Shane Pearlman

The crashing of the waves is intense and reverberates across the lania (Hawaiian for balcony). My feet are up, a Guava juice with a wedge of lime and a bowl of rice chex at my left. I have the Wordpress iPad app open. We landed 2 days ago, with a brand new ipad but short one functional macbook pro. A little flick of the wrist and a full glass of water spilled across the keys. The screen flashed white and immediately went dark.

I screamed. Then opened the chassis, poured out the water and set it to dry. A quick trip to the apple store right before our flight, and the tech just shook his head, wished me luck and sent me on my way. His advice, wait 3 – 5 days, say a little prayer and hit power. Today is day 4. Perhaps this exercise will end tomorrow.

Now in full disclosure, Peter, dear man that he is, raided my house and brought an ancient computer and my backup drive to SF. Phew. Except that my fairly new time capsule backup was corrupted. Four hours of internet research later and only a few hours to go before our departure, I gave up. No sleep for me. I did bring the old lappy with me, but as it really had almost none of my software or my development files, its basically good for watching Hulu and little else. A tangent but Hulu really should get an ipad app, which I would gladly pay for it – even repeatedly. Heck, I pay $17 a month for netflix.

In the end, I found myself on the ipad, trying to run a company. Now if I was a full time technician, this would be a disaster, at least for now. I have yet to see MAMP (IAMP?) on the iPad (wouldn’t that be sick?!?). But, those days are slowly fading and now I am a full time freelance art-director / project manager / sales person. I spend the day communicating. For that, the iPad has got me about 80% of the way there. Ok, onto the good and the ugly (or just plain uninformed).
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We are super excited to announce that gigaom.com is a finalist in the Business Blog category for the 2010 Webby Awards! Our team has been working tirelessly (ok, fine we did get pretty darn tired at some points) to redesign all the sites in their network, launching GigaOm late last year.

Please lend us your vote so that we can go party in New York at what Reid refers to as the “Oscars for Geeks”.

Vote for GigaOm in the 2010 Webby Awards!

http://webby.aol.com/category_groups/marketplace/categories/blog__business

Looking for news and tips about our open source plugin? Follow Shane on twitter @justlikeair.

Update: Thank you so much for all the nice emails and interest we have received. If you are looking for technical support, please read through the support forum and if you don’t find your answer create a new thread.

We have just open sourced two plugins and would love a review / thoughts for future directions, improvement and any wisdom on promoting an open source wordpress plugin.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-calendar/

The Events Calendar plugin enables you to rapidly create and manage events using the post editor. Features include optional Eventbrite integration, Google Maps integration as well as default templates such as a calendar grid and event list for streamlined one click installation.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eventbrite-for-the-events-calendar/

Register attendees and gather money for your events. Eventbrite is FREE for no-charge events and takes a small commission for each ticket sold. This is the easiest and best way to manage your events and now it plugs directly into Wordpress!!!

Eventbrite for The Events Calendar adds Eventbrite integration to The Events Calendar. This plugin depends on The Events Calendar and has no standalone functionality. Both plugins need to be activated in order for Eventbrite functionality to work.

gek slap [gi-k sl-app]
noun / verb

1. A socially correcting blow delivered through the demonstration of superior technical knowledge. Denotes playful to serious disrespect for the person being geek slapped as they are just not worthy.

Examples: Shane complained that firefox kept putting œ in his words, which he claimed must be a bug as that character doesn’t even exist. Reid IM’ed him http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Œ, then told him to change his spell-check dictionary back to English from French and to consider himself geek slapped.

Sometimes I really debate writing about some of our more successful techniques. What if someone actually takes our advice and does something with it? Make our competitors smarter? Then I remember that there really is enough work for all of us (I absolutly believe that) and I unclench my ass.

The fact is that starting a conversation with a stranger is uncomfortable for most people. For the developers I know, it is often more so. After all, they did not choose a people oriented career. The problem we often face when recruiting: How do you make small talk with developers in a public space, get them to come out of their shell and talk to you? Our solution: Hang a sign around your neck.
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Two weeks ago, Peter & I finally stepped out on a long overdue corporate retreat. We have been running in survival mode since my daughter Serenity was born in March. A busy company, little sleep and a smaller (but much wiser) management team caused us to focus upon our clients, but severely limited our time to put thought into the business itself.

Despite all the possibility for disaster, projects went relatively smoothly. We learned a few good lessons and as a result, our terms and conditions grew.  Time to update the old contract.
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Freelance Camp Santa Cruz 2008 was exceptional, emotionally charged and a total win for our local community. The amount of interaction and support that came out of that event had a direct impact on the rebirth of the freelance / tech community that is rapidly growing in Santa Cruz today. It was a catalyst. If you are involved in the local community, or wish you were, I cannot imagine a more powerful way to get involved. No bar camp in your town yet? Grab some people and start one.
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About 10 minutes ago, I filled out a survey sent to me by a friend for the Santa Clara Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. The goal, as best as I understood it, was to look at personality traits of entrepreneurs. As I often do when asked personality questions, I struggled between providing my default tendencies or my consciously developed patterns.

The survey questions freeze my personality at a specific instance in time. Had they asked these questions while I was in college, during my first company or perhaps when my second company was failing they would have found a very different set of responses. I found myself choosing a number of answers while thinking, “but that is because I chose to change that and now am comfortable with ….”.
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The topic at hand: Freelance Camp!

We are beginning to put together a bar camp in Santa Cruz on the topic of freelancing and running a small service business. This is a community event and we are actively looking for volunteers to make this kick ass. If you can help find sponsors, spread the word, find a venue, get some grub lined up or perform general geekery – let’s talk. Hit me up by email or respond in the comment, add yourself to the wiki, and we can chat.

Freelance Camp: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/Freelance-Camp

Quite often sales is like dating. The no-no’s in the land of courtship are exactly the same cardinal sins of the land of sales. Talking about yourself through the whole meeting. Never asking any questions about your date’s situation and needs. Taking the time to ask those questions, and not listen to their answers. Thanking them repeatedly in a gushing and desperate manner for meeting with you. Forgetting to make a friend. If you were a gecko on the wall of a meeting where those occurred, you would probably wince, laugh or both. And yet we have all done them.

Peter and I often talk in detail about sales, and yesterday, the conversation fell upon one of the most detrimental sales bloopers: walking away without booking another meeting in your calendar. What is your goal if you go out on a date? Have fun, land another date.
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