I’m blown away and humbled by the collective intelligence and spirit of adventure and curiosity in every single participant and presenter at the first Quantified Self Conference today. In the afternoon I’ll be co-presenting a short talk entitled Agile Self Development, on borrowing ideas from Lean Startup and Agile Software Development for optimizing personal development, experimentation and productivity.

Seth Roberts suggested in his opening plenary that professional science is stagnating, while personal science is about to revolutionize the advancement of knowledge and human health, productivity and happiness. Hooray for progress!

Shuttle Discovery on pad 39a, night before her final launch

My visits to NASA for this launch were an amazing experience, but I also noticed a valuable lesson for company founders and leaders.

Innovation and reliability sometimes compete, but they matter differently to each of the things you do. At any stage and any size, your company can be more nimble and accepting of failure where needed, and more risk averse where needed. The trick is knowing the difference and taking advantage, rather than succumbing to the temptation to always favor one over the other.

Perhaps a more interesting way to look at it might be that we’re always engineering a reduction in different kinds of risks. Focus on the right one to reduce for each problem, and we can meet our most important and appropriate goals. Beware the temptation to manage the wrong risks.

More about the lesson and the launch, with a few of the snapshots I took on this trip (all are unedited/uncropped from my point-and-shoot Canon sx30is), after the break…

The world's most famous clock?

“Tears.”

That was all I could think to Tweet after Discovery lifted off as I stood feet from the world-famous countdown clock.

The physicality of the launch from that distance (as near as any are allowed to be, and miles closer than the public), is enough to change your emotional state. The sound of the SRBs and main engines reverberates in your chest at least as much as in your ears.

Discovery's last launch (STS-133)

I was also intensely aware of how many people had worked tirelessly to make one of the world’s most complex machines ready to fly one more time. I was lucky enough to talk to many of the astronauts and managers during the programs NASA put together for us.

Even when things go well, the Shuttle is amazingly complex. So much goes into planning and carrying out a launch and mission under the best of circumstances.

Last November, I was here for a series of delays and an eventual scrubbed launch attempt. After that, cracks were found, and Discovery pulled off the pad to make modifications to her External Tank (note the lighter orange band on the ET — those are the repair). For me, this meant the inconvenience of a second trip to Florida. For countless NASA employees and contractors, it meant significant parts of the 100 elapsed days working around the clock weekends and holidays throughout that time to investigate the problem, come up with solutions, run the math and execute the plan. Thousands of people were involved. The layers of procedure they work through and documentation they create to come to agreement about root cause, to understand risk, confidently eliminate it and generate flight rationale is stunning.

Last trip, a turkey vulture, this one, a Huey, flies in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Really though, they added a drop in the bucket to the enormous history of human energy that has accumulated in the shuttle program. When she took off, I could feel all that blood, sweat and tears, all that amazing capacity we as a species have to reach beyond and do what should be impossible. And to be safe and reliable at that.

Remember that moment in the Apollo 13 movie where the engineers work all night to figure out how to put a square air scrubber in a round hole (or was it vice-versa)? It may not always be so obvious, but that’s practically a day in the life. NASA always has to solve problems with lives in the balance, before and during missions.

In the week after the launch date was made official, the countdown started and went smoothly, but we still ended up with a nail-biter. The Range computer went down, resulting in a No-Go and an unplanned hold at T-5 minutes. A verbal OK and override was given by RCO with just seconds before another scrub would have been forced. Even the professional media gathered to cover the event let up a cheer when the countdown resumed.

All that, and the knowing that this would be Discovery’s last flight before she retires to a museum. There were few dry eyes after liftoff.

That’s what it feels like when we have a new product launch, too, doesn’t it?

During the dot-com boom, we mostly built startups the way NASA builds rockets. Acting as if we knew exactly where we were going, we layed out elaborate plans to get there and set huge teams of engineers to multi-year projects building out software to do it. We often ended up with robust solutions no one wanted to buy.

Zoom.

