Bits, Bursts & Bongos

How to Not Get Starstruck By Instagram

Sat, 26 May 2012 06:36:00 -0700

I advice a few early-stage startups and young entreprenurs on how to get started, product strategy and bootstrapping. We very often talk about funding, what’s needed and how to attract investors. Sometimes this discussion overtakes the focus on building what you and hopefully your audience will love. It’s easy that our mind wanders into the future and start thinking about the possible financial rewards and what to do with the money you don’t have. In a society that is constantly promoting the importance of wealth and why it’s the prescribed meaning of life it’s hard not do get sucked into this mental death spiral.

Here are a few thoughts on how to stay focused, grounded and sane:

Focus your attention on learning. The most important reward is the learning experience. Learning new things everyday is a fantastic way of spending your life, especially if you are in charge of the journey. I cannot think about a better way of spending a life than owning your own time and learning new stimulating things, experiencing new insights that can be turned into new ventures.

Build your network. Leverage this journey to build and broaden your network. When you join a company you start at the bottom. When you build your own cool products you start at the center. This is a great opportunity to make a real dent in the universe, to quickly let people know that you are a maker and connect with the right people for you.

Make it your life. If your new venture is a for-profit organization you need to at some point get funded: be that via venture capital, a sale or real revenues. The goal of this funding is primarily to ensure that you get to do what you love and make it your life. This is not Vegas or Wall Street where you gamble big to only reap the financial financial reward. This is about how you spend your life, being happy doing the things you love. That means that long-term survival is the key, not doing an “Instagram”.

Why Change is One-Directional

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:31:00 -0700

It might sound obvious but that’s how change works. One day you watch advertising sponsored TV in your living room, the next you have switched to watching your favorite shows ad-free via your iPad - at anytime from anywhere in the world. Or maybe you have quit watching all-together and start doing something more rewarding or maybe nothing at all. Idleness can be a good thing.

The real power of change is once you have tasted the sweet flavors of something different, better and more interesting there is no way you are going back. The first time is scary but once you have experienced it a few times your confidence builds and the fear fades. Eventually a new habit is formed and now what used to be change is now c’est normal.

That habit turns into a mental muscle memory and you realize that you can replicate change across anything you do. Your mind is slowly switching from listening to others, from following the advice and doings of the herd to trusting yourself and your gut more and more. You realize that the truth, as what is being publicly presented and agreed on, is very subjective and your perspective as important as anyone else’s.

Then you freeze as you have discovered the real power of the human mind - independent and critical thinking. Suddenly you are surrounded by doubts. People in your close vicinity is trying to get you back into the fold as you are challenging their lifestyles and scaring the living daylights out of them. But something inside is telling you to charge ahead, to conquer your fear and to live life to the fullest. You start applying change to everything in life, fearlessly and without any regrets. Some things succeed, others fails. But who cares as you are now in control of your own life, living it as you should, on the edge of what is possible and sometimes maybe impossible.

That’s why change is one-directional, not necessarily cause it’s always better but cause you are in-charge, calling the shots. And the sooner you realize that you are in-control of your own life and destiny the better life you’ll live, the less bullshit you’ll tolerate and the more connected with the true you you’ll be.

And now you must find out what’s on the other side of the street, ocean and universe. What started out as a small thing has turned into a revolutionary spark, a desire to overthrow any contemporary axiom. In the worst case you are wrong, in the best you are redefining the truth. But most importantly, you have reconnected with the true you and have started to chip away on the facade of the lazy and complacent status quo. That’s what change will do to you and why it’s one-directional.

"I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 19:32:03 -0700

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time.”

- Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman

For the past few years I have been experimenting in...

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:37:00 -0700

For the past few years I have been experimenting in network entrepreneurship and lifestyle design, trying to answer the question: How can I design a desirable and sustainable lifestyle around my talents and passions that can generate superior value to my network?

