy for this bundle?

As I mentioned before, all software being sold online has a near-to-zero per-copy “cost”, this becomes a marketing and customer acquisition play for the manufacturers of the software. It’s blitz revenue and TONS of visibility. While that visibility may not be causing people to learn about their software for the first time, it IS reminding potential customers that they still exist, and that’s a marketing expense worth measuring against the cost sunk into selling copies for a fraction of the retail price. Beyond the financial capital gained, I think there’s also some social capital gained by the larger software manufacturers since the smaller shops, like ours, appreciate the fact that their headliner title is helping us make some money. Software development culture is funny in the fact that many development shops make it a point to get out there, chum around with other dev shops at conferences, meetups, and other social gatherings. Big dogs like Parallels coming to hang around and help by pulling some weight, at least in my mind, is a gesture that doesn’t go unrecognized by the independent producers.

The third type of headliner is the “special interest” headliner. There were a couple of “categories” of apps in the MacUpdate bundle, and based on your own interests, those bundles might be the headliner for you.

Our app, Multiplex, was paired up with RipIt (also developed at IndyHall) and DVDRemasterPro as a trifecta of great tools for managing your movie collection with your Mac computer. Having been witness to the success of RipIt so far (and, we hope, the success to come for Multiplex), we know that there’s an audience of DVD collectors out there who want to do exactly the thing our apps were designed for: catalog their offline collection of DVDs, make it easy to recall and play on their media centers, as well as other devices they own that play video.

Given that Multiplex and RipIt alone are normally worth a total $53.99, that’s enough to make the bundle worth it. Toss in DVDRemasterPro, a $49.99 app, and you’ve got over a hundred dollars worth of software to help you with your DVD collection for half the price…and a bunch of other goodies as a bonus.

The point I’ve been trying to illustrate is that because all of these titles have a cost-per-copy approaching zero, there’s an incredible amount of flexibility in creating reasons for people to buy a bundle based on their own motivations. The bundle appears well rounded, but for enough people (over 20,000 at the time I’m writing this), there’s enough value generated for that person to justify the expense.

Dynamic #2: Urgency The MacUpdate bundle runs for 2 weeks. While not an extraordinarily short period of time, there are constraints. “While supplies last” is a fallacy, because again, it costs next to nothing to generate more supplies. In order to keep demand high, new constraints besides inventory need to be placed on the bundle sales.

2 weeks is a time constraint that, while artificial, informs the customer that “after these 2 weeks, the apps go back up to their normal price…so get ‘em now while you still can!”.

The early bird special does this too, suggesting that if you’re one of the first batch of people to buy the bundle, you get extra stuff.

The MacUpdate bundle page does a good job of highlighting the number of bundles sold, and how long you have left to buy.

Regardless of how high the bundles sold number climbs, I think that there is something about competitiveness built in human nature that makes us want to “beat the timer”, and get our purchase in before the other guy. It’s a counter-intuitive dynamic, but one that helps make bundle sales successful.

The other component to the “urgency” aspect is the timeframe in which us, as developers, make money. The important thing to remember is that we calculate success not just on the number of copies sold, but by the amount of cash in the bank.

Think of it this way. There are two paths to a million dollars: you can sell an app once for a million bucks, or you can sell it a million times for a dollar. Whichever has the shortest and most sustainable path to your million is the road you should take.

Dynamic #3: Self Promotion

Probably one of the most important components to bundle success is each individual bundle contributers’ own self interests: I’ve dropped the price of my app to the floor, so I want to promote the CRAP out of myself for doing so and get as many sales as possible, while also gaining brand recognition for when the bundle is over.

With 11 apps’ developers working that angle simultaneously, MacUpdate gains a massive sales team, but so does each individual developer! My own self interests benefit the other bundle contributors. Their self interests benefit me.

Furthermore, MacUpdate provides affiliate opportunities for developers and non-developers alike. This post, you may have noticed, is sprinkled with links to MUPromo.com that include our referral code. That’s because we make a couple extra bucks on each bundle sale that we actually refer. If you’ve found this article interesting and were considering buying the bundle anyway, please consider buying with our referral code and help some indie software developers make a buck.