We’ve learned a lot about how much we usually don’t know in a startup. The first risk to manage in most new products is that we don’t know enough about our customer and what the product would look like that they’d really use.

Better tools make it easier and faster to build web startups with smaller, more nimble teams. The welcome trend is toward doing better customer research up front, incorporating good user experience design, and Lean Startup methods. You can reduce risk by getting to know customers early and often, putting low-fidelity prototypes in front of them early and then getting actual usable software into their hands as quickly as possible. Then you repeat the process, iterating on making changes and looking for customer feedback, constantly learning, proving assumptions and getting new insight and inspiration.

When you get a good product/market fit, then you face the problems of building to scale and refactoring the prototype code that customers are actually using. You have to create a more robust implementation. Now you start to get into the situation where people really are depending on your code and downtime or failures are much more costly. You get to do both at the same time, sometimes focusing on enhancing reliability and maintainability, sometimes focusing again on innovation and customers and market. The more flexibility you have to do both, the better off you are.

It starts happening much earlier, but it’s easiest to see at the extreme: If you’re lucky enough to get to be the size of Google (or Yahoo or Microsoft), you’ll run into the problem that the temptation is to use large teams and build everything to work with your scalable architecture (see Why Google can’t build Instagram, for great insights about their innovation problem). When you want to try out a new feature or product, rather than prototype it with the fastest available tools and try it with a small audience, you’ll build it more slowly so that it can scale if you turn it on to the firehose of traffic you can send to it. When you acquire a new startup, you’ll let them spend their first year integrating their code rather than continuing to innovate. You’d be better off keeping more teams separate longer, running skunkworks operations to prove new concepts before handing them off.

BBQ.

One way NASA demonstrates that it is nimble enough to use different rules in different domains is in how it handles social media. Despite all the beauracracy of a large government organization and the heritage of “Failure is Not an Option” engineering, in this area, they’ve managed to take more risks, embrace test and learn, and allow for public mistakes and a human face that people want to engage with. In a recent study, NASA ranked first of 100 public sector organizations based on the effectiveness of their websites, social media use, mobile sites, and digital outreach. In fact, they came in 26 points ahead of its next closest competitor. The biggest risk most companies face in social media is the risk of not engaging in authentic conversation with customers, of being too afraid of mistakes and failure, and too conservative in what they’re willing to try.

Be mindful with any problem set. What don’t you know? What risks can you afford to take in order to learn more quickly? How can you better connect with your audience by being open and transparent? Often, you are best off trying things and failing as fast as possible to learn more quickly. At other times, slowing down is valuable, and sometimes, you’ll need adopt a more risk-averse stance. In a startup, you’re likely to move between problems in each of these areas every day. Godspeed.

(See also my earlier posts about my November trip and my history as a Rocket Scientist. Thanks to NASA for inviting me back a third time and for access to so many sites and people along the way. Shout out to all the media and Twitter folks I met along the way, and special thanks to Stephanie Schierholz (@NASATweetup) for all your hard work and facilitating so much kind hospitality for us! Catch her SxSW panel in a couple of weeks.)

I think it will result in more discussion and views as they post both here and on folk’s Facebook walls. It’s really cool to see a comment show up in both places.

If it goes well, I’ll look into hiding or disabling Disqus (or better yet, Disqus and Facebook will come to some agreement that lets them integrate and pull in Twitter as a login option).

The plugin I used is at http://grahamswan.com/facebook-comments/ and includes clear instructions for how to install (including setting up a Facebook application key). (I also PayPal’d the author a quick donation.)

What do you think?

We’ll select the two best blog comments and/or Tweets to @dalelarson telling us why you’d make a great guest in our home for dinner on Saturday, December 4 with myself, Walls360 co-founders Yiying Lu and John Doffing (visiting from Sydney and Philadelphia, respectively). Make sure you have an email or Twitter handle that I can DM associated with your account to notify the winners.  Details to be nailed down, but we’ll probably let you know by 3pm for a home cooked dinner around 5:30 in San Francisco…

(UPDATE: So far we’re also being joined by Harry McCracken of Technologizer.com and Time magazine, Marie Domingo of StageTwo.com, and Krystyl Baldwin of HootSuite.  Still room for a couple more to make a table of 12)

I ordered a Canon SX30IS 14.1MP Digital Camera with 35x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom because I was lucky enough to be asked to NASA for the final launch of Shuttle Discovery. I wanted as much zoom as possible in a small, easy to use and affordable package. I wanted most of all to be present and see everything with my own eyes. I wanted to capture images along the way with a minimum of distraction from the equipment.

