Getting to Know My Environment

October 15th is Blog Action Day, and the topic is The Environment. Now, I like a nice tree as much as the next fella, maybe even more. I once lived for 10 months in central Florida and what got to me wasn't the incessantly warm weather or lack of decent Chinese food within 100 miles of me. To my surprise, what I missed the most were the trees I used to see in New England. I remember the first time I saw a tree when I was 32 years old. Sure, I'd seen trees before, but I'd never really looked at what they were. I had been spending way too much time in front of the computer bringing my creative skills back up to par after a disheartening experience of being a manager. My friend Alen took me to the Winchester Reservoir, perhaps the first time I ever voluntarily went into the outdoors. I remember walking among tall pine trees on a fragrant (and i don't mean in a good way) bed of needles and moss, wondering what I had gotten myself into and hoping I didn't step in anything. Then we came into a small clearing and could see the lake for the first time. The sun was shining brightly, streamers of light slicing through the trees and scattering upon the shimmering surface of the water, deeply reflecting the blue of the sky and mirroring the puffy clouds floating lazily above it all. I was transfixed, and the first thought that burst upon my conscious was I need to buy a much bigger and brighter computer monitor. My second thought followed logically: There is no way that any computer in the world could match this. I have been wasting my time.

Since that day, I've decided that trees are really important to me, though I actually don't go out of my way to do anything about this. I just like to have them around me. I guess this is similar to people who prefer living in the city for the "people energy" that charges them. This doesn't necessarily mean they like to socialize with those people; it's just that the energy feels good to them, and motivates them on some primal subconscious level. And so it is with me and trees.

The rest of the time, I don't even think about them. I take those lovely trees for granted, probably because I spend most of my time living in my head and looking at people. I'm not a naturally outdoorsy person, so the environment isn't something that I think of as a destination or activity in itself; it's just the backdrop against which all the other interesting things happen. And there are so many interesting things (social and otherwise) going on that I forget about the trees, the wind, and stars, and the water. It is only the sun that I have a daily relationship with, because I like sitting outside Starbucks in the morning, catching whatever feeble rays manage to hustle their way into the New England sky, before we get our 5 month quota of snow, mud, and slush.

So the question is: should I care?

WHY CARE

The responsible person, conditioned by years of primary and secondary school education, of course cares about the environment. We're supposed to. We've heard a lot of reports about how nature is going to hell in a hand-basket due to our shortsighted abuse of resources, our wastefulness, and our callous disregard for ecological balance. I also am skeptical of activist-sourced claims because they are sometimes dramatically---how do I put this delicately---trumped up based on the artful manipulation of statistics and made to evoke a knee-jerk reaction in people. However, even in the case of tainted data analysis, it comes down to this: the environment is pretty darn cool, and we actually do have to live in it. More importantly with regards to me, I need to live in it. Even more specifically, I need to be aware of it. From a purely selfish reason, there may be secrets in the Environment that will help me in much the same way that hike through Winchester opened my eyes to just how much more glorious Nature could be, and how I could be bound with it.

LEARNING TO LISTEN

I recently started a daily gym habit, which I've adhered too for the past 3 and a half months. One of the things that I learned about the gym was that when you start, your mind and body lie to you. I would hop on a Stairmaster, and about a minute in my muscles start going, "hey, HEY. What are you doing? You should know that I am officially complaining about this additional work we were not planning on doing." My mind reacts, "Oh yeah, we should stop. Besides, you WANT to." If my trainer had not told me that I had to do a minimum of 30 minutes a day for the exercise to mean anything at all, I probably would have stopped. But I didn't, and I didn't die, and at the 2.5 minute mark my muscles are going, "Ok, ok. We get it, so I'm going along with the program. However, you should know that I'm officially burning and am going to make you feel it. Just so you know." and my mind again goes, "Hey, wow. The body is making noise, and we probably should stop." And again we go through that whole "at least 30 minutes" thing, and I push through to the 5- and 10-minute marks. I eventually figured out that by really listening to my body, I could have an actual conversation with it. At first, I didn't know how to interpret the sensations coming from my muscles as pain or discomfort. I also didn't know that my mind and body could be so easily convinced to keep going; the body is designed for this, and exercising that conversation between my mind, my body, and my will has become something I look forward to every morning.

