24 Hours a Day

It's the first day back from my Taiwan trip, during which I was able to connect with a lot of life-affirming family experiences. Today is also the first day in about 4 months since I felt like I was allowed to think about something that was NOT the museum project. While I have a few possible leads percolating that I should attend to, I'm purposely relishing this first day as the beginning of a new period of endeavor. I can resume a path that I now know is critical to my sense of well-being.

There are several things that I am regarding as critical: regular blogging about ideas and inspiration and having the time to creating and refine new tools and ways of understanding. I'm looking forward to redeveloping local community and social media connections, which has been on the backburner for several months, and somehow making it a core part of how I do my work. I'm very intrigued by the possibility of creating new offerings in the areas of writing, creative direction, and product design. The question is how to actually go about getting all this done with as little fuss as possible, while not starving to death.

balancing guilt with mission

While I largely enjoyed my last project, I found it difficult to keep my mind satisfied with just the single project, especially as a remote-working arrangement. Although I wasn't required to tune out all my other side projects, I nevertheless felt a kind of guilt when I wasn't spending every peak productive hour on the many project challenges we were facing. While it all worked out pretty well in the end, I can't help but think that with just some more hours spent here and there, it might have been better or more sophisticated. In fact, I know that more time spent in any way would have resulted in improvement. However, I also recognized early on that there's a limit to how much you can sacrifice of your personal life to a project before it starts to corrode the core of your soul. I think I struck a reasonable balance for this project, but I still felt guilty about reserving the time for myself; this is perhaps a vestige of working for video game and startup companies. It's a dumb attitude to have, I know, but if there's some way of avoiding the feeling of guilt, I'm all for it. In this case, it's giving myself permission based on prior negative experiences.

Building on that insight, I'm very much aware that there are going to be compromises between time I'd like to spend creating new stuff, time spent maintaining the business, time creating new infrastructure for growth, and time actually earning money. And that's just the work side of things; then there's all the personal time. As it was with the museum project, I need to be mindful that all these activities are important, not just the ones that seem more important. It helps, perhaps, that the model of life I'm pursuing attempts to combine personal time and work time, which is sort of the missionary mindset that I grew up with. I touched on the mission in my last Groundhog Day Resolution Review, which is to generally write about and create things that are universally empowering with a group of people that enjoy the same thing. In other words, make stuff that makes a difference, with people that believe that this is a mission well worth pursuing.

I've been defining my mission for a very long time, and have evolved ways of dealing with the intangible contributors to depression. Much of the Printable CEO Series is designed to give shape to otherwise-invisible forces of procrastination and blow them aside with concrete progress markers. Today, what's foremost on my mind is setting expectations for what I can realistically do in a day. Since my mind is also very much on getting billable hours scheduled, I have to also be mindful of not letting those thoughts unbalance my overall mission. Billable hours are not the point of having my business, after all. My business exists to fund the mission.

setting starting guidelines

So today's thought was that I needed to set a guideline of billable hours per day, and let that shape the way I schedule all my other mission-critical activities. Billable hours are one of those things that seems important, particularly because many business advisers stress that revenue is king. I agree that it's important, but I'm capping its importance to sustenance levels. And the sustenance figure is shockingly low: 4 billable hours a day, 5 days a week. At first that might seem absurd, but considering that as a solo business practitioner I have to do all the non-billable activities like marketing, networking, business development, accounting, and so on it is actually pretty optimistic. The other side of the revenue equation is controlling costs and managing cash flow; with a lowered billable hour bar, keeping tabs on costs and cash becomes more important. This historically has been an area that I've never found very interesting, but now that I an acknowledging the need, I can start to see the opportunity to evolve some new tools and processes.

So where does the rest of the time go? To overhead activities related to business development and maintenance, but a goodly chunk will go to maintaining blogging momentum. I know from past experience that this will lead to productive connections later. For example, the photograph that leads this post shows 24 boxes, which is the beginning of some kind of planner tool that I can just see at the edges of my imagination. Four of those boxes represent billable hours. Eight of those boxes are sleep. The other boxes get sucked up with maintenance. What kind of big picture tool could develop from having just drawn those boxes? What insights can we gain from representing time as a stack of boxes next to 4 categories of activity? I don't know, but I'm putting it up there because I think it might go somewhere. The mere act of writing it down has created a thread of investigation, and the audacity of sharing this incomplete thought may trigger a reaction from the Internet. The universe has a strange way of getting back at you, and in a way my entire business model is based on the belief that this is a good way of creating opportunity. If you read between the lines of successful businesses that have adapted to market forces, this is the essential mechanism at work.

