Cut win-win deals. A partnership seldom takes place between equals. As a result, the more powerful side is tempted to squeeze the other party. The weaker side, for its part, will begrudgingly accept such deals and try to get what it can. Bad idea. Bad karma. Bad practicality. If the partnership is a win-lose deal, it will blow up because concrete walls and barbed wire cannot hold a partnership together. Only mutually beneficial results can. In the long, the bitter seed of resentment planted at the start of a partnership will grow into a giant, destructive weed.

-- The Art of Partnering, Guy Kawasaki

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about building communities to help drive my start-up's outside-in software development and my working relationship with the good folks at Cynapse. And while my last post was - for the most part, about getting to be a TechCrunch50's semi-finalist, I did end with my desire to sow the social software seeds in my daughter Sara's elementary school.

As a passionate software entrepreneur and social software evangelist, it breaks my heart when Sara tells me she's bored learning how to use Word and Excel in Computer class. Now please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about her teacher - a fine and qualified professional. I'm not complaining about the curriculum, nor about the state of our education system. In no way would I ever expect the school to provide social software education. But nothing says that I can't.

So I approached the school and offered just that. I prepared a marked-up version of Cynapse's Flash marketing material & evangelized the virtues of, not only the mechanics of learning social software but the life lessons - I truly believe, it can teach the kids.

Our 30 minute meeting became an hour and a half and ended with a few action items:

1. The school would have to agree to a trial period with the understanding that, if successful, they would continue the program.
2. Cynapse would have to agree to barter three months of free hosting in return for a modified version of their Best Practices Guide for Elementary School Students.
3. The students would have to volunteer for the extra-curricular activity and agree to collaborate on the Guide. Delivery of the Guide deems success.

Since the meeting, the school has delivered on Action Item #1. In addition, Cynapse has delivered on Action Item #2. So later this week, I'll be presenting my offer to Sara's Grade 6.

I've since elaborated on my initial presentation by incorporating some keywords mentioned during our meeting and added the narration. But after playing it back for Sara, she thought it may be "too much" and I should try to be more funny.

The problem was, I tried to create something that would appeal to too many audiences - students, school staff and maybe even parents. So in the interest of outside-in development, I created two more videos which have passed the Sara Test. Once, approved by her teacher, I'll start with those & save the one above - hopefully, for another time.

Please feel free to share any thoughts, or, experience around social software in schools.

Related posts:

1. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 3 Using social software to avoid building something that someone -...
2. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H The time has come to put down the books, close...
3. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 1 Here are some lessons learned from past experiences and how...

LBS is just gonna get, sorry Location Based Services, is just going to become more and more important.

-- Dick Costolo,  Panelist & Judge http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2169088

with only the bare bones of running code, I submitted our TechCrunch50 2009 application. My contributors (The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2), while suggesting I was being too aggressive, agreed that it's always nice to have Milestones, and agreed to try.

I received an email informing stating:

Congratulations, your company has been selected for a phone and screensharing interview. We were truly overwhelmed to have over 1,000 applications from over 40 countries submit to launch at our event this year, so please feel great about making it to the next round of consideration.

We received an email instructing us to book a demo time and make whatever live demo arrangements necessary &

The duration of your interview will be 15 minutes. Please plan to demo your product for 8 minutes (show the product, we have the background information in your application) and use the remaining 7 minutes for Q&A.

As a reminder, DO NOT comment about your interview status publicly (including social media such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc.) Unfortunately, we’ve had to eliminate 2 companies to date from consideration who posted about their status with the conference. We don’t want to take these steps, but other applicants are certainly looking out for people who do not follow the rules. Please don’t let this be you.

Our twenty minutes of fame. Jason Calacanis logged into the demo a couple of minutes late. I reiterated our assumption that he's seen our background video uploaded with our Application to which he informed us that he only saw our names & that of our start-ups' as he found the demo log in information. Somewhat disappointed, I pushed back reminding him of the previous email. All Jason said was:

Just demo.