It occurs to me that I could apply the same lesson to the environment, but what do I listen for?

I once worked on a couple of interactive kiosks for the Boston Museum of Science about "bird language" and walking through the woods. As a regular person walks through the woods, birds keeping watch are constantly sounding alarms and other THERE'S AN ENEMY HERE. The space immediately around the person, however, is silent; this is the so-called CONE OF SILENCE. An expert nature walker, however, knows how to move through the woods in a way that doesn't set off the birds. They meander. They move without rhythm. They can more truly experience the life of the forest, because they have learned how to become part of it.

I am unlikely to become part of the environment in this way, but perhaps there are small ways that I could learn to engage with it. How do I make nature relevant to myself in a daily manner?

• I could start by just looking at the trees a little more closely, and trying to understand why I like them so much. Thus, by forming a bond with the trees, I might be more inclined to be good to them.

• I could learn to feel a sense of ownership by thinking of the Environment as my neighborhood. This would be a stretch for me, I think.

• I could just start finding parts of the Environment that I really like. There are a few places that speak to me: kayaking on the reservoirs with ducks, seeing the sky open up wide as you drive into New Hampshire, and watching the trees change their colors over the seasons.

The above reasons feel a little weak to me, but it's what I can come up with right now. First, I need to just pay attention and maybe introduce myself. Hi, I'm Dave! I live a few doors down from you, have seen you every day when I go out for work, and have thought that you were really interesting and that I'd like to spend some more time getting to know you.

The New New 9rules: Ali 2 Launches

One of the best days of my life, though I didn't fully appreciate it until months later, was when this website was accepted into the 9rules Network. What was exciting to me then was that I had found an online oasis of people who believed in creating original quality content. What was even more remarkable was the member agreement, which basically said (paraphrasing wildly): You keep doing what you're doing, we'll do what we're doing, and with luck something good will happen for everyone involved. If it doesn't work out, no hard feelings. It was an agreement that was written by someone who knew how to negotiate the win-win scenario, by speaking plainly and putting intentions as simply as possible. And, it was the first time anything I had done personally was recognized for what it was: my attempt to create something original that spoke for me. Being accepted as part of the Network was an affirmation of my new creative direction.

In the two years since that day, the 9rules mission has changed...or more accurately, it has been clarified. In the beginning, the network was based around the loose idea that if you collect quality content all in one place, you create something special. No one knew exactly what that special something would be, which was readily admitted by the 9rules founders. This didn't prevent armchair analysts from trying to guess what the "end game" might be:

• Was 9rules a portal designed to grow fat with advertising revenue without compensation to member sites?
• Was 9rules a move to brand "quality content" on the Internet and shut out the independent, thus co-opting the blogosphere toward its own ends?
• Was 9rules an exclusive, elitist club with unknown plans for Internet domination brewing behind the friendly logo?

The answer? Not on purpose :-) It depends on your perspective:

• If you're a zero-sum game type of thinker, the type of person who understands success to be achieved only at the expense of someone else, then the answer is yes. That's because ANYONE who is successful in your field of endeavor is perceived as a threat. The pie of success that you are sharing must be split into thinner slices for all participants. Or, it means you have to work harder to maintain your share.

• If you're a win-win strategy type of thinker, then you see the existence of a network like 9rules as expanding the pie of content goodness. There's nothing stopping YOU from continuing to create the best content that you can. Everyone benefits, because more good content creates more opportunities for connections, and it raises everyone's game.