I knew to expect amazing access through the #NASATweetup, including the press area (as close as you can get for a launch, but still three miles away), at the launch pad, and inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Not to mention briefings by Astronauts, engineers and managers, and meeting Robonaut 2. Thanks so much to NASA (in particular @NASATweetup and @NASA) for your wonderful hospitality and amazing opportunity to learn and see so much these past five days! Still looking forward to viewing the (delayed) launch from the press area!

So how well has the Canon meet my needs for these conditions so far?

Let me start by restating the obvious: 35x image stabilized optical zoom is incredible. I previously posted test shots from the Blue Angels over San Francisco from the day after I got the camera. I set up a tripod at the NASA press area the moment I arrived. From three miles away, I was going to be able to get the launch pad and Shuttle to fill half the frame!

I shot all five samples you see above in Auto mode, and used a circular polarizing filter. I imported them into iPhoto, with no cropping or processing other than exporting smaller .jpgs. In other words, I pointed and I shot and I didn’t do any other work.

I had the opportunity to take a few shots with other prosumer and pro cameras loaned to me while at NASA (“hey, would you mind taking my picture in front of the shuttle?”). Going back and forth, it’s easy to tell the difference between a $4000+ setup and a $399 camera. But someone who rents an 800mm Canon lens for nearly $100 a day has to hold and haul something that looks like a battleship. At that point, they stop being able to enjoy the experience of anything but being a photographer. While a little envious at the clarity of the viewfinder on the SLRs and the solid click of their shuttlers and the like, I was still really happy with the SX30is. It’s a fantastic combination of size, price and performance, and I was happy to get stunning snapshots from a compact camera without having to really work for it. Some of these shots would have been impossible with any other point-and-shoot (because they just don’t have the zoom), and all of them were on par with anything I could imagine taking with any sub-$500 camera.

It’s not just me who thinks so, I’ve been seeing a crop of smart posts the last few days that all seem to be contemplating related issues.

Robert Scoble suggests that noise control is our number one problem and that the problem solvers may even need to be under the influence of a wierd drug. Well, duh.

Dave McClure’s How to Take Down Facebook is another take on the lack of understanding of Intimacy, Context, Connection, and Closeness in social networks. Social is Noise and opportunity is lost unless without filtering what I see (and what others see about me) based on what shared interests we have, the context in which we’re reading, and when and where we’re reading.

In case the connection isn’t immediately obvious, how we relate to web content and to companies and marketers online is an essentially similar problem to how we relation to people online, and all are converging around Social. Doc Searls also discusses the related issue of identity and profiling used to present customized content and ads. I might add that in addition to giving me some transparency into and control over my identity profile (I’m not sure that it’s something I always want to be conscious of or have manual control over), that I don’t have just one (or that I have one with many aspects that encompass my interests in varied contexts).

I ran into Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare at the Shuttle Discovery launch NASATweetup yesterday. Promised I’d send him a note about this. A few weeks ago, I wrote my breakup note with Foursquare (well, technically, we’re on a temporary break). I think Location services run into these troubles even more quickly and harder than general social networks. At least they did for me. And though I got huge benefits from Foursquare early on, now I’ve managed just fine without. I had mild withdrawals from impulsively checking in, and did mourn the loss of a few coveted mayorships (like The Pork Store). But I haven’t noticed anything meaningful I gave up in terms of communication, friendship or inside information vs. what I’d been experiencing in the past months. For me, at least, Foursquare quickly lost its utility as the number of users (and my “friends” in it) grew without distinction for what people and locations (or kinds of people and locations) I was interested in at different times.