So...here we go!

Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day 5/5/2009

It's that time again, Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day. I happen to be on the tropical island of Taiwan at the moment, attending numerous family functions related to the passing of my grandmother and 80th birthday of my father. The return to Taiwan, a place that I have associated with intellectual captivity from the ages of 9 to 18, is proving to be an excellent backdrop to my thoughts about the future. In short: it's not as bad as I remember it, and I'm seeing the island from a more mature and empowered perspective.

There's a lot to like about this place: great food, an incredibly dynamic society, lower cost of living (if you know how to live like the average Taiwanese), and an increasingly international atmosphere. It's a lot different from the 1980s. I'm even starting to think that I could finally learn the language, armed with the investigative techniques that I have developed over the years.

where we are now

While I'm feeling positive overall, my ongoing resolution to develop creative and financial independence has been causing a small amount of restlessness. As I said in the 4/4/2009 review, my resolutions are based around the following:

To write about what catches my eye, create that which illuminates, and through these actions build financial independence.

The actual method of following-through with this I had left to "selling products that tickle my fancy", the current incarnation being the preprinted pads I'd started selling experimentally a couple of years ago. I don't have any idea whether it's viable as a product over the long run, but certainly the very act of trying creates opportunities that are yet unseen. So long as I don't lose money on this, I'm probably going to be OK. When I return to the United States in mid-May, I plan to get back on this project and really make it happen. Ever since I was in the 4th grade, I've wanted to print stuff and distribute it; I used to buy sheets of carbon paper when I was a kid and make forms in triplicate, because I was so enthralled with the idea of creating multiple impressions from a single action. In a way, this is the reason why I also like computer programming: write once, distribute forever. The idea of putting something out there in the world that is real and tangible is one that I just find innately exciting.

where we're going

In the meantime, there are certain realities I've got to face. First and foremost, I've just come off a year-long project, and it's time to drum up some new business. I'm rusty at the new business development side of things, and so it's time to start talking to people and letting them know I'm again available. However, in the context of Groundhog Day Resolutions, I should be focused on drumming up the right kind of business. This goes beyond hawking my market-ready skills in the analysis, visual design, and interactive development realms. What's more important to me is the KIND of projects and clients I best work with.However, I also need to eat, so I can't afford to be too picky about my projects. The compromise: be as clear as possible what kind of projects have been a historical "good fit". It's time for some marketing communication.

And so, I've been writing out several lists to help define my main points. Here's my rough list:

• Practitioner Types: visual designer, investigative designer, interactive designer
• Universal Skills: pattern recognition, analysis, ideation, explanation, documentation
• Trade Skills: Flash/Director development, UI Design, Information Architecture, Information Graphic Design, Digital Media Production, Copywriting
• Special Emphasis: Story as major design element, workflow and process improvement, productivity and empowerment, cross-discipline thinking, novel approaches to change perspectives
• Personal Qualities: Likes 1-to-1 relationships. Likes work that affects people on the individual empowerment level, not faceless corporations.
• Ideal Projects for Hire: Start with a question or desire, discover and develop a hypothetical process, create an implementation strategy, create artifacts.
• Ideal Areas of Endeavor: To start, PCEO forms, stationery, concept and product designs, software utilities
• Qualities of Work: informational, insightful, expressed through functional design, imbued with aesthetic and functional quality.
• Interested Businesses: software companies, advertising agencies, educational material developers, museums

I'm at the point now where I'm stare at these lists a lot to figure out which points need to be explicitly communicated and which points can be conveyed indirectly. My best guess: be a universal designer with a transparent process built upon three core ideas:

• storytelling as a driving design element
• the use of investigative reconstruction in the discovery phase of the design process.
• audience-validated scientific creative methodology

These are all ideas that I've touched on over the past four years; it's time to stand firm and establish the foundation of my "designer identity".

I've been chasing this for a looong time, and now that I'm free to starve to death on the open market, I'm feeling especially motivated to get moving. :-)

So that's the emphasis for the month of May. We'll touch base again on June 6 to see how it went. If you have posted your own Groundhog Day Resolution Review for today, please feel free to leave a comment with a link back to your entry; it would be cool to have an informal group review!

Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day 4/4/2009

The past month has been devoted toward getting our interactive project polished for the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. We'll be doing final tweaks to the interaction and presentation for the remainder of this week, and then we're done. Done! After that, I can start to think about what comes next for me.