Off the Internet, where grabbing eyeballs costs real dollars, the zero-sum thinking is much more applicable. There is a limited pool of "attention" available, and the real estate where the eyeballs are looking will command premium advertising dollars. It's very expensive. However, on the Internet, content creators have the advantage of search engines. Good writing coupled with a bit of search engine optimization will allow people to find your content. I'm not quite sure to what extent the pie can keep growing, and your level of optimism is probably dependent on your content development end-game; if it's defined in terms of revenue per click, then you're probably not too keen on the existence of a site like 9rules. On the other hand, if you're after reputation and personal satisfaction, there's nothing stopping you from continuing to plug away at developing your site.

The history of 9rules, in my mind, is comprised of three stages. The first stage focused on quality content, gathering websites that represented the best writing on the web, because that's what a lot of us appreciate the most. However, 9rules came to be seen as a "label of quality" that drove traffic and reputation. The second stage, codenamed "Ali", launched the community aspect of the site, introducing Notes where anyone could comment and discuss what people were interested in. Content served as the anchor that kept people coming, and Notes gave everyone a voice. The third stage, which is marked by yesterday's launch of "Ali 2", is about connections. It turns out that quality content and community really aren't the point after all; what we are all after is making a quality connection with other people. The new member agreement stipulates that 9rules members participate in some way; in other words, you've got to want to talk to other members. You can't have a community without participation. By emphasizing content and community, what 9rules has created is a vibrant space where you can meet conscientious, passionate people with something to say about topics you are interested in. And it's the connections I've made, both incidental and personal, that have really helped me clarify my own vision and direction.

Congratulations, 9rules, on the launch of Ali 2! I'm optimistic that the world will be made a better place, one person at a time, through the many new connections we will all make.

Kickstarting a Freelancer/Collaboration Network

I've been putting this off for months, putting out a call for people who do awesome work, so they can meet other people who value the same.

"I'm too busy to design the right program," I hemmed.

"It needs to be just right, with a nice website," I hawed.

Well, waiting is for chumps! I need to meet people now, as in yesterday.

Freelance Network Prerequisites

What I don't like about most freelancing sites is that they're oriented toward job listings and database searches. Boring! What I like to see is the actual work, and hear what people have to say about it. And then I like to know how to contact them, or refer them to someone else.

So the approach I'm thinking is that of an interviewer, both in the job sense and in the journalistic sense. For that, we need a kit of our work in a succinct form. Once the kit is available for review, I would then evaluate each kit from the perspective of how I see the value, and how I would use it. I would then write this perception---which should always be positive---as a note somewhere on my own "kit page". The idea: by collaboratively creating and reviewing each other's kits, we not only get to know people's work, we also share how we can imagine using it under what circumstances. I think there's something positive to note about everyone's work.

Here's the kit checklist:

1. Pick three (3) pieces of your best creative work, code fragments, or what have you, that represents your professional best. They should be complete and self-contained source files and source code, if applicable. We are looking for a complete assessment, not a surface one.

2. Write a few sentences about each of those pieces that describe: what you did, why you were doing it, what it was for, and how it performed in the field when other people actually started using it.

3. Put all the pieces and text on a website where it can be downloaded by anyone.

4. Provide some preferred means of contacting you.

The idea behind this is that people will hire based on what they can imagine being done on their behalf. To exercise that imagination, people need to see what you've done and draw their own conclusions. Guessing at what those conclusions might is a big part of marketing and self-promotion, but I know from experience that what people find interesting about your work is often something you never thought of.

Here's the review checklist:

1. Contact the person who's kit you've downloaded, and say that you'd like to do a quick IM, phone, or email kit review. Voice or face-to-face is better I think than text, but that's just me.

2. The goal of the kit review is to react honestly to things you like about the work and how you'd apply it in your own projects, while you are talking to the person. Hopefully you actually like the kit you've downloaded, so you will have good things to say. Since you're looking at the source files too, assuming you're familiar with its operation, you'll also get a sense of how that person works. I can tell a lot about someone's experience and level of expertise by looking at their work, personally. Most important is to listen to your gut: I like this. The person who's kit you've downloaded will understand how their work is perceived by others, which is immeasurably valuable to someone just getting started or trying to crack the freelance market.

