dangerouslyawesome

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.

Reposted from the IndyHall Blog:

As you may have heard by now, we’re considering moving IndyHall into a new, larger office on the other side of Market Street, 20-22 N. 3rd St and will be discovering some alternative uses for the community better suited for the space we will continue to occupy at 32 Strawberry Street.

Geoff and I called a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, and had lots of positive response.

If you haven’t seen yet, some of those responses are posted online:
http://www.indyhall.org/2009/03/04/the-state-of-indyhall-march-3rd-2009/
http://technicallyphilly.com/news/indy-hall-to-expand-add-educational-element/
http://www.imouttaherethebook.com/2009/03/big-changes-coming-indyhall-raises-the-bar-again/

Now What?

What we need now is commitment from the community that we embrace, encourage, empower, and completely love.

Much like the membership drive we held in August of 2007 to open 32 Strawberry Street, we’re looking for member commitment to help us verify the sustainability of a move into this new office.

We’re turning to three core audiences:

• Our Current Membership
• Our Waiting List
• The Extended IndyHall Community

We’ve already contacted our current membership, and are working with our waiting list to manage upgrades and new members that have been waiting patiently for news about our expansion.

We’re looking to the phenomenal community of businesses, entrepreneurs, creatives, freelancers, startups, telecommuters and remote workers in Philadelphia, the people we consider the extended IndyHall Community, for their interest as well.

Open Membership

In fact, membership is re-opening at all levels immediately, and will become active on May 1st.

Now, what we need from you.

We’re looking for folks who haven’t had a chance to come meet the IndyHall community and experience our work environment now. If you’ve never worked at IndyHall, we’re certain that working here for a day will help you determine if this alternative office is the right thing for you. Normally, its $25/day for non-members to work here. For a limited time, we’ll be offering free dropin days for visitors who sign up for multiple months at any level of membership.

Space is limited, so you must reserve a desk in order to take advantage of this offer. You can contact us for information on how to make a reservation.

Not familiar with how IndyHall works? This website is admittedly outdated and needs a refresh. Our bad. More on that coming.

In the mean time, Full Time IndyHall member Jonny Goldstein put together this excellent video to explain who we are, what we do, and how it works.

Please don’t hurt yourselves

What we’re NOT looking for is for you to overextend yourself. Our decision is based on how sustainable this move is, so if your upgraded membership is not sustainable, it’s misrepresentative of the entire goal.

At the same time, if you have the ability to pre-pay for any number of months beyond the usual month-to-month commitment we offer to IndyHall, that will also help us plan for this move and have some cash in the bank to work with. While we haven’t decided to raise our membership rates, if you have the ability to pay ahead, we’ll honor that rate for the duration of your pre-payment.

Whatever upgrades we’re taking will go into effect on May 1st, which is our proposed move-in day for the new office.

Deadlines. Comin’ up fast.

This is going to happen very, very quickly:
Geoff and I are going to be making our decisions based on how many commitments are made between now and End of Day on Monday, March 9th.

Yes. That’s this upcoming Monday.

Finally, and maybe most importantly: you are our front lines recruiters. Nearly everyone who works at IndyHall was referred by somebody other than myself, which is what makes this community so strong. If you have friends, colleagues, business partners, etc that you think would benefit from working at IndyHall, let them know that we’re looking for new members to join our community. Encourage them to come work at IndyHall soon for a day and see if they like it. If you’ve got questions about how to go about this, please drop us a line. Share Jonny’s video above. Let them know about the free drop in days (and that they have to reserve!).

Thanks for enduring this lengthy post, and for your ongoing support of IndyHall. If you have questions, or simply want to let us know what you’d like to do, our door is open and so is our inbox.

Thank you so, so much. This is so much excitement, we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

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 afternoon I attended my first City Council hearing. Frankly, it was my first time inside City Hall. Today’s hearing was related to a topic that is known to be near and dear to my heart: the city support of the so-called “creative economy”.

