nate cooper

What Happstr Means to Me – Triumph of the Optimist

2012-05-25T16:03:39Z

Last night I had the pleasure of presenting on my recent Kickstarter success at the New Work City member Show and Tell. I got asked an excellent question from the audience afterwards. In my presentation I had shown that I did my homework about what works: price points, network effect etc but, some one asked “Did you look at any failed projects to see what went wrong?” I answered with my typical response when I don’t know the immediate answer “That’s a great question.” In those brief seconds I had to think of a response, I actually experienced dread.

I imagined myself preparing to launch my Kickstarter filling my head with all these stories of failure and negativity. I thought about what Chris Gillbeau (author of the $100Startup) said in the same space just two weeks before. Some one in the audience questioned his focus on successful entrepreneurs. To paraphrase Mr. Guillebeau, “failure is overrated. Don’t get my wrong. Failure is a good thing to experience because it gives you a learning opportunity.” The important thing is to iterate. Some have the tendency to emphasize the problem over the solution. This can lead to inaction.

Happstr is an example of vindication for the optimist.

It’s been less than 3 months since I stood up at 5 am on a bus leaving New York City and said something like, “Have you ever been fucking depressed? Like, go through moments of darkness? I want to build an app that encourages happiness. You tap a button and your happiness gets mapped out for others to see and get inspired by. If you aren’t feeling happy you can search a map and go to where people are happy.” After three all nighters and a whirlwind tour through the south, five amazing, wonderful people built that very app. We called it Happstr. The app continues to gain steam, has almost double my Twitter followers despite still being a prototype and not ever being officially launched. It was recently nominated for an award for humanizing technology (a personal victory since I teach technology to humans).

Happstr is an example of vindication for the optimist. I’m not always overly optimistic. Like everyone I experience periods of doubt and regret but I try not to project that to others — especially those I first meet. My job is to teach beginners about tech and too often people outside the world view it as closed off and inaccessible. They’re afraid of making mistakes. I don’t blame them. I have a lot of friends who build apps and websites for a living and it’s not uncommon to hear “That’s a dumb idea” or something close to it. The tech world venerates lean, fresh, new and most important ridiculously high-performing products. There is no second place. If you don’t have the hottest, newest exclusive technology you shouldn’t even bother.

From years of teaching people technology, however, I know that the trouble for most beginners is overcoming their fear of mistakes. Giving a beginner enough room to try it out themselves and mess something up leads to high quality learning and the most likely road for their personal success. Guess what? Getting frustrated every time it takes someone 30 seconds to do something it takes you 10 seconds to do, doesn’t exactly help them.

I see students all the time who’ve started and ended their personal web projects prematurely because they saw other people’s sites or they were convinced by someone else that some other technology would be easier or better. Too much posturing again leads to inaction. I often tell my students who ask me what’s the best way to start getting into web development learn any language. I find the people who get that action is more important than talk — like Girl DevelopIt and Mike Caprio who organized the NYC StartupBus make up the quiet majority while the haters; the get out of town if your idea isn’t the next Facebook are the loud minority.

That’s why I’m personally honored (while not presuming full-credit for its success) that Happstr is nominated for a humanizing technology award. It’s not perfect (It’s not even finished). But it’s an app that proves that being optimistic in the tech world doesn’t represent a naiveté but rather a choice and an inspiration for others.

Addendum: I couldn’t figure out how to artfully weave this into the post but you should be following these people. They built happstr: @rickyrobinett @freenerd @b9punk @pnts @robhanleydesign

The Education (Revolution) Will Not Be Televised

2012-05-14T22:48:22Z

I went to two events this past weekend that helped form some thoughts about my relationship to my work, teaching students. The first, on Friday was “Rise of the Independents,” a crash course into the coworking world with Chris Guillebeau author of the $100 Startup. The second was The Brooklyn Food Coalition Conference in Greenpoint.

In the $100 Startup Chris Guillebeau interviews entrepreneurs who either left their job by choice or were let go and found themselves with the opportunity to pursue an independent career. I see Chris’ book as almost the polar opposite of the Lean Startup, which is focused heavily on high-growth startups. $100 startup instead looks at people who are figuring out how to make a living on their own with little or no capital investment and with a minimal trial and effort strategy. At the event on Friday, Chris talked a lot about the idea of value. If you are adding value, providing a good or service people want then you can make a profit. If things aren’t going the way you’d like, you can adjust to figure out what the value is and how to better provide it. The book $100 startup chronicle everyday people making decisions like this some are indeed making lots of money on their businesses ($1M+ per year), but they’re doing so with little to no capital investment or traditional business loans. Tony Bacigalupo underlined the work of the book in his introduction by describing how this major shift towards microbusiness is happening despite being under-reported in the media.