3. After reviewing the kit, go to your own kit page and write up the kit review, with a link to the person's kit page. Say what you specifically liked about it in a few words. Be honest. And only review people that you would consider working with yourself in the specified context.

So that's what I'm thinking of doing...I had hoped to have my website set up for it by now, but I thought I'd just prime the pump to see who was interested. I don't even know what I'd put in my own kit page yet.

I'll formalize this a little more later, but in the meantime feel free to comment or suggest other approaches.

Blog Action Day is October 15

I got a nice email from Leo over at Zen Habits telling me about Blog Action Day, which is coming up this October 15th. The idea is that bloggers can collectively converse on a topic of global relevance. You know, the power of the blogosphere, much mocked by the so-called Old Media, but reaching a more literate and plugged-in demographic. I've been experimenting with more community participation activities as part of my social networking goals for the year, so I figure participating in Blog Action Day will help me along in unpredictable and exciting ways!

The topic of this first Blog Action Day is something that is not on my mind a lot: The Environment. I suppose the reason this is the case is because I live in southern New Hampshire, and we like the Environment just fine so long as it doesn't get in the way of our civil liberties, or people from out of state tell us how we should be taking care of our own backyard, thank you very much. But that's politics, which is another topic I avoid thinking about unless it is actually in my way. What's more interesting to me is how The Environment affects people personally, and therefore how our manipulation of The Environment can be a course of action.

I'm open to suggestions on some topic related to The Environment to write about...if anyone would like to toss me a few challenges to write about in the comments (kind of like what we did with The Bee Story a few months back), this might be a fun way of getting even more people participating. So go ahead, make some outrageous, silly, or even serious claim or statement (it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not)...the challenge will be to integrate everything into some semblance of coherent speech.

You can read more about Blog Action Day over on the official website.

Those Other People

The other day I was chatting with a good friend via instant message, mentioning some information I'd read about the United Nations Development Programme. The UNDP has the following mission statement (slightly paraphrased by myself):

"[...] an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life."

I've known for a while that I love connecting individuals to knowledge, experience, and resources, but I'd never thought about how this was done on a grand scale. It's pretty awesome that there are organizations all over the world that have this kind of mission, and one would think that being part of one would make me happy. But no...actually not. I found it odd that I could be pro-empowerment on the individual level, yet not find it in myself to extend my interest to entire groups of people. I commented on the apparent smallness of my heart to my friend:

Dave: I wonder what it is like to volunteer for something like this. I've never done it before. Never wanted to before. But now I am curious, with my recent interest in community building. I'm not sure where I fall on the line between "building for our people" versus "building for other people". I don't like doing things for ungrateful people, I guess.

FriendX: Well, I guess you'd need to feel some sort of sense of community. Other people are just people you don't know yet.

It's amazing when an offhand comment like that unlocks a whole slew of realizations. In this case, I was able to connect past behaviors with future ones.

First, the dark side of my meet more people drive of the past few years. I had figured out that I'm actually most passionate about certain kinds of people, and that being around such people was a prime motivator. So I set out to start finding them, those special people who would be important parts of my life. I told myself that while such people were rare:

• If you click with just one person out of 100 , you'll be far better off than before.

• Every individual is a treasure trove of new connections and information.

I believe these are both true statements. However, there is an unspoken presumption: There are people worth knowing, and people who aren't. Even the people with interesting experiences are not classified as people; instead, they're more like convenient sacks of data ripe for plundering.

The smallness of this personal realization makes me shiver uncomfortably, and I don't want it to be true. Nevertheless...I can feel it. What the hell is wrong with me?

A DAWNING REALIZATION

It's unrealistic to expect that I will ever like or even get along with everyone, so I've presumed that this meant that there were people who were in my tribe and people who were not. This seems like a natural state of things to me. People who are not in my tribe are therefore irrelevant unless they are active threats. It's only then that action needs to be taken. Up to now I thought this was a pretty reasonable way of looking at things. I can't be responsible for everyone.