Here are a few key hacks and insights:

Find what you love and make it your life. I’ve always loved working with imaginative, interesting and honest people on innovative projects. This is what I’m good at and how I like to spend my days. I enjoy working in bursts of creativity and flow and that’s why I like the network economy over corporate hierarchies. I enjoy learning new things, solving hard problems and rethinking the world. I’m really good at envisioning how to successfully navigate the next 12-18 months so strategy and product development comes naturally.
Reinvent your personal business model. Necessary to survive in this model is to operate like a startup and have a low burn-rate and long runway. This means to kill off all debt, preferable never get in debt. Simplify your financials and scale them back to the absolute necessities. Then when you are financially successful, create buffers and save for periods when the flow of projects are low. This could be seasonal or during recessions. It’s an inverted model of todays debt-driven economy. It’s the way of the true entrepreneur.
Find honest, strategic long-term partners.This is critical to avoid the pitfalls of “freelancing”, waste time and doing busy work. I’m friends with everyone I work with, happy to have them over for dinner as there is mutual respect and honesty. Business is personal, don’t treat it like anything else. This means that you will have to know your purpose and say no more often than you say yes. That’s a good thing, strengthens your focus and value.
Create a personal portfolio of synergetic projects. Once (read: 15 years ago) I believed in personal branding but no longer. Today’s social and personal network tools makes the need for “creating” a perception around yourself unnecessary. The real, personal and human you is much more interesting than the brand you. The projects I look for and participate in have all clear objectives, focus and path to execution and value-creation. In addition, they support and elevate each other, creating win-win for everyone. And for me personally, they save time so I can accelerate my value-creation. It’s how I scale my focus and mind, spending less time doing more faster.
Networks are overhyped and underutilized. We talk and participate in online and offline social networks on a daily basis but how much real, tangible value do they really create beyond connections and interactions? It’s usually just a lot of noise that slows us down, creates friction and clutter our minds. Networking needs to be deliberate and targeted but not necessarily financial. I don’t need to be connected to many people, just the few that really matters to me and my purpose. Real people that I can help and that can help me. Reid Hoffman calls these your alliances.
Do more, work less. Act like a startup and be ruthless in prioritizing and de-cluttering. Only do the right things that create the superior value. Don’t outsource busy work, just kill it off. Only solve hard problems during your best hours, then rest, play and spend time with family. We should fill our days with what we love, not with more work.
Charge for the superior value you create, not time spent. I realized early that charging for value and not time spent was critical to my survival, sanity and value creation. There are many reasons for shifting from a time-based to a value-based fee model, the most important being time itself. Speed is necessary to survive, innovate and thrive. It forces everyone involved to focus, create clarity and to collaborate. And freeing up your time is critical to adding more value.
Give more than you take. I believe in fairness, in helping people that needs a hand when times are tough. But I’m not a believer in charity, it’s such an old model designed by people that have “beaten” the system and search for public affirmation. Unfortunately it has become necessary as the public sector is being scaled down. I like modest utilization of a healthy ecosystem where we only take what we need and are generous with sharing with everyone. It might be easy to politicize this but don’t, it’s just being a decent human.
Disconnect. Just cause we can be online anytime from anywhere with anyone doesn’t mean we should. It’s about taking control of the programming, to program and not being programmed. I’ve also permanently disconnected from all broadcast media, from TV, newspapers and radio to snail-mail and advertising. It’s very liberating and makes me more focused, happy and thoughtful. Counter intuitive, liberating and saves lots of time.

All the above are just a few insights and hacks that I have designed to live a life with a strong purpose and direction. Some hacks are simple and no-brainers, others are challenging the way we think and how our world today is designed to work. It has been very hard to forge this new path, to challenge contemporary conventions and to fight for what I truly believe in. But I’ve never had so much fun doing what I love as I do today. And tomorrow will be even better.

"Innovation is the fastest path to future revenue."

Mon, 21 May 2012 07:51:39 -0700

“Innovation is the fastest path to future revenue.”

How to Qualify Potential Partners and Not Wasting Time

Sun, 20 May 2012 09:14:00 -0700

I’ve learned a lot about the importance of choosing and qualifying potential future collaborators and partners over the past few weeks. My insights have evolved through the interaction with four different organizations that shall be nameless. Two of them qualified and two didn’t.