And demo we did. Not taking any chances, we had a prerecorded simulated demo of how the system will work end-to-end, followed by a live demo of its current development state. Jason made a few observations. Fortunately for us, we had collaborated for weeks on an entire internal wiki pages titled -"Pitch FAQ", which just happened to provide fuel for my answers. And that was it. twenty minutes does not last long. Jason thanked us for taking time out of our Sunday evening, told us we should hear something in about a week and immediately signed off.

The three of us stayed on the conference call for another hour going over and over those twenty minutes and wondering if we could have done any more and whether Jason got it, or, not. And the truth of the matter is, if we could have done it all over again with hindsight being 20/20, we wouldn't have changed a thing. So we were just going to sit tight and wait for an answer.

Via email:

Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to place your company as a TechCrunch50 finalist. This is certainly not a commentary of your business, technology or team. Many applicant companies have gone on to great success without launching on stage. For our 50 limited slots, we purposely showcase a diversity of technology innovation from different countries, mixing both funded and unfunded businesses. In many cases, our need to curate this content matrix eliminates many outstanding companies from a lead position on stage. We received more than 1,000 total applications— making for many tough decisions.

As one of our semi-finalist companies, we would like to offer you the opportunity to participate in our DemoPit. Over the last two years, the TC50 DemoPit has become one of the main assets of the TechCrunch50 Conference. It enables another 100 companies (50/day) the chance to showcase their technology to conference attendees. And the favorite "Audience Choice" from our DemoPit wins the last presentation slot on stage, along with the right to win the $50,000 best in show award provided by the TC50 organizers. The DemoPit wildcard is our way of acknowledging that our judging is subjective and that there are many more outstanding companies in our West Hall than we can fit on stage.

This year, we will be selecting two DemoPit companies to present on stage, one from each Monday and Tuesday. So your odds have doubled for a shot to still get on stage.

For a while I considered dipping further into my line of credit and "invest" in the DemoPit and associated travel expenses. But after conferring with my Contributors, it seemed the responsible thing to do was move the project to the next level by investing further in legal services. And that's what I did.

I replied to Peter of TechCrunch my thanks for the opportunity but simply couldn't afford it. But at the same time, in the interest of outside-in software development, I asked if we could possibly get any feedback to help us.

Email to Peter at TechCrunch

Hi Peter,

Here's a thought...

TechCrunch should publish an index of the semi-finalists with their 140 character description & video (link to youtube if you prefer) in exchange for them not going public until after the site is published at TechCrunch50.

Ideally, you would let your community rate & comment on their favorites. That would be a win-win for everyone:
You're still the mecca for launching start-ups
You're still The Sensitive One when it comes to non-funded (some call it ultra-light) start-ups - you're almost angelic
We get exposure & hopefully feedback that can be used in subsequent outside-in development
My one-liner is: [Still a secret] & you could use the 5-minute video that's uploaded from my Application, or, I can repost it somewhere for you.

Just a thought

Regards,
Steven

Peter's reply:

Steven, I’ll pass this along as something to consider for future years. Thank you.

My reply:

Peter, in the meantime, is there any feedback you can possibly share with us to add even more tremendous value to our TechCrunch50 experience?

Peter's reply:

Steven, I spoke with your reviewer, Jason, who told me “I thought they were off to a really great start and that [still a secret] is a real challenge and opportunity. However, their product was not as far along as the top 50 we are selecting this year. I have no doubt they will get to the promised land with a little more time and effort.”

My reply:

Peter, you just made me very

I haven't watched all of the presentations yet, but enough to honestly say that my heart and nerves went out to everyone presenting. While all of the panelists I saw offered practical and useful feedback, I did feel that some of them were hell bent on not giving any kudos. Yet despite the pressure, I thought the demos were great and the presenters ability and preparedness to answer the panel's questions were even greater.