However, FriendX's statement made me realize something: while I can't possibly be friends with even 3 out of 10 people, that doesn't mean that the other 7 of 10 are "other people" to be thought of as junk. If I make the effort to meet new people, understand where they're coming from and where they're going---in short, to understand their stories and their lives---then they cease to be "other" and become "people" just like me. The common bond that we have is that we all want things to be better for ourselves. Sure, there are people who want to take from others for their own ease, and that's evil, but by and large most people are decent folk. The essence of community, I realized, is that by helping other decent folk like yourself, you are really helping yourself in a weird way. I'm not clear how this works exactly, but I think by working directly with people of a similar mind, you naturally open yourself up to new opportunities. The operative term is working directly with people...that is, making a contribution of time and effort, as opposed to just writing a check. You can help people with a check, but you don't build community.

The personal ramifications are broad:

• Instead of looking for those specific people who I think are the massive contributors, find a way to just talk to more of them and share some stories. That we're all sharing in the same struggle is all the common bond we need. If I can lend a hand directly, then by all means I should. That said, I need to be careful about not overextending myself (very easy for anyone to do), but the flip side is that there's often something I can do that doesn't require a lot of direct investment.

• Instead of avoiding the possibility of getting burned in a collaborative project, I should welcome those opportunities. My mentality in the past was that I always needed to work with very experienced, seasons vets for me to be happy about the project. Maybe this isn't the case, so long as that desire is there.

Frankly, both those ideas are absolutely terrifying to me, and I am not convinced it is a wise thing to do. Every fiber in my project manager hat is screaming ARE YOU CRAZY?, but another part of me (maybe it's Mom) is smiling and nodding, pleased that I finally am on the verge of understanding something about people that I wasn't capable of grasping before.

THE EXPANSION OF SCOPE

Previously, I saw my social hierarchies as a set of expanding rings.

• Elder Friends, with whom I've been through a lot, or know me scarily well.
• Close Friends, with whom I share important ideas and dreams.
• Coworkers and Cohorts, who I scheme and collaborate with on projects.
• Acquaintances, who I chat with every once in a while, but are not part of my daily continuity.
• Contacts, who are people I sort of know only in a specific contexts (e.g.: a barrista at Starbucks, perhaps a tech support person at a company).

Each of these rings is "bound together" with of one or more of the following elements:

(1) emotional connection
(2) work/life context
(3) shared continuity of time/place

It's interesting to note that the hierarchies at the top contain strong doses of all three, while the ones toward the bottom tend to have only one or two.

With the realization that there are no "other" people if I decide that this is the way to think about it, an additional element gets added to my social hierarchy ring game. I'm not sure exactly what to call it, but my best guess is that it's this:

(4) the belief that we're each responsible for contributing to the creation of a good life for the people around us.

That's as close as I can get right now. I'm sure that the theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and psychologists out there probably can list a hundred different names for this idea, and that's kind of exciting to think about. The thought that's on my mind right now, however, is what is it that I can do to create that good life around me? But I'm getting ahead of myself: the first step is to get to know who people are. Then, they won't be strangers anymore. That may be all the information I need.

Trust as Currency

I had an interesting email conversation with Steven Smith of HD BizBlog regarding the nature of trust in today's business world, after he pointed me to guest article on Slacker Manager he'd written. His premise is that trust is the "new currency" of business, which immediately triggered the following comment from me (I apologize for the poor grammar, and I've inserted a missing fragment):

Interesting post! A side comment: Trust has always been the currency of the world…it’s what underlies actual money, and it’s what allows [society to function]. Organizationally speaking, I think the various types of corporate structures have minted their own bank notes for trust: in the hierarchy, the implicit promise is that if you do your job, you will be rewarded and taken care of. This has broken down as people realize that the companies themselves do not have the same loyalty to them as they expect from their employees. And thus, that particular type of trust has become devalued within the organization itself and becomes worthless.