I couldn't remember what my actual Groundhog Day Resolution (GHDR) was, and it turns out that I didn't really define it succinctly this year. The GHDR-related posts of this year have been pained attempts to maintain some semblence of momentum in the face of another project that consumed the bulk of my mental energy. Today, I'm content to just say that I want to write about what catches my eye and create that which illuminates, and through these activities establish financial independence by selling products that tickle my fancy. This may not be the fast track to wealth, but it's the way I would like to do it.

I took some significant steps last month by hiring a personal assistant to handle some of the groundwork in finding a local printer and establishing an Amazon fulfillment account so I can do another run of Emergent Task Planner Pads to have them available all the time, and from there expand into other types of pre-printed products. My reasoning is that with a persistent, easy-to-fulfill presence on the Internet, I'll be able to create a small marketplace for useful forms and productivity planning products. The whole idea tickles me, like having a lemonade stand on the Internet.

Another component of the plan is to make myself available to more people, because this is ultimately what leads to satisfying project work. As interesting as the museum project was, our team was spread between two coasts and the lack of face-to-face time almost killed me. I hadn't realized this was such an important aspect of my working life, but apparently it is more critical to me than ever before. Therefore, I'll be actively seeking collaborators and co-schemers in the Southern New Hampshire / Greater Boston Area to see what kind of daily face-to-face time I can guarantee in my workday. This means that I'm going to be building the organization itself and actively nurturing its culture around familiar themes:

• surround myself with positive-minded, self-empowered, conscientious and kind people who are obsessive about excellence.
• make and show what we mean

As I move into May, my time for new projects will start to open up, and I'll be taking on new work. I've already gotten a couple of nibbles for interesting projects, but I need to ensure that I am not starving my ultimate goals.

For now, however, I'm completely soaked in finishing up the current project. After that, I need to re-enter the world that I've shut myself out of for the past six months: blogging, social media, collaboration, and discovering sources of personal inspiration. There are dozens of people to email and chat with with hundreds of threads to follow. Simultaneously, I'll make an attempt to rebrand strongly around my core values and funnest competencies; I feel it's gotten way too serious around here lately. I'm thinking there needs to be more pictures of cats, sandwiches, and odd objects found in between the machinery of culture.

Yeah.

GHD Resolution Review Day 3/3/2009

It's my first Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day for 2009, and I still haven't gotten around to defining my Groundhog Day Resolutions (GHDRs). In my last rambling report on the process, I had attempted to outline a comprehensive approach to the definition process; rereading it, my attention wandered within seconds, so I have just distilled them into a set of steps:

1. First define A VISION: a story of the "more-awesome" version of the life that I want.
2. Next, itemize my existing strengths and tendencies (both good and bad).
3. Finally, create three levels of action, built around the existing strengths from step 2:
   • Define several tangible steps that can be achieved in a short amount of time (15min to 1 hour)
   • Define a tangible achievement levels, built from tangible steps, that results in a new vision-related resource or capability.
   • Devise a means of measuring the effectiveness, through counting or direct observation, of your new capabilities.
4. Tell people you're going to do this, and then do something.

This methodology, incidentally, is based on the basic video game theory I apply in designing simple games.

I've procrastinated long enough in defining step 1 and step 3, and it's probably because my mind automatically is trying to optimize my decision making with thoughts of THE BEST WAY, THE MOST EFFICIENT STRATEGY, and MAXIMUM FLEXIBILITY, which tends to make me want to go read some more books or babble onward because there is no way of knowing which approach be the one that is most optimal. So I'll just pick a place to start and, trusting to hindsight being 20/20, will find out later.

THE VISION is, in its simplest form, to live a meaningful life of individual creativity and contribution. I'd like it to be self-sufficient, and I want to have a sense of authorship. So without mulling it over too much longer, I'm going to declare just one resolution: Create a shop filled with stuff I like. This has been a long time in the making, starting with the original drive to sell printed paper pads over a year ago. And most recently, I've been inspired anew by reading British fashion designer Paul Smith's book You Can Find Inspiration in Anything. My sister had given it to me some time ago, and while I had flipped through it I had not read it closely. There is a marvelous introduction by author William Gibson, which makes perfect sense editorially-speaking if you've read Pattern Recognition. The philosophy of the Paul Smith enterprise itself is not about fashion, but about connecting playfully with individuals; fashion just happens to be the medium through which Paul Smith makes this happen world-wide.