See what I did there? That opportunity isn’t just available to me as a bundle contributor, but to the properties helping promote the bundle as well (like MacRumors, Smoking Apples, TUAW, and more).

And remember, at the end of the day, this is a promotional opportunity for MacUpdate. They not only make money on the bundles, but on ad-sales during the promo when more people are hammering MacUpdate.com to read more about the apps, their reviews, get their license keys, etc. 

Which brings me to my final point, and the real reason I wanted to put together this piece

Dynamic #4: Developer Relations In retail, there’s no usually relationship between the person selling to the customer, and the producer of the thing that the salesperson is hocking. At most, that sales person might get a kickback for selling one brand over another, but the sales person’s own brand loyalty and experience in what makes customers happy is usually what’s driving their sales suggestions.  

Bundles have gotten a bad wrap. Most notably, MacHeist.

I’m not going to get into the gory details of their indiscretions, but the record shows that they’ve had their shit called more than once for abusing the “value” they provide for their customers to line their own pockets instead of managing positive relationships with the developers that are giving them the opportunity to run the bundle in the first place. As long as 3 years ago, John Gruber was outlining the issues with how this “great deal” for consumers was selfishly benefiting the organizers while giving bundle app contributors a raw deal. It’s also worth noting that in december of 2006, MacHeist sold ~14,000 bundles and our (well, MacUpdate’s) bundle exceeded that quota within it’s first 48 hours. This most recent Holiday MacHeist bundle sold over 80,000 copies, but also took to some “extreme viral” (read: spammy) techniques for getting bundle purchasers to send links to their friends.

We pride ourselves in quality products, quality customer service, and both of those lead to quality relationships with our customers.

This is where I want to highlight the great job that’s being done by the team at MacUpdate, and why we decided to participate in this bundle.

I spent most of the bundle-prep time working with Nate Houle, who manages the MUPromo.com site. Nate was easygoing, straightforward with their interest and offer, and most importantly, I didn’t feel like I was being sold a line like I did when I spoke with other bundles’ representatives.

Nate was clearly interested in working with us instead of simply swapping licenses for a cut of the revenue. At some point in our IM conversations (yes, the entire MUPromo deal was done over IM), Nate said something that made me extremely confident in the success of this promotion:

  …we don’t bite the hands that feed us, without the indy developers none of us would have jobs…  

That kind of attitude goes a long way, and I think that genuine appreciation for the developers that support your bundle says a lot about Nate and his team.

Even when the initial bundle sales load crashed our licensing servers for the better part of the day, MacUpdate’s COO, Misha Sakellaropoulo, and their Lead Developer Chad Harrison were extremely calm, helpful, and supportive. I was on IM at various parts of the day during the first two days of the bundle running talking to Nate and Misha, and at each turn, they were as excited for us as we were. That “togetherness” is more ethereal than some of the other benefits of the bundle, but an important one for us, since it’s such a core value of how our apps get built in the first place.

One of the things on my to-do list for the next week is to continue the developer relations plan and reach out to the other developers who are participating in the bundle, introduce ourselves, and congratulate them as well. I hope that the other developers are planning on taking that time as well, as this is a great opportunity for us to celebrate the fun of being an indy mac developer together.

An honest and hearty “thank you” to the MacUpdate team for showing us that bundles don’t have to be evil, and helping me get my accelerated masters in “Bundle Dynamics”.

Final Shameless Self-Promo

Yes, we’re extremely excited about being a part of this bundle and it’s success so far. There’s still 12 and a half days to buy, so if you do, please consider using our referral link. If you could help even more by spreading the word and using the same link [http://tr.im/IHLabsMUPromo] or [http://mupromo.com/?ref=6602], we’d really really appreciate it.

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.

This past weekend we celebrated the one year anniversary of IndyHall’s grand opening. I’ve been making it a point to clearly define what we were celebrating, for a reason. At our party, I added some clarity to the point.

IndyHall existed before the office at 32 Strawberry St was opened, and I firmly believe that if the office were to close down tomorrow, IndyHall would continue to exist.