Chris Guillebeau Speaks at the Rise of the Independents

At the Brooklyn Food Coalition conference there were workshops on everything from why you shouldn’t eat meat to food politics and policies to navigating the minutiae of government red tape to build a rooftop garden. It was clear that no matter which side of the argument you were on over whether food is a basic human right and shouldn’t be subject to market fluctuations, that most of the action was in the local organizing. Every where you turned you saw t-shirts and fliers for local gardens community coops, CSAs and meetup groups for neighborhoods. Just like with the microbusiness revolution described in the $100 Startup the talk is important but grossly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of action happening on a local level. While at the conference I took a workshop on food security and profit where the conversation quickly turned to a discussion of GMO labeling and concerns about the safety of food, and how to protect against contaminants. I’m always struck in these conversations how closely it mirrors discussion of software patents, DRM and file-sharing. Companies want to protect IP to the detriment of the spread of ideas. Rebel farmers share seeds illegally circumventing copy-protection measures put in place by these large corporations.

There used to be an understanding that college was a four year phenomenon followed by lifelong employment with little to no variation until retirement. It’s almost laughable to type such absurdities now. The realities of the modern economy is that jobs change frequently and skill-sets even more.

When I left my full time job to start a consulting business I was following in the footsteps of millions of other accidental entrepreneurs. I knew teaching would be a big part of what I do but wasn’t 100% sure it could be a business. By experimenting with adding value raising and lowering prices trying out platforms and venues, I was able to figure out a way to make it work. There’s so many resources available for learning today Meetup, General Assembly, Eventbrite, Skillshare, Girl DevelopIt, CodeAcademy just to name a few. It’s quite possible, as I’ve written on before, to make a living by being a teacher and a lot of people do. But like so many things happening in this new microbusiness, sharing-economy a lot of the work is happening under the radar.

A lot of my colleagues don’t realize I’ve worked in academia for a number of years. In fact almost exclusively except for the last six years working in training and education at Apple Inc. Like many people I share the belief that the education system and academia is broken. Unlike many others I don’t believe this means there’s no good in it. I do, however think there are some key factors that make the industry of education seem outmoded. Here’s just a few factors:

Traditional education is a vehicle for debt
Far too much financial aid and school budgets are going towards overhead costs. No doubt it’s expensive to run a university but one doesn’t need to stray far to see students waking up to the fact that the debt they’ve been lead into is a broken promise of society. See this video of Michael Ellsberg discussing the issue. One of the problems that was outlined by Tony Wagner at the Skillshare Penny Conference last month in New York (video here) is that student’s aren’t being taught the right skills. Wagner outlined his mission for teaching entrepreneurial skills for adaptability in the new economy. In some respects this is a no-brainer. If one is encouraged to take on a debt shouldn’t that loan agreement be entered into only when both parties have a tacit understanding of what it takes to repay said loan? I know my bank, granted a wonderful local credit union in Brooklyn (http://brooklyn.coop), requires a multi-week course on debt repayment before taking out a business loan. Education is an investment towards future employment. Shouldn’t the rules of debt and the realities of the market enter into the discussion before graduation?
Education is an ongoing process
There used to be an understanding that college was a four year phenomenon followed by lifelong employment with little to no variation until retirement. It’s almost laughable to type such absurdities now. The realities of the modern economy is that jobs change frequently and skill-sets even more. I remember when I entered the workforce there being discussions of who should use email and who should know how to type. Only certain employees (mainly secretaries) might have a functional understanding of Microsoft office. That seems like a distant past now. Everyone must know basic Office skills. The same shift is happening with web technologies. I see in my classes every month dozens of traditional and graphic designers who’ve seen their client base and workload transition over to the web with rapid pace. They’re playing catch up along with everyone else. If you are just entering the workforce today the reality is that you’ll have to keep up your learning. In fact only those who continually adapt will move forward. Entrepreneurial skills are the WPM of the 21st century.

Tony Bacigalupo at the Rise of the Independents

So what is to be done? The reality is changes are already taking place even if under the radar for the society at large. Many New York tech startups are focused wholly on education or on resources that enable education and communication. There’s a new emphasis on entrepreneurship. But it’s still not enough. The market needs to continue growing and expanding. We need to stop seeing the emphasis on educational resources purely as a market and more as a movement. Similar to how the local food movement is being driven by the loud voices (think: Whole Foods) it’s also incredibly reliant on a strong grass-roots army of local and urban farmers. There are plenty of large voices in the ed tech community (and there will continue to be more) but there needs to also be a recognition amongst teachers and content providers that they are working towards a set of common goals.

