Viewing Category: Patterns
One of my side projects involves the crafting of a custom binder, preferably one with more then three rings. Usually, my search strategy is to use Google to learn about the subject on-the-fly, further refining my keywords as I go until I get what I want. However, with esoteric specialty items like this, it's a little more difficult to get past the cloud of "me too!" sites and get to sites of real substance.
Getting around the cloud has been this weekend's adventure. Notes follow!
Why Google Isn't Working For Me
To recap, this search strategy applies to the case where I am unfamiliar with the field I am searching and therefore need to build some expertise to help refine the search keywords.
My goal is to find the best sources. The challenge is to become more of an expert so I know what I should be searching for, by searching for content that will make me an expert...the situation is something of a Catch-22.
When the topic is not one that attracts passionate writers, finding the "expert" sites becomes much more difficult. By comparison, it's easy to find top digital camera sites, because there are lots of them and they all tend to point to the same place. However, try to find who makes the best bare CMOS digital camera single-chip sensors...you're sunk unless popular hobbyist sources like Make have already covered this field. And "best" is a hard term to quantify, unless you know more about the problems people face. Catch-22, again.
Why does this fail? It's because the Google PageRank Algorithm is basically a popularity contest: when a particular site has a lot of "good" links to it, it is voted "more popular" and will show up near the top of search results. Google's algorithm is a lot more complex than that, of course, but that's the general idea. The ranking works better when there are a lot of participants. For example, the huge number of digital camera and gadget sites create a fertile field for Google's PageRank algorithm to work its wonders.
However, I'm interested in Business-to-Business (B2B) sites that hardly anyone links to. I want to find out about manufacturers, processes, raw material suppliers, and experts in rapid prototyping...stuff like that! The GoogleBrain doesn't have enough link mass to make a good recommendation without very specific keywording...which again, requires expertise in the domain you are searching.
Compounding the problem is that B2B companies tend to have awful websites. There tends to be little information about the company, the writing is unclear, and the product offerings (if any are there) are hopelessly incomplete. The only sites that link to them are private intranets (unsearchable) or B2B directories, which themselves are so eye-scorchingly bad that that only industry people look at them out of necessity. [update: Seuss points out asiannet and thomasnet as the good resources...thanks dude!]
Do the industry guys have time to blog about these resources to put the word out? Hell no...they're too busy making actual money. Which leaves me up the proverbial creek, informationally speaking.
The standard Google search, using noob keywords like "binder 5-ring" and "custom binder" returned hundreds of results of little apparent authority. The first two-dozen hits didn't give me a good sense for who ran a quality shop; I really want to know who's on top of the industry, and my impression was that most of these places were just using pre-built ring mechanisms with some in-shop tooling.
Pondering this problem for a while, I figured I could grow old looking at all the sites and form a tentative opinion, or I could look for another authority on the web. As it turns out, the U.S. Government had what I needed all along: the enormous patent database!
Going to the Patents!
I did a patent search at the United States Patent and Trade Office(aka USPTO) on "ring binder". If you didn't know this before, the entire patent portfolio from 1790 onwards is searchable online. You can type in a few keywords, and get matching search results in a few seconds. This includes scans of the original application, complete with diagrams, at a resolution high enough for printing, like the 1847 patent for this Machine for Exercising Children (left).
Now, how are patent results good for me? First of all, a patent application includes information like the name of the inventor, the company sponsoring the invention, and a description of how the invention works: this is exactly what I need to re-feed back into Google! In about 30 minutes, I quickly found that there was one company in Hong Kong (World Wide Stationery and Manufacturing LTD) that seemed to be a leading "innovation in ring metal binding equipment" manufacturer. They had a web site with some information about their products, and lists of retailers and other suppliers. The Patent results also included related inventions by other companies. One was "Specialty Looseleaf" who took great pride in their ability to actually manufacturer rings in-house (they say 99% of other companies have to outsource to Asia). Another outfit in London had patented a very cool high-end presentation system, and they had some really interesting products.
So the gist of what I'm saying is this: if a company is motivated enough to file a patent, they're probably serious about maintaining their competive edge through innovation. And that's a company worth looking at first.