So...let's make that shop. Just make it. Design and optimal thinking can come later, once I have something I can look at.

To this end I have hired a personal assistant for 40 hours this month. The way this came about was completely serendipitous: I was talking to my friends Sid and Sara at Plastic Camera Studio. Sid shoots portrait and editorial photography in the Southern New Hampshire area, and Sara shoots fine art photography using the albumen process. Sara also works in various adminstrative capacities at educational institutions nearby, but I had never thought that this was an opportunity until we were all hanging out one night in the studio jabbering about trips. I was thinking about planning a trip up through California over a month, meeting people and doing design gigs while writing about the process. Sid told me about their plan to someday return to California for a photographic expedition, California being the only place they didn't linger the last time they did a cross-country tour. As we discussed our ideas for funding our trip, it occurred to me that there was quite a bit of overlap in the planning. Shared interest + administrative experience + willingness to see what happens lead to me commiting to 40 hours.

I've never had an assistant of any kind before, but I'm finding that it's sharpened my attention on certain matters. For example, I've had to think of how to explain what I'm trying to do to someone in the room with me. Also, some old management habits surfaced to be reshaped in the context of "being in charge". And as always, Clarity is Fleeting, so we're trying to establish some means of communication that helps provide the continuity and context for the work. Right now that solution is BaseCamp plus brief meetings. After assigning the rather nebulous task of reviewing all my Printable CEO material, we regrouped and decided to focus on getting the store working. That means (1) making new product and (2) selling it online. She's gathering contact information for all the printers in this area (and a few online) that we can establish some kind of relationship with, and after that she'll be establishing how one goes about using Amazon Fulfillment. The goal is to have something in operation at the end of this month, or be ready to do it.

In the meantime, I am in crunch mode on the Museum project I've been working on over the past year, a large-scale interactive children's exhibit for a Holocaust museum opening this April in Skokie, Illinois. This is the final crunch, so I have had very little time to blog or think about new business in May. However, I've had a few ideas:

• I may be offering some coaching hours to see if I like it; this isn't much different from the highly-appreciated "executive sounding board" service I sometimes offer to clients.
• I also do want to pick up the development of the long-dormant Flash version of the Emergent Task Timer as a way of getting familiar with the current crop of Flash development tools. Adobe AIR? Maybe even iPhone development, though I dislike AT&T so much that I would probably just develop with the emulator and team up with someone.
• There's the repackaging and reorganization of content on davidseah.com itself into a more accessible magazine-like format.

I've always liked the idea of having a magazine, but I've never known exactly what it would be about. When I started blogging, I blogged about what I liked in hopes of discovering just what those main categories would be, but never thought that was enough reason for itself. Reading about Paul Smith's approach, in which he just sold stuff he liked, I'm getting the idea that this might be the approach that work for me: write about the stuff the catches my eye, with trademark obsessiveness. There is always a market, though small, for quality obsessiveness packaged well. Will it be enough to sustain me as a business operator? We'll see how it looks on April 4th, our next GHD Resolution Review Day.

Explaining My Freelance Practice

I was chatting virtually with my friend Britt Raybould about just what it is that she "does" for work; this has been an ongoing three-year conversation since she first introduced herself to me at South by Southwest 2007. I know she's intelligent, competent, driven, and writes well; I just didn't know exactly how to frame these desirable qualities in my mind in a "work" context.

In the last exchange we had this morning, she shared with me the fruits of a night's thinking about the problem, and bing...I finally got it. And at the same time, I had an insight about how I should tackle the challenge of describing myself in a way that felt intuitive. It's a matter of remembering that the biggest challenge of describing yourself isn't coming up with the right keywords and categories; it's being able to paint a picture in people's minds about how they work with you.

I've been spending a lot of time over the past few years figuring out how to describe myself accurately, and I actually enjoy this. I love trying to find the differentiating nuances in my work that also reflect my personality. However, I haven't spent so much time thinking about how to "paint the picture", figuring that so long as I kept showing things people would figure out if they liked what I did or not by themselves. It's a practical implementation of "The Law of Attraction", the idea that "like attracts like". It also is a good way to not have to make a decision about what it is that I do in convenient "HIRE ME FOR THIS" form. This is probably because I hate labels and boxes; they feel so limiting, and I that's why I don't have a regular "business website" packed with the usual service offerings.

Since I need to start rustling up business for April/May 2009, I can't put this off too much longer. Thankfully, Britt's comments to me have kicked me in the butt towards action.

