Archive for October, 2007

es·sen·su·al [uh-sen-shoo-uhl]
adjective

1. That which at its core is both critical to our survival and arousing or exciting to our base instincts: the senses and the appetites.
2. Being such by its very nature or in the highest meaning; the ultimate experience which elicits raw emotion.
3. That which every artisan seeks, sometimes called the ‘holy grail’ or ‘the best work I ever did that will never win an award because it’s way too personal and a little too weird’.
4. A type of project management lacking in restraints; raw and obsessively driven to identify and focus upon the core of each element. Often resulting in ’simple software’.

   Synonym: iPhone

You know why you need a mentor. You took the time and energy to find one. If you haven’t yet: take your list of dreams, goals and aspirations for your personal life, find someone who has achieved the bulk of them in your industry (or if there are none, consider changing industry) and grab their coat tails and never let go. A bit of elbow grease and a whole lot of patience and interviewing will do the trick. So, now that you have a mentor, what the heck do you do?
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I’m taking a scuba class right now. One of the primary laws of scuba diving is, “Never hold your breath”. This is because it only takes very small variations in pressure to collapse your lungs.

I’ve been told more than once, by friends, family, and clients that I’m not responsive enough. This has always been a challenge, as my nature is to wait until i can formulate the right response. However, I rarely end up with enough time to think through the perfect answer. So I hold my breath and hope that i can get back to them soon.

The problem here is one of managing expectations. For example…

Client: Peter, could you please tell me what it would take to do XYZ?
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The first time I ever talked to Peter was on the phone. He was interviewing me to work on a project already in development. I generally like interviews. It’s a chance to meet a new person, learn about what they do and show them what you’ve done. I was happy after talking to Peter. Not only because I was going to work with him, but from my answer to one of his first questions: “If you could do anything in life what would it be?”. I answered immediately: “I’m doing it”. Peter repeated my answer out loud. He was trying to come up with another question that would encourage me to be more descriptive. As we continued to talk, I realized Peter wasn’t only interested in my professional abilities, but was genuinely interested in my hopes and dreams. Continue Reading »

Now don’t you feel better?

Four years ago, Julie & I decided we were (emotionally) ready to buy our first house. Santa Cruz is quite expensive, with the median house price weighing in at $740,000 and the medium apartment around $480,000. This was going to have a significant impact on our monthly cashflow. We had some savings, and a loving wedding gift from both our families gave us enough to put 20% on a small apartment or townhouse.

Julie and I sat down to figure out what mortgage payment we really thought we could afford. I was trying to stabilize my business at the time, as it was often feast or famine. Some months I could pull in $15,000, other months I would see $1,500. This discussion ran for weeks and continued into our family vacation.

Enter the parents. My father listened quietly as Julie and I ran through past numbers and possibilities for hours on end. One evening at dinner he asked me: “How much do you think you will make in the next six months?” A long pause ensued. The fleas began to leap for saftey as my craneum began to heat. I guess he couldn’t take the pathetic, confounded look on my face. “How much do you have in your sales pipeline?” he tried. I really didn’t know. Most of my gigs are word of mouth. Even the bids I was writing, or discussing with potential clients, could go on for months and fizzle. How was I supposed to know? After I suggested getting my tarot cards, dad laughed, put on his Australian leather cowboy mentor’s hat and asked me to pull out my trusty business notebook.
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We are stoked to add a new W3 award to the 2007 list of achievements. I’d say more, but we just register for these kinds of awards for the party and the networking. Ok fine, maybe we are just a little excited. The 2007 Webby Awards party in June was kick ass, check out the pictures.

The W³ Awards honors creative excellence on the Web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning sites, marketing programs, and video work created for the Internet. The W³ is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts.

ac·tion·ate [ak-shuhn-nit]
adjective

1. A passion to act, driven by strong emotion, that is often considered by your more cerebral and dis-actionate kin to be extremely foolhardy.
2. A characteristic assigned to saints, sinners, some bloggers and most entrepreneurs.

Usage: “Though many people express the desire when going through the blog action day sign-up list, most were not quite as actionate as they might have proclaimed.”

In honor and respect of those who boned it up and wrote some great articles. A few of our favorites:
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In honor of the theme of this year’s Blog Action Day, we’ve decided to bring up the topic of commute reduction. After all, it is one of the reasons that drove most of our team to go indy. It’s as simple as this: we believe that a good number of people that work in the realm of technology can find ways to work from home and cut down on the number of days that they spend commuting back and forth to an office. Sure, this isn’t for everyone, but with a relatively small percentage shift towards this new trend, very real benefits could be reaped from the environmental perspective.

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We are proud to announce that we have been crunched. Sort of. Our client Blip.tv has earned themselves the attention of the public eye. The flash video player on which we worked has received solid public recognition. And being the choice for the TechCrunch40 is pretty cool. Even their one and only complaint has already been developed and is in testing for deployment.
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