I learned the most from the organizations that didn’t qualify as they failed to understand basic concepts like value creation, strategic partnerships, fairness, honesty, openness, mutual respect, intelligence, equality, speed and iteration. They wanted to “outsource” busy work just like a car manufacturer looking for the cheapest possible option to satisfy their mediocre mass-market clients. What they do is nothing personal to them, it’s just business as usual.

Both of these organization reached out to me via LinkedIn as they wanted my help in creating their future, knowing that the threat of a painful extinction is upon them. They pitched me internally and were very excited in “working together”. But neither felt sincere in their accolades, nor very speedy in the interactions. They never asked why I would be interested or how they could help me out, aside from paltry financial compensation they offered. In honest, they acted like 18th century landowners.

I think they assumed, in their self-mirrored arrogance, that it should be a pleasure for an independent knowledge worker to work “for” them. That anyone “freelancing” (what a shitty word btw) would be happy to get their weekdays and weekends filled up with their busywork, working “for” someone which brand they could “leverage” in getting even more busywork.

They failed to realize that the world has changed dramatically while they were asleep at their corporate wheels, enjoying not having to take risks or responsibility and developing into arrogant bastards. But when they needed help, feeling the pressure from all sides, they weren’t prepared to pay for value or to share the wealth. They just wanted an underling to do all the hard work and then reap the financial awards.

So when I asked what they offered they came back with $0.10 on the dollar with arguments from not having the budget to it will get better in the future to the best one yet “I hope you didn’t except to get rich working with us”. I obviously declined which both chocked and infuriated them, to the extent that one of the organizations advised me to “not string along potential clients in the future”. Right, it took 2 months and several reminders to get them to produce an offering. The worst is that I don’t think they have learned anything.

Any independent knowledge entrepreneur (aka freelancer, free agent et cetera) knows how time-consuming it is to work with large clients, how long it takes for them to pull the trigger and pay for the value you are creating. The idea is that a big well-known client will create opportunities. They don’t, especially not public companies. They will just waste your precious time to then nickel-and-dime you through their supplier and procurement departments.

Here are my rules when responding to requests for collaboration:

I only work with real people from ~~private~~ entrepreneurial organizations that understand ~~entrepreneurship~~, value creation, strategic partnerships, fairness, honesty, openness, mutual respect, intelligence, equality, speed and iteration.
I’m not looking for busy work or working hard but doing hard work, solving the right important high-value problems that can create significant future revenue streams for everyone involved.
I create value and charge for value created, not per hour, week or month. There are a number of reasons for this, the most important are: fairness, focus, simplicity and speed.

The above allows me to work with a few strategic partners long-term to build amazing value together. It allows me to focus on leveraging my talents and passions to create value for everyone. It prevents me from wasting time, doing busy work or getting bogged down by general bureaucratic bullshit and idiosyncrasies. It allows me to free up time to dedicate my best, most creative and energized hours to the hardest problems. It allows me to design a fantastic happy and well-balanced life which accelerates my growth and the value I can create to design win-win for everyone in my network.

The two organizations that qualify are meeting all of the above criteria. They are run by real smart and creative people that understand how entrepreneurship works and how to create and share value enabling everyone to thrive. They are in the end of the day friends as business is personal, very personal. Life is too short to waste time on anything else.

billwesterman: What we do at Create with Context, a true story...

Sun, 20 May 2012 08:02:37 -0700

billwesterman:

What we do at Create with Context, a true story in 10 frames

Wonderful use of #paper.

"Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy."

Thu, 17 May 2012 21:32:35 -0700

“Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.”

- Paul Graham (via trey)

The Art of Innovation

Fri, 11 May 2012 20:47:15 -0700

Innovation is everywhere. It’s happens when the mind is liberated to think and do things differently to solve real and important problems. Innovation can be anything. It can be small adjustments, building on others or big new leaps in the way we work, live and play. Innovation happens all the time. It’s the shortcut that saves us time, re-using old stuff in new ways or plainly rethinking old ways to make life simpler.