I can only imagine the organizational nightmare it must been to pull off this event with such class - not to mention the temperaments required in dealing with start-up to guru egos. I thank you Peter and Jason for all your efforts, patience and inspiration. I look forward to one day meeting you in the Promised Land.

Once the legal work is complete we'll start expanding our start-up Community to prepare for a limited private release. In the meantime, I'm going to try to bring in some income by seeding the social software seeds at my Sara's elementary school.

Related posts:

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2. Connecting the dots – Part 1 What I learned about connecting the dots from Garr Reynolds'...
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Once you have the community, let them tell you how to improve your product by exposing your engineers to the cheers and jeers. This type of feedback is one of the greatest values of a community.

- Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki

idea - who

In the spirit of openness, I just want to state that this post is a plug for the wonderful folks at Cynapse and their awesome and even at times inspiring, social software platform - cyn.in.

The underlying theory behind outside-in software is that to create successful software, you must have a clear understanding of the goals and motivations of your stakeholders. Your ultimate goal is to produce software that is highly consumable and meets/exceeds the needs of your client.

- Wikipedia based on Outside-in Software Development: A Practical Approach to Building Successful Stakeholder-based Products, Carl Kessler & John Sweitzer

Now Guy, Carl & John can't all be wrong - developing software solutions in an ivory tower is no longer an option. As any external & internal stakeholder will tell you, you need feedback - especially in the world of global development & delivery (GDD). So how do you connect all these people from all over, with different skill-sets, different perspectives and most importantly different roles and rights? For example;

As a Developer (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to see Customers' (External Stakeholders), comments on how they interact with the system, so I can better understand what value they're trying to achieve.

As a Founder (Internal Stakeholder), I would like to collaborate with other Founders on our financial planning by sharing discussions, files and bookmarks, so we can communicate in a more timely and efficient manner than email.

Both of these scenarios involve the sharing and disseminating of information. However, not necessarily across Developers, Customers and Founders.

Having software development & start-up in my blood, I was thrilled to see the state of cyn.in. What the solution lacks in features, as compared to some of the competition, it makes up for in design, ease-of-use, quality and support.

I think the business model is great - its got something for everyone. For the techies, the open source model is a great way to use & potentially contribute to the code. For the folks looking for a free open source solution to experiment with, the VMware image provides the cheapest simplest in-house solution. And for those who want to avoid any hardware/software/networking issues and assure themselves of timely & helpful support, then the Software as a Service (SaaS) offering is the route to go.

For now, the one weakness is lack of documentation and knowledge base contents.

Since I consider myself a cyn.in early adopter, I hope to contribute to the requirements process - with my own spin of course In addition, I'll be blogging / tweeting about how we compliment certain features in their infancy with other solutions to achieve our desired results. Why am I doing this? Well, in the interest of transparency, I get a preferred SaaS deal for helping out and I better position myself as a potential reseller & service provider. However, most importantly, I actually do enjoy this stuff. And I will especially enjoy myself if I can contribute in a meaningful way to what I trust will be a distributed software development effort in an outside-in agile environment.

In addition to Enterprise Support, another SaaS benefit is being seamlessly migrated to the latest release - which by the way is as gorgeous as the Adobe AIR desktop client. If you're currently a cyn.in Version 2 user, then moving to Version 3 should be one of your priorities. If you're not, then Version 3 offers every feature you'd expect from a social software platform - minus some functionality. For example, while there are calendar Events, they lack the ability to invite members. Until that's enabled, we supplement cyn.in Events and with Google Calendar. In my opinion, a minor price to pay.

For whatever cyn.in lacks in documentation, they more than make up for it with their Enterprise Support. Despite being timezones away, I can always count on a timely, concise and helpful experience. There's seems to be no question too small, or, bug too big for them to answer in the same courtious manner. And in those special cases when I do come across a missing feature, it's nice to know that my input is used to help contribute to their development process.

A key feature for this start-up community is the ability to control user roles and their permissions. Currently, we use Personas to help us in our development effort. In the near future, we'll be ready to search for actual users to assume their own personnas and help us define and satisfy their needs. When that time arrives, I'll describe our community's site hierarchy and permissions for members to better understand how they fit in.