IndyHall is not (just) a coworking space. IndyHall is a coworking community that shares a vision of making Philadelphia a better place to do whatever it is that they love to do.

The space at 32 Strawberry Street is the most tangible facet of IndyHall, the easiest to identify with. That’s a good thing, for our own community here in Philadelphia as well as the global coworking community and, quite frankly, the entire world. It’s good that IndyHall has a clubhouse at 32 Strawberry (so good that it was worth throwing an epic party to celebrate).

It’s important to have these clubhouses. Without some tangible touchpoint, it’s difficult to share goals, share visions, and collaborate on executions.

I’ve talked a lot about coworking over the last 2 years. I think I’ve talked about coworking more than any other single thing in my entire life, really. Over this time, I’ve realized the most common questions we get, and some of them tend to overlap and create some interesting trends.

Usually, people don’t get it. It’s getting better over time, and mainstream press is helping. But on the whole, outside of the microcosm community that we live and work in, people don’t get it. They don’t understand the purpose, other than the “having a desk in a real office” part.

I used to get frustrated when the thing that got people to understand was when I said, “Well, our business model is renting desks. But that’s really just the way we cover our overhead.” The fact that the least important part of the company (in my mind) was the most obvious, bothered me. Leaving a conversation where someone understood IndyHall on that level meant that they simply didn’t understand IndyHall.

Geoff was quoted on PSFK over a year ago saying:

“It’s not about making money, It’s like when you were a kid, and you had a clubhouse… it’s a way to feel like part of a community.”

The people who truly understand IndyHall are the one’s who’ve come to hang out at the clubhouse. And by the clubhouse, I’m still not just referring to the building in which we rent desks, host workshops, and build some of the coolest software you’ve seen this year. I’m talking about a bigger clubhouse.

People who heard me talk about IndyHall a year ago probably heard this analogy from me:

Imagine a bunch of little soap bubbles. Each one is self contained, and adjacent to a number of other soap bubbles. If you were to pop each bubble, the contents would just spill out into the open with nowhere to go. What I want to do is blow one giant soap bubble over top of the little bubbles, reach in through the wall of the big bubble, and start popping the little bubbles in creative and interesting ways, getting their contents to mix and mingle under one common “structure”.

That’s what we’ve effectively done with IndyHall. There was an extremely vibrant community here in Philadelphia, but it went undiscovered due to its fragmented and disparate nature. Think back, Philadelphians, to BlogPhiladelphia. Annie Heckenberger and I put together an event (this was the most “Hurricane” I’ve ever seen Annie, by the way. I wonder when we’re going to get that back) that was a whole lot of fun. But beyond the fun, but the number one response I got after the event was:

“I had no idea what my neighbor/coworker/blah blah blah was up to. They write for this blog/have their own startup/want to take of the world, too!”

It’s absurd that we think we need to have a conference, a meetup, or a party to find out what our neighbors/friends/peers are up to. Totally and completely absurd.

We should be able to simply hang out and go about our every day lives and have a point of contact that has the same degree of effect as a conference/meetup/party, but all the time. Tara and Chris have called coworking “Barcamp Every Day”, and I think that is a more important effect of coworking than the “save money on gas and office space” angle.

Frankly, the “efficiency” angle is an easy sell, and a real boon for the movement and it’s growth. But it says nothing about the value add and the changes that I firmly believe are much deeper rooted in not where we work, but how we work. We’re riding the crest of these changes, but I really believe this is bigger than all of us realize yet. THAT’S why I was upset about FastCompany’s shitty coverage of coworking. They have a massive, and extremely impressionable audience, and were sending the less valuable message. But I digress.

So going back to my soap bubble analogy, IndyHall is so much more than the 32 Strawberry St clubhouse. We’ve got clubhouses all over the city. Bars, restaurants, parks, apartments, offices. We’ve crashed conferences in other cities, together. As new soap bubbles find themselves within the ever-improving community clubhouse framework, they have similar experiences.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important for setting goals and executing on them as a community.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important for moral support when things aren’t going quite like you planned.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important when you need that last little push to get your shit done.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important for putting things into perspective.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important when you need to just close your eyes and dream for a minute.