But why we innovate is more interesting than finding the “correct” definition of innovation. Innovation is a human trait, it’s a survival skill that’s part of our DNA and if not beaten out of us during our childhood most of us still inherent. But we are also inherently lazy, social creatures of habit; in many ways “set in our ways” due to the need for simplification.

Any human innovation has always started with a personal quest to solve an important problem by someone with a different or multiple perspectives of how the world could / should work. It’s a journey of trial-and-error, failing fast forward to getting closer to the right solution.

The way to re-discover innovation is to start with defining a very personal problem and then finding a simple solution to that problem. It’s an exercise in disconnecting your mind from how the world works and embrace how the world could work. It’s about making innovation into something hands-on, practical and personal from being an abstraction and a common buzzword.

joshuanguyen: foreverdigital: Flash mob in the Copenhagen...

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:38:47 -0700

joshuanguyen:

foreverdigital:

Flash mob in the Copenhagen Metro. Copenhagen Phil playing Peer Gynt. (by CPHPHIL)

Please oh please let me serendipitously stumble upon the NY philharmonic doing this in the NYC subway one day. I think that would make my entire life right then and there.

Made my night. And day.

The essence of humanity!

Stowe Boyd: The Next Big Thing Is Eating The Lunch Of Something That Was Big A Decade Ago

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:29:02 -0700

Stowe Boyd: The Next Big Thing Is Eating The Lunch Of Something That Was Big A Decade Ago:

stoweboyd:

Someone who hasn’t fallen for George Orwell’s trope ‘whoever is winning now will always seem to be invincible.’

Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years - Eric Jackson via Forbes

In the tech Internet world, we’ve really had 3 generations:

Web 1.0…

Really excellent analysis.

My Moment of Zen

Wed, 02 May 2012 20:41:52 -0700

I’ve never grown as much as I’ve done over the past three months or felt as much personal and professional (same-same) fulfillment and satisfaction. It’s been an amazing, epic and mind-evolving journey from which I feel more connected and in tune with humanity and the world than I’ve ever experienced or imagined was possible.

The secret lies in the following simple tricks: disconnecting from the broadcast machine, fearless exploration, follow your natural talents and inner passions, collaborative with real human artists, ignore the future, live in the here and now, eat real food, play with your kids, read books, listen to music and walk as far as your legs will carry you.

Knowing that you can survive and thrive no matter what unleashes an enormous power. Hallelujah!

I can now stop wasting time on random hacks to unlock, jailbreak...

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 07:36:30 -0700

I can now stop wasting time on random hacks to unlock, jailbreak and change APN settings (well, might still need to alter the APN to use the iPad’s MicroSIM…;)). It’s one step closer to global ubiquitous connectivity. When this happens - zero friction connectivity and fast enough speeds - we’ll be living in a whole new amazing mobile world. I cannot wait.

The Silicon Valley Platform

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:52:06 -0700

Most locals don’t think it’s possible to replicate the Silicon Valley model somewhere else but I disagree. The model is fairly simple as most ingenious things in life: the right density of smart people, great weather, openness, high risk / high reward and an end-to-end funding system. There is also plenty of confidence, based on legacy and strong storytelling tradition.

But Silicon Valley has a lot of downsides: overpopulated, stressful, very bad transportation infrastructure, devoid of progressive urban culture (or any culture outside of tech if you want to be snark), sky-high cost of living and stiff upper lip regarding anything not invented here. And maybe these downsides is what makes it work, like there is not much else to do than work to afford to stay.

The toughest challenge is to replicate the generous and honest openness and fearlessness of failure. But that’s more Californian than Silicon Valley to be honest. Maybe even more West Coast than Californian. In the end of the day it’s human, really human.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not about replicating the model but just like a great platform strategy leverage the relevant content and functionality. Maybe there is even an advantage of not being in Silicon Valley to create new amazing things. Then Silicon Valley is not a place, maybe not even a platform but a way of thinking that could work anywhere.

I like that idea. It’s human and real. It’s modern and achievable.

The simplicity and beauty of this car blows me away every time.

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:51:01 -0700

The simplicity and beauty of this car blows me away every time.