I found out about this event, as most people did, last minute. And my desire to attend was minimal, chiefly because I have a strong distaste for the types of meetings that end up being mostly masturbatory: if I don’t leave a meeting with some sort of actionable item besides having another meeting, I’m usually pretty unhappy with the use of my time.

However, I was drawn to this event because a number of my peers, notably some that I have a pretty large amount of respect for, had been invited to present on panels to the hearing board. That group included Blake Jennelle, Philly Startup Leaders founder, and Matt Fisher, President of Night Kitchen Interactive and long time member of PANMA. I knew that these particular leaders shared my views of the local scene, shared opinions about the strengths and needs of our community, and were extremely capable of vocalizing these messages succinctly and effectively. If nothing else, I would have an educational experience in how a city council hearing is conducted, and support my friends. The only guaranteed loss was being indoors on such a beautiful spring afternoon.

As I was walking into City Hall, I decided that it would be interesting to live-twitter my experience. Not only for record keeping purposes…but sort of an experiment to share my at-the-moment opinions (as heat-of-the-moment as they were) with my followers.

So it began. I quickly learned that there was a video feed (which I’m working on finding an archive of), and others were watching from afar. And before I knew it…my twittering turned my timeline into a back channel for the Philadelphia City Council Public Hearing on the Creative Economy.

I’d be very surprised if this was actually the first time a government event had a backchannel…but what was interesting to me was that it ended up proving incredibly valuable. For a number of reasons.

First, as my original thought was, for record keeping. If you look over my tweets in chronological order, the hot-topics were tracked in twitter forever. Sweet.

Second, was me opening my brain. Not that I wouldn’t have done that anyway, but instead of passing notes or whispering in my neighbor’s ear, and being disruptive…I got to put my disruptive behavior to good use.

Third, and most interestingly, it engaged a number of people who could not be in the room do to prior commitments, or lack of notice. I’m lucky that I don’t have a boss I have to ask if I can take the afternoon off to go do something. Most people aren’t. Did all 1500+ people that follow me care about the contents of the hearing? Of course not. But a number of them certainly did. And some of them cared enough to chime in on the conversation. And thus, the backchannel was born.

Whats most interesting about the people who cared, is that not all of them were even in, or from, Philadelphia. One of the really important parts to remember about all of the creative economy and city branding initiatives that we’re involved in is that they are, at the very least, two-fold. There’s the need for better awareness inside our city limits, but just as valuable, are the external perceptions of our city, its economy, its workforce, and it’s general contributions to the rest of the world. So when people started listening, and better yet, chiming in from places like New York City, Kansas, Austin, and LA…the message was being spread MUCH further than the city council ever could have anticipated. And the best part about this message? It’s showing the rest of the world, not only that we’re doing something…but we’re looking to them to reciprocate in many of the potential relationships we’re creating.

Its worth noting that I only have a limited scope to this online backchannel…my own tweets and the tweets of the people I follow. If someone said something and I wasn’t following them, I missed it. If someone responded to one of the people I was following, I likely missed that as well. So the message may very well have gotten even further than I’m aware. And that’s freaking rad.

There are a lot more thoughts I have about the contents of the event. Some of it was intensely, intensely positive. Some of it was intensely, intensely frustrating. I’ll save those thoughts for another post as my mind starts weaving things together. Most notably, though was some really really glowing support for the things I care the most about: Indyhall, of course, but also P’unk Ave and their Junto, Geoff DiMasi in general, and iSepta (a new app thats sprung up out of some really awesome organic collaboration between some IndyHall members). IndyHall, P’unk Ave, Geoff, and I were mentioned by no less 3 separate panelists. If the city didn’t know about us yet…they sure do now.

In the mean time, today was the day I realized the value of live, citizen journalism.

Today was a pretty important day.

Important Update: Alex’s involvement in Round3 has changed.