Related posts:

1. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2 My Idea's Unhidden Agenda, also known as, Work-For-Attribution, and how...
2. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 4 Partnering, building communities and pitching social software to Sara's elementary...
3. Lessons learned from Social Content 2.0 Circle of Life – Part 2 The most important pattern that emerged and lesson I learned...

Imagination: Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Leaders create things that didn't exist before. The do this by giving the tribe a vision of something that could happen, but hasn't (yet).

You can't manage without knowledge. You can't lead without imagination.

-- Tribes, Seth Godin

idea - who

As written in my Part 1, I needed to find a way build on my lessons learned and try my best to avoid repeating any errs of the past. But even more than needing a way to attract members to my new tribe, I needed to find a way to give them an environment where they could go beyond simple contributions. I needed to find a way for them to build their own opportunities, own quests and maybe even their own tribes.

So a little while back, I came up with the following for my collaborators:

How to make this viral
I was also wondering how to make this a community project where we could create the engine and enable/empower other communities to use/build/extend it for purposes we haven't yet considered, or, may simply not be in our domain of expertise.  In other words, make it "viral".

This is what I've come up with so far
The core engine - to be defined later, is the center of our community.  If you've read Seth Godin's Tribes then you already know that every community needs a leader.  That would be me - Steven Milstein.  And while this is not a democracy, that certainly doesn't mean that I won't hear & listen to the members of this tribe.  Now that may sound harsh but, please hear me out - I'm not finished yet.

Since you're here reading this, then I'm going to guess that you like the idea, or, appeal of leading - maybe even a tribe of your own.  It may not be today, but someday in the foreseeable future.  If this is not the case, then I deeply encourage you to give this some thought.  Because what I'd like to see is each of us exploiting this opportunity to seed own tribes with this core engine.

Unhidden agendas
What I'd like is for each of us to create an entry here with our Unhidden Agenda.  Describe what it is you hope to gain by investing your time, energy, maybe money, in this venture?  (Don't tell what you can, or, cannot invest.) You have to be honest & you have to be passionate.  Once approved/agreed upon, this Agenda will then represent your social contract to this endeavor.  Break your Agenda, break your contract - you're out.

I'm not dead certain about this idea & am certainly open to your feedback.  But until then, I think this Unhidden Agenda Model will scale & encourage others to not only participate but contribute.  And if we truly believe in outside-in agile/scrum software development & we strive to maintain the integrity of the core engine then each of us should be able to fulfill our agenda.

For example
My (Steven's) Unhidden Agenda will elaborate on how I'd like to be the product manager/owner of some leading edge social software product. I'll go on to say how I want to use this endeavor to prove that I can not only be just that but, also have a touch of vision and more importantly, that I deliver.  I'd also like to boast about the community/communities I seeded and onboarded to social software.

I imagine [Retail IT Guy/Gal] 's entry will focus on their retail domain of expertise & how they would like to cultivate their own tribe.

For [Software Engineer Guy/Gal], I can see them seizing the opportunity to build the core engine in their own technical fashion and then sharing & expanding its APIs with the technical community of this growing social network.

Next steps
As I said earlier, this is not written in stone but I would like to find a way to make this more than three guys who live in Montreal.  If we're all somewhat comfortable with this approach, then here's what I see happening next:
1. Work & finalize on our agendas
2. Get to work on building a simple proof-of-concept
3. Start blogging about what we're doing here & post your Unhidden Agenda
4. Find & contribute to your related communities
5. Seek feedback from others & maybe ask a select few join us in our Community
6. Invite some of those to publicly blog their own Unhidden Agenda in the hopes of gaining admittance to this exclusive community - exclusivity matters. (If you believe Seth Godin.)