Where’s your clubhouse?

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.

Today, 8/10/08, marks the 1 year anniversary of Geoff and I signing the lease and acquiring the keys to the office at 32 Strawberry street that myself and a few dozen others have come to fondly call home. That home has allowed for the cultivation of one of the most exciting and impactful communities I’ve had the privileged of being a part of.

In less than a week, it will be the two year anniversary of the first time I blogged about coworking. (note that in that post, I hyphenated co-working. ha!). That’s right. Two years.

I’ve been talking about coworking in Philadelphia for longer than Snakes on a Plane has been out.

I talked about coworking in Philadelphia before Steve Irwin passed away.

I was still in school when I started down the path of founding IndyHall.

Longer than Viddler has been publicly available.

A year and a half’s worth of Juntos.

Two SXSW‘s, both times changing my perspective on an industry and opportunity.

Longer than most of you have been twitterholics.

Longer than John Gruber has been avoiding me.

The last 24 months feel like a blink of an eye.

I’ve been talking about this coworking thing for a long time, but I’ve been immersed in it the whole time, not just talking about it. Action has been everything. My inability to sit still has been my greatest asset.

Thank you to everyone who’s inspired and encouraged me. This past year has been truly astonishing, and I’m so proud and thankful to be surrounded by so many brilliant, motivated, hard working, and life-loving individuals.

It wasn’t easy.

In retrospect, it seems easy, but it wasn’t easy. I gave up a lot. I’ve turned almost every aspect of my life upside down. Each step of the way, no matter how difficult, came easier and easier because of a combination of fantastic mentors, and trusting myself.

Where will I be in another 2 years? Where will IndyHall be in another 2 years? So long as I keep following my heart and my intution, I’m confident that wherever it is, I will be happy.

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!

In a post today on Not An MBA, the boys evaluated the business side of coworking.

And to be completely honest, I’m a little bothered by the category that we’ve been put into. We seem to be pushed aside in favor of the critically “for profit” models in terms of sustainability.

The irony in this? Between the list of Profit and Not-For Profit coworking ventures, we’re among the few to be turning ANY profit, even if its not a lot.

Before I go any further, please note: Drew and Todd, I’m not mad at you. I still like you guys. You just greased some already turning gears.

Non Profit isn’t a State of Mind

We’ve never claimed to be not-for-profit. We’re very much for profit. But our initial focus, outside of community building, was on break even.

Early on, Geoff and I discussed the benefits of going either way. We decided, together, that operating IndyHall as a for-profit business was absolutely critical.

There’s nothing in the world stopping a coworking community from operating within a profitable coworking space. But I think THAT is where the line is drawn.

This isn’t Chicken and Egg, People.

For the sake of this example, there are two types of coworking: communities, and spaces.

• You can operate a coworking community without a for-profit coworking space. Jelly is a fine example of that.

• You can operate a coworking space without a coworking community. You can provide all kinds of nice services and amenities. You can hope and pray and wish. And people will show up. In an ideal situation, they’ll even nest.

But this has been done before and, in my mind, isn’t particularly compelling.

That’s my opinion, but it’s also the opinion of many, as illustrated by the transition away from traditional incubator setups into the Y-Combinator (also see Colorado based TechStars, and Philly local DreamIT Ventures) model where you’re still evaluated as a participant of the space, but along with the space and small business services, you find yourself surrounded by like minded entrepreneurs at similar points in their business experience as one another. And just like “working alone sucks”, “starting a business alone sucks, too”.

You can jam services down people’s throats to attract them like moths to a lightbulb. Who DOESN’T want a swanky office. People will come for the shiny stuff, but you’re going to need some substance to keep them there. That substance? Culture.

So, it’s not Chicken and Egg?

Oh, right. I was making a point. My point was, if you establish a business before establishing the community, you’re pretty much guaranteed to end up imposing on the single most important asset of ANY coworking community.

The culture.

If you’ve created the business without the prior influence of the community of it’s users, you will inevitably be forced to make decisions for the business that are contrary to the members interests. THAT is business.