The Standard Approach

As much as I prefer not to be pigeon-holed, I must admit that labels and boxes are effective tools in narrowing down a potential niche of work. I can throw out a few of them quickly--design, writing, interactive, Flash, productivity--and a certain narrowing of understanding occurs. Potential clients actually get an idea if they can use me or not to get certain types of work done. The questions that inevitably arise next are:

• What kind of design/writing/interactive is that?
• Are you good enough to meet my needs?
• And in the best case, will blow away my expectations?
• And will this be a great value for my money?

Back when I worked in more traditional web agencies, my typical reaction to these questions would be to provide the information I thought the prospective client needed to make the decision, using as little boilerplate as possible. By boilerplate, I mean making empty claims on paper. You know, stuff like, "you should hire me because I am excellent and conscientious and devoted to making you look good." It may be a true sentiment backed by genuine intention, but it lacks substance because experience has also taught us that intention and action do not guarantee satisfaction. In other words, you may get the exact results you paid for, but you might not be happy with what you got. Que sera.

So instead of focusing on these kind of statements or relying on my client list to make indirect claims of excellence, I put the thinking work into the response, provide useful insights, and show examples of past work that are relevant to the problem. A lot of people freak out at this approach, saying that I'm giving away the ideas to a prospect who is likely to turn around and just implement the solution themselves, or even just use it to re-pitch their RFP to get a lower price somewhere else. While this is certainly a possibility, I don't see how I can lose. In the best case, the prospective client is impressed by my analysis and candor and we start a good working relationship. Or, the prospective client sees that the way I'd implement the problem is how they would do it too, and they're happy to pay someone to do it right because they don't have the staff resources to handle it themselves. And if the prospective client is just fishing for free information for the cheapest price under the guise of putting out work for bid, they've done you a favor by looking elsewhere because they've just shown a lack of business morality that will bite you in the butt later. I'd rather just provide the insight for free, then consider the time well-spent in collecting another datapoint on what people are up to in the business world.

Freelancing is a feast-or-famine lifestyle at times, and since clients are perceived the ones with the power, freelancers is to think in terms of maximizing their exposure to as many clients as possible. Then, the trick is to be as flexible as possible without hurting yourself. This is basic survivalist thinking, which begets what I might call the standard freelancing approach:

• Where do prospective clients look for freelancers? I better make sure I'm with all the other freelancers then, because that's where the clients will look.
• How do prospective clients find freelancers that do what I do? I know they ask for, so I better list those same things so they find me in keyword searches.
• How do I convince prospective clients to hire me? I need to show them the work I've done that is the work they are looking for.

Once you take care of these three questions, the process becomes a game of numbers and luck. If enough people see you, and you stand out in a way that they happen to like, you'll get chosen. Superb salesmanship and follow-through then come into play, and your reputation will start to grow. It just takes time.

The Personal Approach

I'm not planning pursuing a straight service model, otherwise I'd just be hanging my set of keywords up on various job boards. The skills I have, in other words, are NOT my offering. I'm seeking a certain kind of personal interaction that happens to make use of my skills; this is the expression of my general desire to create more "awesome and inspiring" experiences for myself and people that I like. The logic may sound business-backwards, I know, but wouldn't it be great if I could make it work? And I know it can work...just go to SXSW Interactive or a Podcamp sometime and see for yourself.

I see my challenge not as "accurately categorize the work", which is how I would describe the Standard Approach outlined in the previous section. That's phone-book thinking, guaranteed to put you in competition with everyone else that "does" the same thing. And from a design perspective it's a big sin, similar to organizing a website based on how the database schema came out, or like writing code documentation based on a list of methods in the API. This is dumb, because there is little sense of what causes what and why, which is essential to creating any kind of meaningful understanding. You just end up with a collection of descriptors that are not connected in any kind of narrative or qualitative sense, which ends up being as frustrating as a bad round of charades. You need to have some kind of story that lays down the foundation, which then helps put you in context to the prospect's vision of the good life. That's a great place to be...now you just have to deliver! :-)

So for me, I'd like to reframe the questions in two parts. First, from my perspective:

• What kind of people do I like and respect? Creative, generous, positive people who are trying to do something different and are willing to be a little weird.
• What are my favorite skills that can be made a productive part of their working life? It's writing, brainstorming, categorizing, explaining, analyzing, and making things make sense to me using whatever supporting media I can dream up. In the past I'd made the mistake of doing things that were not among things I enjoyed doing (straight website development, for example), and the results were disappointing.