While I originally sought a lawyer's opinion about the Idea's monetization possibilities, I was immediately told not to proceed without securing my copyright and ownership of "said" Idea. And that's when I had visions of Groundhog Day. To be very clear. I did not then, nor do I now, have any money. I did not then, nor do I now, have the time, nor the resources to expend on fantasies and illusions of gazillion dollar exit strategies. This is my Reality Check. (By the way, if you click on any of the links that lead to Amazon and actually buy the book, then I get something back - although I quite honestly don't even know that that is yet, through their Associates program.)

So as of today's date, this is the best I can offer:

Whatever work you contribute will be considered "work made for hire" and for whatever reason that may not hold up, then the agreement will be considered a "copyright assignment" from you to my company - Milstein & Associates Inc.

Sounds harsh, eh? But, it is what it is. I'll post this digital back of the napkin version in the Idea's community site so folks can sign up - at least in the digital sense.

Now in lieu of any payment, what I hope to do - subject to lawyer approval, is offer an Attribution for your contributions. Something like movie credits, or, if you open Adobe Reader, click on the Help, About, Credits button - for starters. Ideally, as stated in the Unhidden Agenda, I would have to provide a mechanism and venue for folks to discover and explore your contributions, maybe even for you to start your own tribe.

My next post will be about the Idea's Community site and who would be its target audience.

Related posts:

1. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 1 Here are some lessons learned from past experiences and how...
2. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 3 Using social software to avoid building something that someone -...
3. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H The time has come to put down the books, close...

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
...
Tribes need leadership. Sometimes one person leads, sometimes more. People want connection and growth and something new. They want change.
...
You can't have a tribe without a leader - and you can't be a leader without a tribe.

-- Tribes, Seth Godin

idea - who

The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H

Back in Connecting the dots - Part 2, I mentioned my previous dot com experience. Looking back, here's some of the lessons I learned;

1. Having a great idea and the ability to code it is simply not enough. Like it or not, you need others. Others who understand things like marketing, sales, support, service, administration and more. However, you just may not need them all from Day One.
2. Too many chiefs (partners): We had too many voices, too many opinions, too many circumstances requiring votes where majority rules and even Super Majority Rules. Oddly enough, most of these issues were valid & necessary - at some point in time. And that's exactly my point. At some point in time, we would have to discuss these issues at length. But that time never came.
3. The "What If This Thing Is Worth A Gazillion Dollars One Day" Scenario: A pre-condition to this scenario is that you have to deliver something that could be worth a gazillion dollars one day. We exerted too much time and energy discussing, fantasizing, negotiating, bickering and haggling over this scenario. We really should have poured that energy and passion into the pre-condition.
4. Lawyers and accountants: You need these people. You not only need them, but you need to talk to them pretty much from the start. But talk first. Do your best to net-it-out as much as possible. If you're lucky, you'll know someone who'll say something like:
   

   Drafting an agreement like this and getting all the parties to finalize, could cost you around $10,000 - assuming everyone agrees in principle. But even with that in place, it could be always be argued that ... On the other hand, you could just write ... on the back of a napkin and get everyone to sign it. Of course that could always be contested too, but at least you've got a signed agreement in principle and $10,000 to pay me when you at least have money coming.

And that is the final point. If you don't have any money coming in then you would not be contesting a dirty old napkin.

So now I needed a way to invite others to help me with my quest. But on top of all my above issues, I had one more whopper. I had no money to pay anyone. Offering equity in nothing would only condemn me to repeating my errs of the past. It would be like Groundhog Day, all over again.

My next post will be about my Unhidden Agenda & how I hope it will attract community members and contributors.

Related posts:

1. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2 My Idea's Unhidden Agenda, also known as, Work-For-Attribution, and how...
2. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H The time has come to put down the books, close...
3. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 3 Using social software to avoid building something that someone -...

What's Your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient)? The intent is to test your knowledge of the subject of entrepreneurship, not to test how good an entrepreneur you are, because, there's no way to measure that. Therefore, scoring high doesn't mean you're the next Steve Jobs, and scoring low doesn't mean you're not. This makes the EQ test as reliable as the IQ test, but it can't hurt to have a good working knowledge of the reality of entrepreneurship.
...
What your score means:
17-22. Your score is high, so you can now focus on doing, not learning.