Secondly, when you read the patent applications themselves, you get some insight into what the problems are, from at least the inventor's perspective. That's part of becoming an expert, and problems are exactly what I want to avoid :-)
Also cool: Every application also has a list of related patents. This creates a historical record of the invention, which can be used to further research key people and companies through Google. If you know the name of a company or the name of a key inventor, Google might reveal to you what industry that company is in, and that will lead you to trade journals and other specialized sources of information. Plus, it's cool to see how everyday objects have evolved: if you've got Donald Norman's writings on your shelf, you also should have some Henry Petroski; his history of the lowly paper clip, for example, is a fascinating anecdote.
Anyway, I'm happy again! The patent database gave me a quick shortcut to an online "authority", and that gave me a new jump on Google search terms. I've updated my Oblique Searching Strategies article too, so I don't forget.
It's been about a month since I made my Concrete Goals Tracking worksheet, aka The Printable CEO. In that month, about 8000 people have visited the original page, and about 1700 have actually downloaded it. Another 500 enterprising folks have downloaded the editable Excel version. Cool!
But does it work? I've been using it for the past four weeks; here's my report.
What was The Printable CEO Again?
In case you missed it before, The Printable CEO is just a tracking form I made to keep my focused on growing my freelance business. It's a paper-based, using a carefully chosen list of of tasks coupled with a motivational point-based tracking grid. My past interest in game design and development--and acknowledgement of my slacker-perfectionist tendencies--led me to structure it as reward bonus system as opposed to a completion tracking system. In other words: it's good feedback when it has relevance in the game system; in my case, that's "making money", "maintaining connections that lead to opportunities" and "making assets that will make money later". Whenever I do something on the list, I know it's one of these things, and that those things contribute directly to the growth of my practice.
I think To Do lists are fine tools for managing tasks, but they're somewhat cumbersome when it comes to motivating personal or business development. If anything, they are demotivators, because things that aren't on the To Do List still have to get done. I am a company of one, and I have to deal with unexpected client interruptions, computer issues, fleeting business opportunities and other small fires every day. The Printable CEO is my reminder that yes, I must develop assets that pay off in the form of new creative business opportunities. And money--crass as that sounds, I need to make sure I'm making enough money so I maintain creative independence.
So How Has It Been?
I've been, as they say, eating my own dogfood by using the Printable CEO for the past four weeks. My personal experience has been pretty positive; observations follow:
Filling in the bubbles is still strangely satisfying, even after four weeks. The experience isn't as spiritual as it used to be, but I just like using the No. 2 pencil to fill in that bubble. There's a fun doodling feel to it; perhaps it triggers a similar reflective frame of mind, activating the right side of the brain?
I found the Notes Area quickly became a kind of pseudo-todo list, because the form was generally handy. Put important information where your eyeballs can find it easily!
I tended to list things that I wanted to do for the day, and then add the points with a "+5" or "+2" modifier as they got done. I also wrote some phone numbers on it. Developing this into a full task tracking system on the side is a new project I'm undertaking to extend the concepts.
If I didn't write down the tasks I did right away, I would forget them. So it was very important that I wrote down tasks as they happened.
The weighted list of goals was absolutely critical in making this work. I found that there were days that I looked over the list to find something to do that would bump up my point count for the week.
I also found myself looking at every task to see whether or not it was worth points. The beauty of this is that this is exactly the mentality I want to inculcate: thinking about business development activity all the time! Ordinarily, one might think of "spinning" every activities to be worth points as being a form of cheating, but in this case it's not. It's resourcefulness and adaptability instead.
Choosing the right goals, of course, is the tricky part. Your goals should all have concrete results; if the fruits of your labor can not be counted like money or shown to someone else, then your goals are not concrete.
Counting weekly points at the end of the week gave me a feel for what a "productive" week should be. A good week runs about 50 points, which includes talking with people and posting a few blog articles. That works out to about 7 points a day (including weekends). Add billable work to the mix, then the points double. I add +10 points for each project performed as billable work, so if I do two projects in a day, that's a +20. However, if the billable work was under an hour, I would score it as a +5. My best week was 107 points, which included about 3 days of billable work.