Stephen has posted the entire thread, including his thoughts and my other feedback, over in his blog post The Importance of Trust in the Web 2.0 Economy, and would like to get a conversation going on the topic. It's not every day that I get to bring up Richard M. Nixon in an email conversation! So check it out and give him some love :-)

Printable CEO Wiki and Forum

After setting up Expression Engine for the Guild website (still a work in progress), I've come to like the Wiki and Forums modules enough that I'm transitioning all my other work to it. The guild was intended to be a business networking activity in the first place, so consolidating other community content to the same location makes sense to me.

Forum Changes

I have a somewhat inactive forum at http://davidseah.net/dsforums. It's a private forum, requiring a registration application to join. It's based on PunBB, which is a fine BBS in most respects but just never worked well for notifications. I like the EE forum module much better in this regard.

The new forum is now attached to the Guild forums in another section; the shortcut is http://davidseah.com/talk. Guests may now read everything, but registration is still required to post. I also no longer require the "backstory" submission. The old forum will remain private.

Wiki Changes

The Wiki at http://wiki.davidseah.com is based on DokuWiki, which at the time of installation was the least ugly Markdown-friendly implementation I could find. After some struggling with its CSS, I got it to look "almost right", but the Markdown integration felt awkward to me. The Expression Engine Wiki was much easier to configure, looked pretty good out of the box, and with just a few CSS tweaks looked even better.

I've moved the content from the old wiki to the new one; you can access all the Printable CEO™ modification action here. Also, I've enabled file uploading, so people can submit their versions of various mashups directly.

You can reach the new wiki at http://davidseah.com/wiki. I ask that people cooperate in keeping things organized. You need to be registered to edit the Wiki and to upload files.

Future Changes

One reason I am moving to this system is that the user management is handled by a single system; I'm hoping that I can leverage this for future integration with things like the Online Emergent Task Timer. The plan is to try to write an EE-based web service that will handle the data loading and saving for this and future tools, tied in with existing user management. If it works, we'll get built-in forums, wiki, and data management, plus photo management and simple e-commerce within a single solution that I actually like. That would be awesome!

If anyone out there has experience writing such a web service for use with Expression Engine (it basically needs to accept and restore data from a Flash application), I'd be very interested in hearing from you.

Thanks! Enjoy!

Some Thoughts on Recruiting

UPDATE: All future WoW-related posts will be directed to guild.davidseah.com.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I've been recruiting players for a World of Warcraft Guild, ostensibly as a business networking experiment. This is not a new idea, of course, but I'm still astonished at how well this might actually work.

As I mulled this over, it occurred to me that this was just the latest in a series of networking activities related to my freelancing efforts. Read on!

DEVELOPING A PRESENCE

As a freelancer, one of the greatest challenges is finding new work. Before I had a website, I relied on word of mouth through my previous work contacts, and this kept me fed but not much more. After I started blogging, word of mouth gave way to "I found you on the Internet and I like your stuff", which is a great way to get business contacts. It works because I write in the blog everyday frequently A LOT, and as a result I've amassed a collection of useful articles. This adds to my credibility as an individual who is serious about communication, design, and organization.

I think the credibility aspect of the blog works in three ways:

• Appearance -- The initial surface impression is that it looks clean and that I can put two sentences together.

• Personality -- I write plainly and conversationally, and my writing tends to mirror the way I present myself. The friendly emphasis on productivity, empowerment, and practical insight-making creates an environment that draws like-minded people.

• Content -- If I'm lucky, visitors stumble upon a post or photograph that strikes a chord with them on some level, and they explore further.

The main draw is, if I were to guess, Content and Personality. The main weakness in my website, however, is the poor organization that doesn't do a good job of channeling new guests to the content they will find interesting. It doesn't even do a good job of channeling people to the various useful bits of design I've already made available. I need to address this soon...the easier I can make it for people and search engines to casually explore the content I've created, the better the chances for creating a meaningful collision of interests that will lead to fruitful collaboration and co-scheming.