They say (good) things happen in 3s

A few months back I marked the 1 year anniversary of my independence. Along the way I’ve made contacts and friends across this wide and amazing industry, and even built a home for some of them to spend their time during the work week.

I’ve alluded to, in various places, a new project that I’ve been working on since not that long after that 1 year announcement. Not that it’s been much of a secret but as of today, there’s one more tangible piece to the puzzle in my hands, and those would be my new business cards for Round3Media that you see above.

Over the last year, the types of and scale of the projects I’ve gotten involved with has changed dramatically. Lucky for me, there’s always opportunity for growth when you’re willing to take some initiative and be challenged. Through the year, I’ve had the privileged of working with a number of extremely talented folks, and in an effort to scale things properly, we’ve formed Round 3.

The Name

We kicked around naming and branding for quite a while, and as I expected, the one we fell in love with was the one we least expected.

Ken, Bart, and myself (founding partners of Round3) have all started multiple companies. For all of us, Round3 is our 3rd company. There are 3 of us (supplemented by a well rounded talent pool). There are three phases (or rounds) to most web projects: discovery, design, and development. Round3Media just made sense.

There are some strangely exciting coincidences that have happened while we’re starting up surrounding “threes”, so we’re pretty sure that’s a sign we made the right decision.

The Team

Round 3 is comprised of myself on the technology front, Ken Rossi on the design front, and Bart Mroz on business and project management. Ken’s designs and clients combined with my code have comprised a large portion of my portfolio in the last year. Frankly, Ken was the designer who convinced me that I had what it took to go out on my own in the first place. Bart’s been a huge part of day to day operations of IndyHall and continues to run a successful freelance project management operation.

To supplement our “core” team, we’ve brought Johnny Bilotta and Jason Tremblay on as contract-to-hire associates. Johnny’s designs have appeared ALL over the place recently, from the initial creative for the IndyHall website and business cards, to a number of branding initiatives we’ve done together. Jason’s been active in IndyHall since early on as well, and has been behind the technology for a number of local projects including www.wcdish.com and some of the tech behind the West Chester Restaurant Festival. We’re excited to have these two incredibly talented individuals who are interested in joining our mission.

As far as structure of the team, it’s our goal to keep things as flat and low to the ground as possible. There are three “disciplines” we’re representing (design, development, and business/project management). Beyond that, project and company goals will be discovered together. For as long as we have the ability to keep communication open and not end up with a super-tiered ultra-mega-globo-corp type mentality that I’ll get into a bit later, this seems like a step towards an ideal working situation. Why? Well there’s some problems that need fixing.

The Mission

What’s the mission, exactly? The way we see it, there’s a huge gap between the independent contractor and the agency. And don’t get me wrong, they both have their place. What I’m interested in experimenting with is the space between them.

Working as an indie is great. You have freedom, you have flexibility and agility. You have independence. You can keep your overhead low, and deliver high quality products for a great value.

On the flip side, it’s difficult to be held accountable by larger clients for larger projects. Also, if there’s a need to collaborate, there tends to be some scrambling to get things together and unify the communication for the ad-hoc team. It’s doable, and it’s a very powerful thing (i’ve done it for a long time and we do it every day at indyhall). It just takes more time and energy than most are willing to put out.

Agencies have a high level of accountability and structure. To their credit, the additional organization necessary to pull off larger projects and accounts are absolutely necessary as a supplement to the talent they employ. Certain clients and project types simply cannot be handled by a solo talent.

On the flip side, that additional organization adds cost (both time and money, as projects become more expensive and take longer to execute as information moves through the ranks). This also means that there’s a rather large amount of “whisper down the alley” between a project coming in, and the person executing the tasks.