Made with Paper

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:55:39 -0700

Made with Paper

Less is More When Value Replace Time

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:05:14 -0700

We are conditioned and soft wired to believe that working harder by clocking hours will equal professional and business success. And maybe that is true in the industrial and corporate world were presence and obedience has been rewarded over rule-breaking and innovation.

But applying same work values and behavior in the mobile economy will only make you slower and heavier, resulting in obsolete and bloated solutions. The best path to ensure innovation is to switch to a value-based model where the focus is switched from time spent and worked to real value created.

Focusing on the endgame - value creation - from an employee, consulting or entrepreneurial perspective will create new dynamics that will accelerate results, insights and success. Projects will become smaller and iterative. The iterative process will strengthen collaboration within and across teams and networks.

Customers will benefit from simpler products introduced faster to market, participating in the product development cycle via usage and feedback. In this world there is no place for traditional marketing, one-way messaging to talk up the product. The product is the message.

This is great news for humanity; maybe not so good for old behemoths.

The Beginning of A New Humanity

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 10:51:00 -0700

I very recently joined in on a Twitter conversation about work triggered by the article “Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity” published on AlterNet. It argues that longer hours kills profit, productivity and employees. Something I wholeheartedly agree with.

Despite cultural, social and technological advance we work more and not less which I find ironic. It obviously depends on how we define work. Is it as narrow as a 9-5 office life or as wide as raising a family? In the context of finding work-life balance the definition becomes really clear. Work is everything but life.

The Fast Company article “Strive For Work-Life Integration, Not Balance” is scratching the surface of a new way of looking at life without daring to go much deeper. It’s still grounded in an old school industrial view on work and how it defines you by a culture that asks the question: What do you do?

My wife and I started to rethink how we should design our lives when we had our first son two years ago. We had both left our more traditional employments at a very successful Silicon Valley startup and an iconic tech institution respectively the year before.

We asked ourselves the question: Is it possible to design a life around our growing family instead of around an ossified concept of work? Well, we live in the most creative, empowering and innovative time so why shouldn’t we be able to disrupt and change the way we work the same way we are changing banking, health, communication, shopping, education et cetera. Must an accelerating world mean that you also have to run faster and longer?

So we decided to both be stay-at-home parents and alternate working on interesting projects where we could leverage our respective talents, passions and create high-end value. I ventured into teaching and my wife investment banking.

Not to scare anyone off but it’s been very hard as most new ventures are. We look upon ourselves as a startup and try to operate really lean, iterate often and collaborate with our networks. We are rethinking our personal business model, staying away from unnecessary debt and frivolous consumption. Any startup knows that key to long-term survival is to bootstrap. Only take on debt when there is a clear path to accelerated growth.

We approached this experiment by turning off everything and reinventing our lives from scratch. What really matters on a daily basis? We quickly got rid of all industrial junk: TV, news, stationary phones, newspapers, mail, grocery shopping and anything advertising related. We replaced driving with walking for the obvious health benefits. We started to source all our food locally and cook everything from scratch. We designed a home office where we could each do bursty work a couple of hours or more per day pending project. We got rid of anything that demanded regular maintenance. We only work with smart, focused and nice people on fun projects. We stopped trying to fit into the statistical normal and started living.

Most people forget that they have 16 hours / day available to do whatever after a healthy 8 hour night of sleep. Those 16 hours can be wasted on commuting, multitasking or endless meetings, or on real value-added doing. They could also be used for healthy idleness.

The cool thing is that we are connecting with more and more people that think the same and that we have started to collaborate with, even do business with. People that are tired of business as usual, corporate career climbing, politics, titles, busy work and big egos. In the end of the day it’s about having a great life, not to win the competition of who owns the must stuff.

What having a great life means is a very personal decision despite the monolithic social contemporary consensus that it’s about extrinsic values and rewards. The industrial era treated humans as machines, as we could be taken apart and fixed if anything broke. It’s time to reclaim humanity and I think we see that happing across the world today via all different kinds of initiatives, from crowd-sourced projects to peer-2-peer initiatives, local movements and the new era of craftsmanship.