EXPANDING THE PRESENCE

While the blog is starting to work well for generating contacts, the other way of drawing people is by doing it in person at a festival like SXSW. I've also toyed with forums and Wikis, but the great problem with these tools is that they're not very good at providing real-time interaction the way you get at an actual event. Without that back-and-forth interplay, it's a lot more difficult to maintain a conversational groove.

• The Forum is good for lengthy discussion, but if reading the forum is not a regular habit for the reading audience, it dies out. It takes a lot of effort to keep a forum going, and it's mandatory that you have a few key contributors other than yourself.

  The forum has been great for meeting new people, but I feel bad for not keeping it as a nice, active place. I tend to concentrate on creating new content over reading websites and bulletin boards, which means I don't put the energy into the forum that it deserves.

• The Wiki, based on DokuWiki, has the potential to be a fun participatory project, but in practice it suffers from the need for someone to constantly say "It's OK to edit". Again, it comes down to having the momentum of someone other than the Wiki owner creating new content. I think a lot of people feel that they are a "guest" and shouldn't edit other people's work willy-nilly. Plus, editing a wiki isn't exactly a pleasant experience unless you're comfortable learning and working with embedded formatting codes. This limits the audience considerably.

  The Wiki is turning out to be more as a supplementary "content development" zone for me, where people can make requests and additions. I think it could be developed into an interesting site in its own right, as a kind of "co-development" zone, but that's a lot of work also. I don't think it's what I need to focus on.

WELL, WHY HAVE A FORUM OR A WIKI IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Taking a step back, I need to ask myself why I started the Forum and the Wiki. Both of them were experimental forms of reaching out, but as I like to focus on new writing and new ideas, they end up being a kind of drain. However, I can see a pattern:

• With the Forum, the idea was to share our personal histories and dreams to find kindred spirits. People who were interested in both (1) writing the background story and (2) talking about the subjects I laid out would be, I reasoned, more likely to be kindred. This worked to an extent, and several interesting side projects blossomed developed. However, it's been difficult to maintain for me, because of the time involved. It's been backburnered.

• With the Wiki, the idea is to allow group shaping of ideas, together. There are a LOT of great ideas, some inspired by my work. Ideas, articles, and other content could be the binding agent of a community. With the Forum, it was more about our personal stories, but with the Wiki, it's about co-creating ideas. That may not seem obvious yet, as I haven't laid down any rules, but should I open source some components of the Printable CEO series it will be in some free-for-all form like this. Or, a more streamlined content management system.

• With the WoW Guild, I think the idea is this: build relationships by sharing virtual experiences with people of similar interests and background. The people who are going to join the guild will only have heard about it through this blog or through a related person; if you are a regular visitor you're likely to be compatible with other regular visitors. Add "business and social networking" to the raison d'etre of the guild, and I think we have the foundation of something that could be pretty darn cool.

SHARING EXPERIENCES

Skeptical? Here's some stories from this weekend:

• I was out exploring Stranglethorn Vale, a lush tropical jungle area teeming with giant gorillas, raptors, and panthers. Not only that, but the entire land is infested with surly trolls and pirates, and they make moving around off the main road quite dangerous. I teamed up with "Lansun", a Level 38 Night Elf Druid, and some dwarf hunter we came across named "Ironhorse" or something like that, to help collect some magical liquid from a particularly virulent group of mystic trolls...very nasty! Now, a group of three mid-level characters can, individually, handle one or even two trolls by themselves easily; it's when you have to deal with clusters of trolls and the roving patrols that things go all pear-shaped. It takes discipline, speed, and coordination to not get your party destroyed. Over the next hour or so, we figured out a strategy that made best use of our strengths while covering our weaknesses, creeping our way through the thickets and ruins trying not to take on too many opponents at once. There was one bad moment when the entire camp seemed to descend upon us, and we were wiped out. However, there were also two glorious moments when our careful planning gave way to a free-for-all. We covered each other magnificently, healing each other and handling the unexpected monster rush by the seat of our pants. When it was all over, we were drained but victorious. Just barely. There was certainly room for improvement (I blew a few spells myself), but we had bonded as a team. It kicked ass.