Finally, as an indie, you rely on collaboration. There’s very small group of superheros who are actually good at hybrid skillsets. You may KNOW HOW TO wireframe, design, build XHTML/CSS/Javascript, as well as back end data driven architecture, but the odds of you being REALLY, REALLY good at all of them are much lower than the chances that you’ve lied on your resume and listed every piece of software you’ve ever heard of as a “skill”. It’s OK. I’m not chastising you. I’m encouraging you to pick a skill to be a rockstar at, and find other complimentary rock stars to work with. If you put 3 rock stars together, you’ve got the makings of a band. That’s what I want to see on a project: less drum solo, more collaborative singing/songwriting/performance pieces. And a little cowbell never hurts.

So really, what’s the mission?

Its our hope that over the next several months, Round3Media will give us an opportunity that a number of other very talented groups have begun to explore. We’re going to dig deep and find out what can be done in the space between indie and agency. Rather than scramble at each project to figure out who’s working on what, and what pieces we need to pull together, we have some stable business process that over arches over our individual indie “practices”. Its a step towards unity, but not so far away from the individuality or freedom we crave.

To follow the band metaphor from above, think of Round3 as a jam session for talented ‘artists’. The session is always at the same place at the same time, but what happens at each jam session is totally unique and special. We’re going to create a construct for business to take place in, but the creative side of web production and marketing will all be more like a pick-up “jam session”.

At the core, for me, this is all about scaling indie methodology.

Process vs Results

When the NotAnMBA guys were in town a few weeks back, they were inspired by the culture at IndyHall and similarly, speaking with Tony from CoworkingNYC. They made a post about a common theme that came out of our conversations and that the majority of us put much higher value on results than process.

Rather than caring when you get to work, where you’re working from, or that you’re “following the rules”…we’re actually more interested in people who are willing to bend or break the mold, try new things, innovate, and get to the highest qualty end result by “any means necessary”.

That openness and freedom for the people that we’ll be working with as Round3 grows is key, I think. It’s the type of process that an indie works on, because they don’t have a boss to answer to. Instead of worrying about the process that I had in mind when I delegated a task, worry about the end product that I had in mind. How you get there, how you meet or exceed my expectations (as an employer or a client)? So long as communication stays open, I’m a happy camper.

So where do we go from here?

Up, is our best guess. We’ll continue to work at IndyHall as we have been, and honestly, not much is going to change. Individually, we’re bringing some really interesting client work to the table that we’d have turned to the talent that sits around us every day for collaboration.

There’s going to be some transitioning of our existing client bases as we try to bring as many of them on board as we can. We’ve all worked hard to build client relationships over the course of our careers, and nothing would make us happier than seeing them served by the results produced by Round3 talent.

For me, personally, I’m going on the road. The next few weeks are travel heavy, as I attend Future of Web Apps in Miami this upcoming weekend and SXSW Interactive 08 in Austin, Texas at which I’m presenting (more on that soon). All along the way, I’ll be showing off not just the cool stuff that I’m directly involved in (IndyHall, Round3, etc) but will be spreading Philly love in any way that I can. I’m so excited to get to show the world, even in these two venues alone, what the talent in Philadelphia is up to. If you see me at either of these events, ask me about what’s going on in Philly. I’ll give you an earful of excitement, for sure.

The IndyHall community is one of my proudest accomplishments of my entire life. Round3, though only at its inception, is yet another moment in time that I’m insanely proud to be a part of, and I’m so excited to see grow from the seeds we’re planting.

[tags]alex hillman, bart mroz, business process, creativitiy, indyhall, jason tremblay, johnny bilotta jr, ken rossi, round3media, scaling indies[/tags]

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!

I’ll be there, will you?

Badge prices go up $25 after today, so if you aren’t on the Panel Submission waiting list like me, you’d best get on that.

I’ve got some pretty rad plans, and even if only one of them manages to get executed, this year’s SXSWinteractive should NOT be missed.

Philly, represent!

Oh, and don’t forget my tips from last year on how I survived SXSWi07.

In my years on the internet, I’ve dealt with a number of mainstream ISPs…back in the dialup days, I settled on a local company who was good at supporting even things that they didn’t have to. I had a habit of janking up my local lan settings as a kid…their support staff was kind enough to walk a younger, savvy but inexperienced me through fixing whatever I had mucked up.