And from the client's personal perspective:

• Are you someone that I'd like to work with? This is a matter of showing enough of myself and my personality that's relevant to a good mutual working relationship. The various tools and writing I've done become the marketing collateral; I've just got to make it easier to look through.
• What kind of things can I ask you to help me with? What kind of things can you handle for me? This becomes a statement of what I'm willing and able to do.
• Can I actually envision using your products and services to make my life better in some way? That comes down to composing a picture and telling a story.

The combination of the personal approach with the standard approach creates, for me anyway, a more well-rounded strategy for pursuing new business. You could say what I'm doing is just another way of explaining a certain kind of salesmanship and marketing. The difference, though, is that the interaction satisfies both parties in an authentic fashion: "This is me. You are you. Is there a genuine complement of skills, needs, and collaboration in the making? Let's find out."

Status on Hiatus

I'm still on blogging hiatus because I've been busy with a challenging year-long interactive project. This is an enforced hiatus, not a vacation, and it's been driving me a little nuts. The plus side of my time away from writing: I'm learning a lot about relatively-modern video game development technology and authoring. The down side? I really miss writing and working on my own projects. However, this period of enforced time away from blogging has helped me see what I want to do more clearly.

>> CONTINUE READING

Freelance Referral Network Building

Today I got an email from someone looking for a referral if I was still booked through November (I am, on that museum interactive project). It highly irritates me that I don't have a good referral network of deserving people who share my values. Almost two years ago, I wrote about a different kind of freelance network that would be powered by circles of personal recommendation of the work, from which the nature of the person can be inferred. My theory is that as freelancers, we really have no idea what clients respond to, so we put together a portfolio of our "best work" and hope for the best. Frankly, it all starts to look the same after a while, and it's impossible to see the person behind the work because we assume that he/she is the same. I say show your most "you" stuff, and let people form their own impressions. If they like what you see (and this is hard to predict), they will act if it's convenient relative to their need.

Referring

When I refer someone, I insist on qualifying what I know about that person's work and character. I don't refer someone who I don't trust, and if there are areas that I think are important to the business prospect that I can not speak to from personal experience, I say that. Here are some of the things that I like to see in the people I refer, adapted from my original post:

• Defines tangible, concrete results.
• Is candid, real, and honest in establishing expectations right from the get-go.
• Tells you how much something will cost before the work is done, to the best of their ability. Sets the expectation that this may change under specific conditions without being a jerk about it.
• Acknowledges the sending and receipt of critical work and related dependencies (e.g. receipt of asset photographs, etc)
• Strives to understands the nature of your work and the context in which you operate.
• Is willing to learn how to speak your own language (business, art, etc).
• Teaches how his/her profession works as necessary or as asked...no secrets! Good clients hire for the person doing the service, not the service itself.
• Actively collaborates to deliver tangible results at every stage of the project
• Keeps your best interest as the priority, not maximizing revenue at your expense, at fair compensation.
• Takes appropriate protective measures in terms of contractual scope that are mutually beneficial, and/or requires mutual commitment through tangible action.
• Looks out for other's relevant interests in day-to-day operation.
• Delivers great product on time.
• Is a source of good ideas and brainstorming.
• Enjoys the process of communication through regular dialog.
• Accepts criticism and disagreement, and works with that to help bring the project back into alignment (any feedback is good :-)

I don't expect to see every one of these line items in the same individual, and goodness knows that I am not perfect in this regard either. However, these values are what I aspire to professionally.

Building

The original initiative petered out as I got involved in other projects, and I figured that the energy it would take to build the network exceeded my available energy. This is still the case, but I'm now thinking of a relatively lower level of commitment. Ask people for resumes. I just posted this on Twitter:

I need to expand my referral network: If you kick ass at whatever you do and have 3 examples of ass kickery to back you up, contact me!

I'm going to keep everyone's information on file and start the positive critical review process myself on the information provided. This is useful for me because I'll start to rebuild my rolodex of people to go-to for work. Secondly, I will make the review process public by posting my positive impressions of the work I get to see. This means I focus on possibility, not expectation. It's up to the hiring client to make a determination whether a given freelance is reliable enough to do the work; I merely want to see what people are doing so I can connect the right gigs with the right people. This is something I like to do anyway, so it will be fun. This is a sort of variation on word-of-mouth, designed to create short lists of qualified candidates as opposed to filtering through hundreds of people.