  I also learned a bit more about Lansun aka Jonathan, a Flash and ColdFusion developer. From that shared experience, I've come to know Jonathan a little better and recognize that he's a good guy to have in a fight. I certainly would consider him when I had a ColdFusion job come up now, just based on this positive in-game experience.

• Earlier in the weekend, I spent some time helping "Dirk Gently", a newly-minted Paladin, through the game. This is Hornbeck's character, a developer out in Oklahoma I think (I still haven't gotten everyone's name and real life profession straight...my apologies). It also happened to be Hornbeck's first time playing World of Warcraft, so I spent a couple hours exploring the icy mountains of Dun Morogh, frigid home of the Alliance Dwarves and teaching him what I knew of the basics of WoW combat and questing. We chatted a bit about work, and I enjoyed reliving those earlier levels through him. It was a good opportunity to remember how to play also, since it has been a couple years since I've played. Hornbeck picked up the basics quickly, and he's quickly rising in level. He also is having a good time.

• On Monday night, there were 3 or 4 of us online at the same time, and we hopped on the same IRC channel (WoW has an IRC system built-in) and met everyone for the first time. "Beetlebum" was helping "Rendellini", my Level 24 Mage, through the tedious and spooky quests in Duskwood. It's a dark, haunted place where ancient trees stand in a cold fog, the landscape crawling with giant black wolves, man-sized spiders and the shambling Undead. It is a desperate place under siege from the creeping infestation of dark magic, so I was glad to have the help of a friend to power-level me through the rather depressing sequence of quests. Having a few people on the IRC channel chatting about work and meta-interests was fantastic too; when my kitchen timer went off to announce the end of my play session, I was sad to go.

NEXT STEPS

Starting a guild is, as many people have told me, a lot of work. However, it has a huge advantage over the Wiki: it's interactive in real time, and you can talk to people in real time. This is hugely energizing; it doesn't hurt that WoW is a highly-polished and refined game, so it does not get in the way of having a good time. And remember: you can learn a lot just a few hours of sharing the same game quests. My challenge, with the help of guild offers that I appoint, will be to create an organization that creates more energy than it consumes for every one of the intelligent and friendly people who choose to join and stay.

We still need two more signatures before the Charter can be submitted and our Guild comes into existence. We're maintaining a temporary guild page where you can list yourself so I can find you online to get your signature. From the way things are shaping up, I'm feeling very positive about the direction and the possibilities behind doing this. I'm looking forward to see how this experiment unfolds. As I said in my earlier post, starting a guild in a game as deep as World of Warcraft is quite similar to recruiting people for a new company; the lessons learned here should be quite valuable.

I'll be on the Echo Isles server Tuesday May 29 from 8PM to 10PM Boston time as "Rendeihl" for signups. You can also jump in on the temporary chatroom by typing /join ddochat to say hello. Feel free to say "hi" to each other, and find out a bit about what you do...it is networking, after all :-)

The Printable CEO Free-for-All Wiki Page

Over the past year I've gotten a lot of amazing insights and forms from other people, and I keep telling them I'll post them on this site to share with all. However, I've been very bad about actually following through with it because I tend to write new posts when I have the energy to work on the blog.

Since I'm busy this week, I thought I'd try a social experiment in community idea sharing by opening up the PCEO Wiki to, well, anything, so I'm no longer the bottleneck.

I know there's the potential for abuse, but heck, I'm curious to see what happens.

If anyone would like to share their work, please feel free to post it. I'll have to figure out a secure way of providing file upload space...if anyone has suggestions, let me know.

> PCEO Wiki