These are key emerging problems in all of Social Networking that will continue to grow and impede the real potential of all these services. Big rewards (and great drugs) await those who find solutions.

We were at a party, so I didn’t have time to find out more about what he had in mind before giving him the general answer of what anyone in his position needs to hear…

I said I knew several Bay Area app developers who have released great apps and are available for hire, but he should know that it can be expensive to develop native apps for any mobile platform, and developers in San Francisco and Silicon Valley who are good don’t come cheap. In general, it’s more difficult and costly than web development by far. He nodded, already knowing from first-hand experience what it takes to get a commercial app out, and how common delays and overages are.

I mentioned that there are many services who provide overseas programmers at a fraction of the cost, but their quality and flexibility might not be to the same standard. I have yet to work directly with any of these services for iPhone, but have worked with offshore developers in other mobile and web settings. At CTIA earlier this month, I spoke again with Shishir Danani, CEO of MobilePundits, this time about how his firm does iPhone app design and development. I’m sure I have other cards in my rolodex from folks representing coders in India, China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Shishir is confident that his firm does good work with design and all kinds of apps, my sense with offshore firms generally is that they are best for an app that needs more code than design, especially one that is database driven and/or can draw on open source. He added that his teams are often called upon after a project has gone wrong and someone has to clean up.

Back to Doc, I suggested that rock stars and Internet personalities often have apps built by various services that allow you to get an app into the store without a programmer. They have limited functionality to choose from, but perhaps they’d serve a useful purpose for the price. There are at least four choices here:

• My friends Robert Scoble and Brian Solis are among those who have iPhone apps is built by MobileRoadie.
• Yapper won a Macworld 2010 Best of Show.
• Other options include AppMakr and MobileAppLoader.

But getting an app designed, coded and into Apple’s App Store is only a small part of what makes a succesful app.  Of the 300,000 apps already in iTunes, the vast majority never exceed hundreds of downloads.

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” -Thomas A. Edison.

“App Store success is 20% development, 80% the right product for a receptive market you engage effectively.” – Dale L. Larson

When we met, it felt like you really cared about me and my feelings. You used to help me stay better connected to people. Now you only connect me to places in a mindless game.

What was once an interesting and useful relationship has become an irrelevant distraction. I’m taking you off my iPhone’s shortcuts dock for now, but I hope this note might help you change in ways that make you relevant in my life again. I’m going to take a break from our friendship for a while rather than unfriending other people…

This week marks a year and a half since your big splash at SxSW in March 2009. That’s when I started loving you. Back then, we had a few dozen friends in common in San Francisco. I loved getting alerts as they checked in. Seeing where my friends were, I dropped in to bars, parties, and tech events. We made a great team.

I deepened connections to people I knew and felt a stronger sense of community. I visited places and met people I never would have otherwise. For months, I was the most socially active I’d ever been in my life. For a while, you fueled that. I was a better person because of you. Thanks.

But we seem to have grown apart…

As you grew, hundreds of people requested to be my FourSquare friends. Even after rejecting folks I’d never met, I still had more than 150. That’s a fraction of the people I’m connected to on Facebook, Twitter or email, but this is simply more people than I can ge

t location alerts from. I can’t keep track of it all, and I can’t act on it. You no longer help me sort the interesting from the mundane. Excepting your downtime this week, the database in my ears isn’t capable of handling nearly the volume that yours is.

At first I disabled alerts for many people, but I found I had to disable them altogether. Part of this isn’t your fault — the alert system on the iPhone is primitive, and alerts from apps trounce each other (and incoming SMS messages). I found I was losing both. Hopefully that’s something Apple improves soon.

The bottom line is, you don’t help me meet up with my other friends anymore.

And frankly, you seem so focused on work that you seem to have forgotten people. If I need a business directory, I’ve got Yelp and plenty of other options that do a better job right now. If that’s what you want to be, you’ve got a long road ahead of you. I fell in love with you because you were all about the people in the places, not the businesses themselves.