The original ten goals covered every situation except for one: measuring qualitative return on investment. Following the original list, I got points only when I made something, counted something, or did billable work. However, I realized I should also record when an asset pays off again without requiring further work on my part. I had forgotten to account for this in the system; proof of an asset bringing in revenue is cause for celebration, because it means it's out there working for me. For example, say that someone wants to hire me because they read an article on my blog. Although I had already earned +2 points for the article writing, I give myself another +2 points because someone actually noticed it. Likewise, if someone wants to hire me because of some artwork I did, I would give myself another +5 points. Every time that artwork works for me, it should give me another 5 points. This reinforces the importance of creating good assets; they are worth way more points in the long run, and I believe this is important to the long-term viability of my business.
Now what to do with these points. They're useful for getting a quick qualitative measure of how busy one is, but I also have the desire to redeem them somehow. Like, for every 1000 points, I get to do something fun or buy something cool. This could work well in a school setting. Choosing the reward, of course, should follow the principle of good asset purchasing; if you buy something, make sure it can help you make MORE assets. I think that's called a "capital investment".
Summing Up
So is it working? Yeah, it is.
I know I'm making progress because I can see the numbers every day. The overhead of tracking these tasks is very low because it's bubble-based, and the concrete goals list makes it easy to focus on something productive to do. What's really cool is that these forms help maintain continuity in my daily goal-directed actions; that's another prerequisite for good feedback in a game system.
For the past two weeks, I've been more busy with billable work, and have found I've had to go back and make some To Do lists after all; like I said, they're great for managing tasks. I found myself starting to use the Printable CEO Notes area for keeping a small To Do list since I was always looking at it. I will probably incorporate this into Version 2.0 of the Printable CEO in the weeks to come.
I was also talking to some friends over lunch, and it occured to me that The Printable CEO has a strange appeal to procrastinators. One of my friends is the Anti-Procrastinator. She just gets things done, and a To Do list is a great tool for her. Another friend is a procrastinator-perfectionist; he doesn't start those big personal projects because he doesn't have the time to do them right. I can identify with that myself; I have no trouble planning out a project in terms of hours, resources, and manpower, but I just would rather not do it for something I love to do. I want it to flow more naturally. As I type that out it seems a little silly, but that's the way things are for me. The Printable CEO is not a To Do list. It's an I DID list, rewarding productive behavior when it happens to happen. That's an important distinction to note. And because it only rewards the correct actions, it is also a kind of conditioning tool.
So that's how it's going for me. How's it going for you? You might find The Making Of The Printable CEO useful if you're adapting it to your own purposes.
Update: Task Tracking
Now that you have your task direction established, check out Part II of The Printable CEO for Task Progress Tracking!
I almost never do touristy things. When I lived near Orlando, Florida, I didn't go to Disneyworld once. But my cousin is in-town and we wanted to see uniquely East Coast things, so we did a day in Boston and Salem. I wasn't sure if I was going to have fun, but what doesn't kill ya...
I wish I'd done this before. It was very enlightening to experience two different tourist-based businesses; it's given me some insight in the mentality I need to have to generate recurring income.
We went to the Salem Witch Museum. I wasn't sure what to expect for our $12 bucks/person, as there were different "showings" every half hour and you couldn't see what was going on. We booked our spot and waited in the chintzy gift shop until it was time. When the moment of reckoning burst upon us, we were ushered into a large, dark room with a glowing red circle in it. The guide suggested we gather around the circle, but everyone opted to sit on the benches. One little girl got scared and left. When we were all settled, the guide welcomed us and then...left the room! She said something like "enjoy the show!" on the way out. My mind was already appending the word suckers when the show began.
An audio tape started to play, and a somewhat Vincent Price-ish voice began setting the tone for the story: The Witch Hysteria of 1692. The room, about the size of a small barn, was basically a kind of diorama; each wall had several life-sized scenes with mannikins depicting the story of how a bunch of little girls got 19 people hanged (and one was pressed to death). The sets, though only somewhat lifelike, were nicely lit by hidden lights that faded in and out in time to the soundtrack. ; I'm guessing it was controlled by some kind of ancient audio-tape control system. I couldn't help but think that this kind of presentation was very old...maybe this is what got Uncle Walt so hooked onto audio-animatronics? Multimedia before the dawn of computers!