--Reality Check: Guy Kawasaki.

idea

Arising from my three-part Connecting the dots series, here's the first entry of my Start-up Chronicles where I'll journal about decisions made and ones coming up; actions I'm taking and those I'm deferring.

Take a look on the right sidebar under "Pivotal Reading". I've read all I could read - for now. (FYI, my "idea" image was inspired by Back Of The Napkin.) So it appears the time has come and the stars are aligned to take a shot. To be quite honest my idea is not the kind of stuff that will change the world but it might just change a few things for a few people. And if I could do that, well that's pretty good for starters.

In the interest of keeping things short and sweet, I'll briefly blog about my Idea's Five Ws (and one H). However, I'll save the What entry for when there's actually a piece of executable code for you to try for yourself.

My next post will discuss the Who decision-making part of my Idea.

Related posts:

1. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 2 My Idea's Unhidden Agenda, also known as, Work-For-Attribution, and how...
2. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 1 Here are some lessons learned from past experiences and how...
3. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 2. Who, Part 4 Partnering, building communities and pitching social software to Sara's elementary...

Morse Telegraph Key

As a resident, or traveller, I would like to discover and subscribe to local alerts, so I can be informed of emergency news, traffic and weather alerts.

As a news agency, I would like to contribute to a standard global alert system, so I can better reach my potential audience.

Any local resident, or, traveller and news agency.

SMS text message alerts - sent via Twitter, about emergency situations - like Amber Alerts, severe weather conditions - like tornadoes, or, traffic - like accident reports.

Alerts would be published in real-time, however, recipients would subscribe to only relevant feeds.

Any area with internet, or, wireless access.

So people may be better prepared for simple matters like traffic conditions to being aware of Amber Alerts, or, emergency situations.

Local news agencies, are already aggregating this information and therefore would be the natural choice to act as the publisher and should conform to use a standard #hashtag. For example:

#yul Traffic: A40 East. Ramp to A15 South is blocked
#yul Weather: Severe thunder and lightning storms this morning with risk of high winds on bridges
#yul Amber: Child abduction. Girl age 9, blond hair, pink jacket, Honda Civic QC plates

By using the IATA airport codes as #hashtags, local residents, as well as, travellers, can quickly discover publishers - if they so desire.

Depending on the area, discovering the source of the feed may not be so important. However, in cities like Montreal, where we have several news agencies, operating in multiple languages, then knowing the source helps reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. So in the above examples, imagine getting text messages for each alert, from each news agency, in each language. To resolve this situation, subscribers can simply decide to Follow the publisher of their choice.

While many news agencies use the call letters in their Twitter accounts, such as CJADNews, I would suggest creating accounts that would inform subscribers where they can be found. So in the case of CJAD - which is a local English Montreal AM radio station, they should create an account like "YUL_800AM". That way my search results for #yul would include:

YUL_800AM #yul Weather: Severe thunder and lightning storms this morning with risk of high winds on bridges

would also advertise the publisher can be found at 800 on the AM band of my radio.

Now, I'm not advocating text messaging when you're driving. So if you'll be travelling, please plan your Follows ahead of time. You should also check with your wireless carrier for their text message pricing policy.

You can further reduce your signal-to-noise ratio by unfollowing / unsubscribing when you're out of the area. If you'd like to further explore the wonders of twitter you can start with some of my earlier posts and links.

Please let me know if you're aware of something similar out there. Certainly, the concept of text messaging alerts is not new, however, I haven't seen any simple way to discover and subscribe to those feeds - universally.

Also, please feel free to contact me if you'd like any help trying to set this up.