I realized I just wasn’t getting anything from our relationship anymore. I kept putting in checkins and tips, but what’s the value for me? Coupons? Really, you think love can be bought?  Badges? Honey, if you think I’m a boyscout, you really don’t understand me at all.  Mayorships? They’re not worth the hassle, it’s just more work without a meaninful payoff. (Well, OK, it does tickle me a little to be the mayor of a few of my favorite places, even though no one notices anymore.) You used to mean something to me, but I see you’ve grown shallow.

I thought maybe I could help you myself. So I started to unfriend people on Foursquare. Then I realized that I’d lose context for people who are loose connections, so their tips wouldn’t pop up. And I wouldn’t be able to spot larger scale trends.

I don’t need to unfriend other people. What I need is for you to acknowledge my feelings.

While I love all people, I really do feel closer to some more than others. I’d love to know what my closest friends and family are doing wherever they are in the world (my feelings for them are enough to create relevance), while others only matter to me if they are checking in to someplace of professional interest rather than their social haunts (or vice-versa).  Some people I might only care if they are very near to where I am now. Often I’d like to follow someone closely for a while as I get to know them, but later let drift into my pool of broader friends or acquaintances (once I’ve decided how compatible we are, or how interesting they are).

You need to respect the fact that some of our friends are closer than others, and mean different things to us.

I still care about you, and I’d like to see you change. My friend Facebook has the same problem, and started trying to manage it this week with a new groups feature. I’m not sure how well that’s going to work out. Twitter has its own issues. But they’ve both changed so much in the last year. They show me they’re really trying, that they really care about me.

I hope someday I’ll again feel about you the way I still do about Facebook and Twitter, but for right now, I just need a little break.

Canon’s latest point-and-shoot just became available this week: the SX30IS has an amazing 35x optical image stabilized zoom. It’s a bit of a lens on steroids with a camera attached. I tried one out for the first time this afternoon during the Blue Angels show. They finished flying two hours ago…

During their 45 minute performance, I took just under 100 shots, all free-hand in automatic mode. . I took full advantage of the long zoom for some (or tried to — at 810mm equivalent, it’s challenging to track planes across the sky), and for others I was better off cropping the 14.1MP original. The autofocus was often frustratingly slow for this subject, and too often distracted by uninteresting boat masts and sea birds. A particularly challenging first shoot, so I don’t really have an opinion yet on what I think of the camera (and whether it’s what I want to take it to the #NASATweetup at the end of the month), but here are three of my best shots from this initial test. Laura Larson was kind enough to quickly run through them in Aperture to select the best ones, auto-leveled the colors, and cropped the first two.

What do you think?

While hardly an insider, I’ve been to Facebook’s offices a couple of times over the years, and I’ve met some of the people from the film in person. I wanted to know what other people, closer to it, had said about film, Facebook, and what comes next…

Harvard professor and copyright activist Lawrence Lessig writes in his review of the movie for The New Republic that ‘The Social Network’ is wonderful entertainment, but its message is actually kind of evil. Lessig’s writing is more intelligent and almost as entertaining as Sorkin’s. He makes an important point about the true (unsung) hero of this tale.

After one screening of the movie, Silicon Valley insiders engaged in a panel discussion and revealed “That’s Not the Zuckerberg I know” [GigaOm].

Who is Mark Zuckerberg’s Most Valuable Friend? The New York Times reports, “If all of that sounds a bit touchy-feely, well, it is. [She] is known for her interpersonal skills as much as for her sharp intellect. And her regular meetings with the famously introverted Mr. Zuckerberg have helped to keep one of Silicon Valley’s most unusual business partnerships working wonders for Facebook.”

In a fantastic guest post to TechCrunch, Adam Rifkin bets that Facebook will eclipse Google within five years. He shares a similar sentiment to Lessig: the open, democratic Internet is the real hero here. Rifkin goes further in suggesting that the door is still open to unseat Facebook and change the world, and that an entrepreneurial young engineer may yet out-Zuckerberg Zuckerberg.