Work is about deliver high-value by working less; it’s about contributing to the world where you give more than you take; it’s about collaboration, fulfillment and personal growth.

There is a certain pleasure in setting up a new iPad, only...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:30:25 -0700

There is a certain pleasure in setting up a new iPad, only keeping the apps used on a daily and weekly basis. Nothing fancy or eclectic; they all work to get the job done and leave some room for entertainment.

Waiting For The New iPad

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:28:10 -0700

I bought the first iPad almost 2 years ago as productivity tool for my travels and lectures. Back then, the general mainstream media consensus viewed the iPad as a playful toy designed for leisurely media consumption at best.

As I never listen to the statistical normal I decided to bring only the iPad on trips and work to see what it could and couldn’t do but also envision how this would change over time.

I wrote four blog posts about this experience back in 2010 with the conclusion that it works and when it doesn’t the creative mind will find practical workarounds.

As I’m awaiting the delivery of the new iPad in a few days I’ve been contemplating how technology is changing the way we work, or rather how we can utilize technology in smart ways so that we can design work around our desired lifestyle.

I’ve been able to change not only the way I work but also what I do thanks to technology. That has impacted how I use technology in creating superior value and spending less time “working”.

Work has morphed into an artisan and artistic experience like cooking. To be able to cook I need to have an idea or a recipe of what to make, sources the ingredients, prepare them, find an audience (easier than you think) and then cook. It also includes doing dishes, cleaning up and critiquing the experience.

Once I divided up what I really do - researching, reading, thinking, writing, talking, advising and lecturing - into smaller activities it became easier to find the right tools to make these tasks faster and less time-consuming using technology.

I wanted all of these activities to work from anywhere, anytime and anyhow (across both iOS and OSX). Here are a few highlights:

Researching: I get ideas and insights from a selected few RSS feeds (Reeder) where there is optimal signal to noise ratio within my areas of interest. I also read lots of book (Kindle) and get my news from Twitter which I often read later (Readability) in the day or while traveling. LinkedIn has also become a valuable tool.
Reading: I read more than ever, maybe even more than in college. It’s a fantastic activity that feeds my mind with new ideas, perspectives and insights. I use the Kindle app despite it’s shortcomings.
Thinking: The great thing with thinking is that it can be done from anywhere. It’s a lost skill in our passive consumption society but one of the most rewarding and completely free. Thinking in combination with verbal sharing, mental prototyping and writing is especially effective to accelerate learning.
Writing: There is a lot of friction in writing and always a challenge with combining great ideas and thoughts with words - transforming information and knowledge into valuable and actionable insights. I’ve started using Evernote again to capture ideas, quotes and images in realtime. But I use both Google Docs and Pages to write. Interestingly enough there is no really great solution today.
Talking: I spend a few hours per week talking to emerging thought-leaders via one of my newer projects and that has really accelerated my thinking. I use Skype to connect even-though I think their product has become harder to use. Another alternative is Vox.io or Google Talk.
Advising: I work on a few advisory projects and after meeting up face-to-face a few times - establishing trust, need and urgency - communicating via email and voice apps works great. But there are still too few tools that makes collaboration work well via iOS or OSX.
Lecturing: All the above converge into my lectures on technology-driven change and impact. I’ve used Keynote on the iPad to structure my talks since it’s very first release and albeit limiting in thought and design it’s one of the most practical to use in conjunction with Dropbox. The lack of iCould integration for both Keynote files and independent content like images is disappointing.

The above activities and tools solves anywhere and anyhow but not anytime. Time is scarce and should not be valued in money but in experience, growth and fulfillment. I’m the most productive in the early mornings and before lunch. That’s when I need to schedule thinking and writing, activities that takes a lof of attention and focus.

I try to schedule my different activities around my immediate environment (family, friends, lectures, travels et cetera) to reach a state of productive flow and zero friction. This I might add, has been very hard but is becoming easier - as with most things - the more I practice.

We have had over 100 years of practice in how to fit into the workings of the industrial era and office life; it’s to be expected that working in the networked, self-employed world will take both time, focus and effort. Be patient and have some faith - we live in the best of times!