Related posts:

1. My Five Ws of Twitter in less than 10 minutes (video included) Twitter - not your father's Oldsmobile of news sources Who's...
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Garr Reynolds' 'Career Advice '08' - Page 100

This is my third and final post in my Connecting the dots Series. Part 1, provided the three sources of inspiration for the series and Part 2 focused on taking inventory of my own dots.

A few months ago, I had another one of those

Wouldn't it be great if you could... yada yada yada

moments. And after consulting Anna and the kids, have decided to do my best to bootstrap this yada yada yada into reality - while looking for work of course

Don't worry! I'm not going to use this blog to promote the start-up - too much. I'll create a new blog in its appropriate space when the time is right. This blog is going to return to the grass roots of what blogs were once meant to be.

blog noun

: a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer ; also : the contents of such a site

Here's the plan - for now; I'm going to journal my start-up adventures. Decisions I made and ones coming up. Actions I'm taking and those I'm deferring.

So whether you're among the 90% of Viewers out there, or, among the 10% of Most Fequent Contributors (MFCs), please join me as I chronicle my start-up adventures. But until my next post, I'd love to hear from some of those MFCs out there about their experiences, or, opinions. And for the record, I too was once a Viewer. So Viewers, fill out the Leave a Comment box below and let me know you're out there following along. It's actually a lot more fun to leave your mark than just reading all the time.

Related posts:

1. Connecting the dots – Part 2 What I learned about connecting the dots from Garr Reynolds'...
2. Connecting the dots – Part 1 What I learned about connecting the dots from Garr Reynolds'...
3. The Start-Up Chronicles: Chapter 1. An Idea, Five Ws and one H The time has come to put down the books, close...

Garr Reynolds' 'Career Advice '08' - Page 99

In my previous post, Connecting the dots - Part 1, I provided three sources of inspiration for this three part series.

While I may not share much in common with Steve Jobs - aside from a first name, I do feel I have to stop trying to connect my dots looking forward. I've been in the business of software development for over 25 years now. Truth be told, if I had to do it all over again, I would still be in this business - but I'd do things a little different. There's nothing I love more than creating things. And the only thing more exhilarating that thinking

Wouldn't it be great if you could... yada yada yada"

is actually bringing it to life.

Back in the dot com days, I was fortunate enough to get asked to join a start-up. We put together an e-learning solution & without going into too much detail, I have yet seen anything better. But as you may have guessed, it was a dot com & it suffered the same fate as many. I held on for three years, despite only being paid for one & picking up the odd contract here & there. Others, for their own reasons, clung on to hope even longer. For myself, with a wife (Anna), two kids (Sara & Alex) and many of the other things that come along with them, it was the hardest lesson I ever learned. It was also the best time of my life. From early morning conference calls to one's that stretched into Sara's soccer games, or, Alex' bottle, to working through the night feeling quilty while Anna was alone watching TV, or asleep in bed. We were at it 24x7 and would gladly have worked more if we could have only found a way.

What started from a 10-minute phone call, went to whiteboard, proof-of-concept, alpha, beta and live. For the first time in my development life, I actually understood and contributed to the value of marketing, sales, service & support. It was the best & the worst all neatly bound together. But my dot (com) s were not going to connect as dreamed.

Within a few months, I was fortunate to get a much appreciated job with IBM Canada's Montreal Rational Software Lab. And while it was a great experience, I never really felt my dots would all of a sudden start aligning. And so, as Seth Godin might say, it was a good Dip-dot, but a dot nonetheless.

And so, here I am. If you've seen any of my last few posts, then you may know I've been trying to build a case for the shared services of a Community Product Manager. To be quite honest, it's been a tough sale. Not so much because the concept lacks merit, but more so because it's difficult to only talk about delivering value. Today, you have to deliver value first and then build on that in order to get the business. Unfortunately, the cost of delivering first and selling later - in this particular case, is just too high for me. So I'm going to consider this a little Dip-dot and simply move on.

My next and final post in this three-part series will lay the foundation for my next dot. In the meantime, it'd be nice if any of you could share some of your own dot-stories here.

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