So if you're an ass kicker of any stripe, send me your information or post it in the comment area. I am not sure how this will all play out, but I think it will be informative in some way. Here's what you should do in the email:

• Provide your name and public contact information
• Provide links to your three best examples of your work, as you see it. And that means you pick three links instead of throwing the whole portfolio at my head. It'll be hard, perhaps, but this is about what YOU think is important, not some abstract demographic. Three means three.
• Tell me what you think you do. If you don't know, that's OK, so long as you picked what you think your three strongest bits of work are.
• Tell me the story of how you got into what you're doing. This is very important context for me.

What I will do is spend about 30 minutes on each set of links, and then I'll spend another 30 minutes doing my informal analysis of how I can imagine your work being used in a given situation. I'll then post it on the public wiki for my reference, based on when I can get to it and what people are asking me for. It will be visible to the public, but as I said I will be only posting the positive reactions I have. This is not a recommendation I'm making; I'm merely documenting possibilities. As I said, it's up to the hiring party to do their own due diligence.

The benefit to you is that you'll get my perspective on your strengths and how I imagine it might fit with other people. People who have gone through this process with me have told me I should charge a lot of money for this service, but in this case you'll be doing me a favor by helping me expand my Rolodex. I can't promise that I'll get to everyone in a timely manner, but I will try my best to help people make connections.

Contemplating Career Directions

I had a long coffee meeting with Fred Schechter yesterday, an industrial designer based in northern California that I've been talking to on-and-off for the past couple of years. Industrial Design is one of those majors I wish I'd known about when I was applying to college; not knowing any better, I had gone into Electrical Engineering. Fred himself had originally started in Mechanical Engineering, but thanks to a chance conversation with a friend ("they have a MAJOR for making cool stuff???") he made an early exit and jumped to the world of product design. Anyway, we've been chatting about our mutual interest in making and selling our own products, and Fred's perspective on it from the industrial design / manufacturing side has been invaluable in fleshing out my next steps. He's an enthusiastic guy too, so if you're looking for someone to talk to about early-stage concept and prototyping for manufacturing, it's worth dropping him an email. Anyway, the conversation has helped solidify some thoughts on my personal career direction, so I thought I'd share them.

What Do I Do?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it is that I do, because it doesn't neatly fit into a simple category. Or rather, I don't want it to, which makes telling people what I do difficult. And if I can't tell people what I do, it's hard for them to imagine a way to work together. This is essentially a kind of marketing / branding problem, but from my personal perspective it is an aspect of my ongoing search for identity and how I relate to others; this is the million dollar question. It is what really drives my design process too. I suppose if I billed myself as a marketing or branding person, I would have to say that I'm NOT an operational or strategic manager (which is what a lot of people seem to do). What I like to do occurs before strategy so it can inform strategic planning, but it is not strategy in itself. What the heck is that called? I don't know, therefore I can't explain it.

For most of us getting started in the job market, we've learned to define ourselves through skills and years of experience (this includes education, which becomes less relevant as years of experience accrue). For "creatives", we add a portfolio that showcase the physical work we've materially contributed to. If your job does not produce artifacts like this, then you use position and job title as the lowest common denominator for placing yourself in context to the field with which you've identified; this implies you have relevant knowledge and experience. All of these "markers" of "job identity" work if you fit in the pre-existing system. I could fit into this system (I've tried several roles to date), but they have not fully satisfied me. For the past few years, I've been trying to figure out my niche, so I could adequately define something NEW that fit me well. I haven't thought much beyond that, but that's OK: I've learned to appreciate that chance encounters are pretty much the mechanism through which the Universe makes my life interesting.

In the conversation about making books, Fred helped me figure out a few attributes about my writing methodology from a more detailed perspective. Here's what I think I do from a blogging perspective:

• I am obsessive about documenting process meticulously and accurately. I hate bad docs, having been exposed to plenty of them.
• I scaffold my documentation with personal experience and context. I can safely use myself as an example without stepping on other people's toes.
• I am inclusive of my readers as friends as I document and relate these experiences. I don't like feeling like an outsider, so I try to be as inclusive as I can so long as it feels good.
• I always try to create original expression and new content, rather than just report on what others are doing. It's a personal value.
• I summarize and distill working principles as succinctly as I can, because that's what I find easiest to remember
• I maintain personal continuity in my writing, because I happen to find that kind of thing interesting.