Since being responsible for my own utilities, I’ve dealt with almost every major telecom provider…Verizon and Comcast for internet, and I’ve had an account at almost every cell phone provider. Bottom line: the customer support at every single one of them absolutely positively sucks.

When we opened IndyHall a couple of weeks ago, I made a conscious decisions NOT to utilize Comcast or Verizon for our commercial internet install. My members’ usage was priority, and a quick, stable connection was a must…but I’ve been without service for unacceptable amounts of time in the past due to awful, awful customer support.

I started asking around, and a lot of people recommended SpeakEasy(referral code included). I called to get some clarification on their commercial line plans, and settled on the top speed commercial DSL: 6meg down, 768k up. For our office, this would be perfect, and I was told that should I need to grow into a T1 it wouldn’t require any downtime. The service rep helped me schedule our installation, and we were slated to have everything in fairly close (within about a week) of our first day in the office.

The two part installation was painless. On the first Monday in the office, someone came from the phone company to install a loop in the basement of the building. The tech showed up on time, had worked in the building before, and was very friendly and got right to work. A few days later, I called Speakeasy to confirm that his installation had been completed successfully, which I was told was correct. I also confirmed our final installation date, which at the time was for the following Tuesday.

At that point, I shot in the dark, asking the phone support “Is there any chance of moving up the final install date? It’d be really great to provide your service to our members sooner…”. Quickly, he came back, and moved up our installation to Friday instead of the following Tuesday, buying us 4 extra days of service! I was so pleased, I thanked him, and moved on.

The final installation was also great…the tech once again arrived right on time, and diligently worked through some really tough, old wiring in the building. He updated me regularly on the progress, and we tested the line together before he left.

1 week later, my phone rang, and it was Speakeasy. “Hi Alex, we’re just calling to see how your first week of service was?”.

Wow. Proactive customer support. That was new to me, in the realm of internet providers and telecom. I was honest with the guy and told him that while the speed was acceptable, it was a LITTLE slower than we had hoped, but that was mostly likely due to the old lines in our building. He agreed, and said that if we wanted that I could call back at any time and they would come back to test and, if necessary, replace the lines.

At this point I told him who we were, what we do, and how I value customer support so much. I explained to him that this was one of the most pleasant experiences I’d EVER had with customer support, let alone within the telecom industry, and that I really, really appreciated it.

So this post is an open THANK YOU to the folks at SpeakEasy for proving that customer support isn’t dead, and I highly suggest to anyone, based on my experiences, that you should consider using their services for your next business venture.

[tags]internet, commercial DSL, speakeasy, verizon, comcast, customer support[/tags]

isn’t for the lack of interesting things going on. Quite the contrary, in fact. I have a MILLION things I want to write about. Among them:

• The opening of Independents Hall on 32 Strawberry Street
• The power of building the community before the product or service
• My own discoveries about balance and time management
• Neat new development projects
• A summary of what I’ve learned so far along the path of building IndyHall
• and much more…

In the mean time, to tide you over, you can read this piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about IndyHall.

I’m about to walk away from my computer and all connectivity for 3 full days…the longest I’ve unplugged in as long as I can remember. Today is the 3 year anniversary for Ryan and myself. It’s been a crazy road, and she is amazingly supportive of everything that I do even though, at times, my time commitments to work related things make for bad juju. I love you very much sweetie, thank you for a great 3 years.

Oh, but before I sign off and leave the state for a long weekend, one other big announcement.

Geoff and I signed a lease on a space for Independents Hall last night. I’m going to drop off our first rent check and security deposit, getting the keys and then trying to forget that on Monday, the next chapter of Philadelphia’s coworking community begins.

Congratulations to everyone who helped us get here. Ecstatic doesn’t describe what we’re feeling.

[tags]vacation, Ryan, love, anniversary, independents hall, coworking, lease[/tags]