And culture, imposed upon a community, inevitably crumbles that community. Culture, carefully cultivated and built on top of, is sustainable.

I’m not saying you don’t need business. You do. You absolutely, positively do. If you’re thinking about starting a coworking space and don’t have any business experience, get a business adviser. NOW. I got lucky and got Geoff DiMasi as a partner.

Remember, I’m not saying that a community is the core. I’m saying the culture is. That’s a really big difference from the messages I’ve sent in the past. I’m going to be revisiting this a lot. In part, this is due to some realizations that ‘community’ as a term is getting dumbed down by overuse and overemphasis. Thanks, Kathy Sierra, for joining twitter and sharing this thought at just the right time.

Every coworking space has it’s own culture. Recently, Tara Hunt of Citizen Space (also one of the “not-for-profit” coworking spaces, as appointed by Not An MBA), remarked about how despite the 14+ person waiting list for Citizen Space, when she tried sending the people on the waiting list to any of the other spaces in the vicinity (and rumor has it that San Francisco has a BUNCH very diverse of coworking spaces and communities), the people on their waiting list said, “No, thanks. We don’t just want coworking. We want Citizen Space coworking. We’ll wait.”, or something to that effect.

I recently made my first visit to Citizen Space.

Yes, it’s beautiful.

Yes, it’s in a convenient location.

Most of all, for me, it felt like home. And that had nothing to do with the physical location, which was 3000 miles away from my REAL home. The culture was familiar.

Is Citizen Space for everybody? Of course not. That’s why San Francisco has a number of other coworking options. Is IndyHall for everybody? No way. And that’s why I eagerly await another variant of Philadelphia coworking. Please. Somebody step up. Do it you’re way. I’ll even help. Pick my brain. Anything you want, except a check. Cuz I don’t want you to be answering to me when you’re making plays with my money.

And, of course, I’m not in any kind of financial position to be investing. At least until someone figures out how to convert Whuffie to US Dollars. If you do figure that out, email me please.

Money Changes Everything

When you’ve got large sums of money and salaries on the line, your decision making skills are changed. It’s inevitable. It’s the most common issue I’ve seen with the relatively small contact I’ve had with startup founders.

Product managers do not make good CEOs. I mean, they can be one or the other, but it’s not a good idea for the product manger to BE the CEO. The results are obvious: product roadmap decisions driven by the guy dangling the checking account balance in front of you are not going to be the same as decisions made for the end goal.

What I am trying to get across is order of operations.

One foot before the other. Crawl before you walk. Walk before you run. Put on your pants before your shoes.

Build an unstoppable community to take part in the development of your business.

So Coworking is Profitable?

I’ve never ever gone on record saying coworking can’t be profitable. It can. I hope that someone (and it doesn’t need to be us) proves that it can be CRAZY profitable, just to prove the cynics wrong.

I just hope that doesnt attract the wrong people to the community.

I HAVE gone on record saying that our end-game isn’t to be rich from coworking. The true values are corollary, for the members and the owners. That does NOT mean, however, that they are intangible.

I HAVE gone on record saying that by making profit your number one priority, you’re going to have to work a whole lot harder to adapt your profitability to fit the needs of your community. It’s doable, but it’s challenging.

And I don’t know about you, but I prefer to work smarter and retain my quality of life than work more than I already have for an unknown, anticipated, calculated gain.

Philly’s own Josh Kopelman said at the recent kickoff of DreamIT Ventures first season,

“I’d rather back an entrepreneur who can adapt to change than an entrepreneur who claims he has all of the answers. Because, inevitably, every business plan starts out wrong.

Agile as a Business

Geoff has pointed out our decision to run this as a business is to be able to keep it open, iterate, and improve. We take this process for granted as we both come from agile software development backgrounds. The methodologies of Agile are second nature to us.

Having a strong and committed culture, our (paying) members help drive those iterations forward because it doesn’t just benefit IndyHall (the business).

It benefits IndyHall (the community).

Original Photo by Jill Greenseth

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

Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

The Next Chapter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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