Let’s breakdown the idea of the classroom as the sole locus of enlightenment. This means a new emphasis on personal responsibility.

So what are these common goals?

Education happens anywhere: The four years and you’re done model is outmoded and outpaced. Learning can happen in a video, in an online course, at a meetup, by reading a blog article or reading a book. The point isn’t that traditional educational institutions don’t matter. Peer review is an incredibly powerful tool. At the same time the experience of learning can and should be experienced subjectively. Let’s break down the idea of the classroom as the sole locus of enlightenment. This means a new emphasis on personal responsibility.

Open Source + Curation: Borrowing techniques from the open source software movements, education should be widely available and accessible. This may seem a daring or foolish stance in the age of Information where silos of knowledge are fortified by a pristine paywall. As the saying goes free as in freedom not as in free beer. I need only to point to my own experience to show an example of how this works. I teach a class called Getting Started with WordPress. WordPress is an open source content management system free to download and use from WordPress.org. The full documentation for WordPress is available for free online. There are hundreds and thousands of resources available for free online but I still charge ~$30 for my class which is basically a culling together of resources I’ve found since I’ve been an avid WordPress user for seven years. Why do students pay? They are looking for someone to explain it to them in an interesting and clear way. They know that they can find the content I teach available for free online (in fact I tell them this) but I’m saving them time and effort by giving them all the important things in one 90 minute session.

Education should be Entertaining: This may be somewhat controversial but if you’re looking at a solution that responds to the market demands of education then adding drama into the mix should not be ignored. Emotion and memory retention are highly connected. If you’re able to create a drama through teaching, which forces the students into uncomfortable territory but ultimately rewards them by having them find their own solution there’s a higher probability that they will remember the information. Though I’m not a gamification expert, I believe this is some of the argument for why it’s being so rapidly adopted into education.

Collaboration: As I said above one thing that binds together the organic and local food movements as well as the open source and microeconomic movements is the recognition of common goals. That is to say that there can be disagreements and debates within the movements but it’s the commonality and especially the respect for the grassroots that makes these things flow together. In the adult education category there’s a lot of room to grow here. Too often I hear academia and established professional training institutions see startup education brands and technologies as a threat. Likewise there’s sometimes a chip on the shoulder of the upstarts since they too often feel they’re not getting adequately recognized for their efforts. To borrow a well trod phrase: can’t we all just get along? Instructors should feel empowered to move fluidly between traditional academia and online and offline independent training.

In fact only those who continually adapt will move forward. Entrepreneurial skills are the WPM of the 21st century.

Entrepreneurship: Finally instructors and students should begin to see themselves as entrepreneurs. Not all should or will be but the more we open the dialogue to making education a grassroots effort the more we’ll have to be open to discussions of profit and how to make sustainable models of educational resources. This sense of business acumen is something that will in turn inspire our students as students become employees and entrepreneurs and then give back by teaching their own skills to others. So student becomes teacher who then becomes student. Just as the gardner grows her own tomato for her salad and when she has an excess shares with her friends and colleagues.

In conclusion education is changing. It’s becoming more agile. There’s more resources than ever for any one to share their valuable skills with others. At the same time there’s a recognition that traditional models aren’t living up to their promises. Edupreneurs need only look at the $100startup model and the local food movements to see that the grassroots are an important and in some cases a foremost influence on larger trends as a whole. Indeed one of the most interesting things about education is how it’s already woven into other movements seamlessly as a tool. We need only recognize our common goals and work together to make the impact we’re looking for.

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Popped Culture: What’s Inside The Ears Of Batman’s Cowl?

2012-05-06T14:09:17Z

via Popped Culture

Two Initiatives

2012-04-20T00:52:17Z

I got two important things going on right now that I want to share. One is that my Kickstarter Website Bootcamp Adventure Comic is almost at an end. If you want to learn how to build a website in a fun and entertaining way check out this project.

The other is Reboot Workshop. Which is our day long unconference for individuals looking to start their own businesses or get help with their existing ones.

Reboot Workshop: Shakti Smith – Massage and Movement

2012-03-22T05:02:46Z

Last January I put together my first conference. Reboot Workshop was a sold-out day long workshop with presentations, Q&A and Networking.

I was so happy when Shakti Smith from Massage and Movement agreed to talk at the Reboot Workshop. She helped to relax the room and add an air of calm not often sought or appreciated in a networking event. She is amazing. You should book an appointment with her today.