After about 30 minutes, we were released into the second exhibit by a second tour guide, who walked us through the Witches: Perceptions portion of our visit. There were three main set pieces that showed different perceptions of witches, from the pre-Christian "Midwife" to "Green Skinned Devil Worshipper" to "Modern Wiccan". The tour guide could press a button on the wall that played an audio track that spoke from the witch's point of view.
I was not-quite disappointed by the whole experience. I later found out that this museum has remained essentially unchanged since the 70s. The takeaway: Some people built a big theatrically-lit diarama, wrote about 30 minutes of script, hired a few voice actors, synch'ed the up to a light and tape show, and have been charging people 12 bucks per head for the last 30 years. AND THEY HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT! My mind...reeling!
After the Witch Museum, we took a night walking tour of Salem with Hocus Pocus, an independent tour guide company. We had passed by their booth before, and I had been impressed by the front man's friendly and non-intrusive pitch. His pleasant demeanor made me think that the tour itself would actually be pretty good...he seemed seemed invested in the business, and wasn't just some flunky making beer money for the night. Anyway, for our 12 bucks, we got a 90 minute evening walking tour with about 25 other people, lead by a tall red-haired woman in a long black dress. It was quite enjoyable to walk the town, taking in the sights and listening to the stories. By the end of it, I felt I knew the town and its history better though I already been here several times before. My 12 bucks had been well spent.
This got me to thinking...
The tour guide had her original copyrighted program and a route (no videotaping allowed!).
She had delivered a good product that didn't require any capital or fixed location except for a tiny portable booth, albeit in a good location near the Peabody Essex Museum.
On the money side, they run both nighttime and daytime tours nearly every day of the year. Say they run 50 people a day at 12 bucks a head...for 2-3 people, that's not a bad income to do something that they clearly love and care about.
I told the guide, Susan, that I had enjoyed the tour and asked how long she'd been doing it. She apparently used to be a guide at the House of Seven Gables, and when that place had drifted in a direction she didn't like, **she decided to start her own tour **of Salem. That was 3 years ago. Long time resident, passionate about the town history, she and her husband and son have made a business out of it. Cash only! No credit cards, please :-) Good work if you can make it happen!
And so...I am wondering how I can make this happen for me. I have been thinking that getting out of services is the way to go, but until now I really didn't have a close-up look at how other people had done it outside of software. This is content generation at its most basic: people packaging and sharing their knowledge at a market-conscious price point**.
Is New Media so complicated that this approach would not work? Is the key element having a clear definition of what you are making instead of what you are doing?
Barry just forwarded this quiz to me:
The standard clinical test for psychopathy, Robert Hare's PCL-R, evaluates 20 personality traits overall, but a subset of eight traits defines what he calls the "corporate psychopath" -- the nonviolent person prone to the "selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others." Does your boss fit the profile?
He said that he hypothetically scored me as a "0", which on this metric is good. Just the sort of thing my inner-psychopath likes to hear...Yessss...the facade is working! Soon, the world will bow before me and tremble! Mua ha ha!
Happy Friday! :-)
The mysterious S. pointed me to Eyetrack III, a study that used eye tracking equipment to record exactly how people viewed a web page. When I was in grad school, I knew a couple of Cognitive Science guys who spent time in the labs programming eye trackers for their experiments. The machines capture the rapid eye movements both voluntary and involuntary, making it easier to see exactly what is being looked at for how long.
I'd thought then it would be useful for understanding Graphic Design, so it's cool to see that someone has done this. The study made use of EyeTools, a company out of San Francisco that uses eye tracking gear to provide viewing data on web pages. You can actually do your own study over the web for $100/person. A particularly neat feature is the heatmap, which shows what parts of your page are attracting more attention.
A word of caution: this data tells you what people are looking at and for how long, but it doesn't necessarily tell you what they're thinking. Mistaking observations for conclusions is dangerous, and I could see this kind of information in the wrong hands leading down a horrible path. I would read the article with that in mind before you go stripping out all your photos and put ugly headlines right in the middle of layout so eyes trip over them. I would get a design professional, knowledgable in the Ways of Gestalt, to help interpret that data. It wouldn't hurt to really study Understanding Comics too...it is a fantastic treatment of visual communication in a form we're familiar with.