From this, I could see how I could induce general principles of interest from my specific interests. For the past few years, I've been aware that I tend to write about these specific areas:

• Design
• Development
• Productivity
• Personal Empowerment
• Inspiration
• Sharing Personal Experiences

Repackaging these into general principles, I come up with this:

• Design Thinking and Concepts
• How People Work (from a process psychology perspective)
• Building Stuff
• Chasing Dreams and Making Them Real
• Creating Practical Process Guides with Useful Insights

It is interesting to note that my specific interests were inward facing: they are my activities and interests. The general principles, however, are outward facing: they include other people's interests and activities. For example, I'm very interested in what other people are doing with their dreams, and I'm happiest when I'm a part of that process of making them real. With the general principles, I now have the critical balance of perspective that I was missing.

And, finally I can see how I could spin this into a general consultancy specializing in making sense out of things. The skills I have---that is, the specific experience I have with design and development tools, new media development, interactive design, etc---are just tools used to express the general principles.

Friendship-Focused Marketing, Take 1

I had a pretty good time at SXSW Interactive this year, largely free of the self-consciousness and second-guessing I had put myself through the first two times around. I don't know about you, but when I'm around thousands of talented, motivated, and smart people, I wonder just how I stack up. I'm old, maybe washed up, but I still have The Dream. Some tiny part in the back of my mind whispers that it is too late for me to have such dreams; I should settle down and find a good, steady career with great health benefits. Fortunately for me, that part of my brain is speaking Chinese, which I don't understand very well, so it's relatively easy to ignore as I blithely continue down my path toward wherever it's going. SXSW has become my yearly pilgrimmage to stock-up on inspiration and find new stars to guide me.

This year's SXSW was also different because I've had to introduce myself to more strangers. The previous two years, I hung out with groups of people who already knew me from online groups. This year, I hung out with mostly new acquaintances and got to know them the old fashioned way: by talking to them in person. I met a lot of new people just by sitting in the hall flashing my OLPC XO, through the core conversations, and through acquaintances I've only talked to at previous SXSWs. The impromptu situations that arise through the sharing a power outlet lead to the exchanging of cards. As I handed out my cards, I silently kicked myself because I knew my website was a mess. It doesn't really convey who I am succinctly or rapidly. Because my categories are all broken, it's whatever happens to be on the home page that will feed that first impression.

I found it notable that I was so concerned about how my website reflected on me, so I gave the matter more thought. Conveying who I am has always been really important to me, I knew, and it has colored the way I've presented myself to prospective clients. In fact, I started the blog as a deliberate attempt to avoid putting up a regular design portfolio / services website, having developed a severe allergy to crap marketing writing; I wanted to speak my thoughts plainly, not hide behind empty superlatives and ambiguous references to excellence. I told myself that maybe I would lose out on clients seeking "professional" designers, but at that time in my life reclaiming my sense of identity was much more important.

But why?

>> CONTINUE READING

Quickie Business Card Design 8: Return of Dot Story

Yes, South by Southwest Interactive 2008 is about to spring again in Austin, Texas, and I am again way behind on my preparation. However, I did finally decide to get business cards printed up beforehand, using Hotcards.com on the suggestion of the Twitterverse. I really liked the Hotcards website experience and the copywriting, so I am taking a chance on them, though it is pricier than some of the other business card services I've seen at $60/1000 plus shipping. Still, I have a penchant of putting my dollars where the user experience catches my eye.

Since this is the first time I've ever had the opportunity to print double-sided cards, I tried to put something together quickly. After a couple of hours of trying to put some Printable CEO-style graphics on the back, I remembered the old dot story concept on my really early cards. I never liked the way that design had worked, as it felt "all over the place" to me. With the extra room to play with, though, the dot story became viable.

Unfortunately, I thought of the "Structure / Story" tag pair after I had submitted the job to press; the cards I get will say "Structure / Design". This sort of works still, but it isn't as relevant to the story-based approach I take to design work. And, the alliteration sounds way better to my ear.

The front of the card is still the same general design I had from the previous round, though I have changed the text to reflect my incremental movement out of interactive and toward general design:

david seah - providing insight + ideation via information graphics and investigative design services

The text is broken with short lines, coor, and selected bold on keywords. It reads clunkily off the tongue, but it convey something. Not the greatest piece of marketing copy in terms of fluidity, but they may work better as conversational keyword starters. I'm not entirely happy with it:

Making these kinds of decisions can drive me nuts, as I'm prone to have long "should have / could have" internal conversations with myself. At some point, you just got to see how people react. Perhaps for my first double-sided card I should have used a cheaper service. Oh well!