Viewing Category: SXSW06
One of the panels I missed at SXSWi06 was Running Your New Media Business. I'm in niche-defining mode again, so I listened to the podcast with some interest. There are two questions primarily on my mind:
- What is my business? My criteria are that it's a clear value, easily understood, is something I like, and is uniquely me.
- Do I want to remain a soloist, be part of a network, or take a leadership role?
The Panelists:
- Jennifer Robbins, Littlechair Inc -- design practice of 1 person, using a few freelancers.
- Erika Hall, partner at MuleDesign -- representative of the decision to have a company with employees.
- Evan Williams, CEO of ODEO -- starting another company, taking the VC / grow fast approach
- Jeff Robbins, Lullabot -- just started a company, taking the informal "let's get a bunch of cool people together" approach
- Moderator: Bryan Mason, COO, Adaptive Path.
Here are some of the things that stood out to me as I listened
A reason to stay small: Jennifer Robbins didn't want to manage people, nor did she want to have people dependent on a payroll. The business has gone up and down, through lean times, credit card times, etc...she'd hate to drag someone through that. There's also the question of manueverability.
A reason to have employees: Erika of MuleDesign said they work with people first before bringing them onboard. It's very important to work with people you like, because the work is intense, and you need people you can really rely on. They need to work well in a team and communicate really well when things get "tricky". To keep those people, the comapny needs to have them make a commitment...it was very important for them to have that relationship.
Good lawyers are worth paying for.
Lay down all expectations up front. This was echoed by virtually all the panelists. In business, in terms, in dealing with employees. Assumptions, especially, can be deadly. You may not even realize you have them, because as Erika pointed out, you're often dealing with your peers and you expect them to have similar values. Buzzzz! Maybe they don't!
Communication Tax. With more people, the amount of effort it takes to get everyone coordinated and clear increases rapidly. Communication, even if it's virtual, needs to be constant and continuous. You've also got to have those hard conversations.
Self-Lawyering. You don't always need lawyers to move forward. Writing something down with a clear vision and having everyone sign it is enough of a binding force to get commitment.
Geez, my notes go on-and-on, so I'm just going to stop here. There are many great tidbits in the podcast if you're interested in these types of issues. Even if you're not a business owner, the perspective is worth understanding because it deals with common-sense issues of communication, relationships, and cooperation.
Just FYI, Kathy Sierra's SXSW 2006 session How to Create Passionate Users is available now in mp3 format. She said at the beginning of the session that this was originally a 3.5 hour presentation...she crunched it into an hour, with a zillion slides. It was one of the best presentations at the festival. Via the SXSW2006 Podcast Stream.
ADDED: Still amazing even without the visual component. This could be the basis of a one year master's program in the psychology of kicking ass.
ADDED: Hey, here's a different audiocast from her keynote at the 2006 Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. Update: much of the same content, but delivered in what sounds like a somewhat more informal setting than the giant room at SXSW.
No slides for either audiocast, but if you go to cpu and google the individual topics she mentions, you probably will see some of the illustrations she used; a lot of them looked like they were from her blog.
It's the week after SXSW, and I'm still pulling my thoughts together. There's been a lot of retrospective articles posted already in the blogosphere---yikes, is this the first time I've typed "blogosphere" out loud?---so I'm not sure what to add. The burning question is how to explain SXSW to my 70+ year-old Dad. He's pretty hip for a man of his generation, having bravely battled the demons that Hewlett-Packard pre-installed on his notebook computer. How do you recognize a laptop demon? It asks for your credit card number every time you try to do something useful. ATTENTION MARKETING ASSHOLES! STOP PUTTING CRAP ON MY DAD'S COMPUTER!
Where was I? Oh yes, SXSW, and how to explain it to my Dad. It's very much not about being a marketing asshole. I find it interesting that I want to explain SXSW in the first place. When I go to E3 Expo, resplendant as it is in spectacle and raw marketing dollars, I am not nearly as moved; at most, I experience an optically-induced twitching. Someone described SXSW to me as being like "Burning Man for Web Geeks", which might make sense to me if I had ever been to Burning Man. Neither of these analogies are helpful anyway, since I'm pretty sure Dad has not been to either. I can imagine Dad at E3: "Too bright and jumpy." he would comment. Of Burning Man: "It is very noisy." Then we'd get back in the car and drive home, and Dad would spend a quiet afternoon practicing the cello and catching up on Taiwan news. "China is being a bully again", he would inform me, brow furrowed in consternation. "Taiwan must be free of such oppression."
What does help is that Dad is an ordained pastor, a doctor of philosophy, and a former missionary. While I rejected the trappings of organized religion as soon as I entered college, over the past few years I've noticed an odd convergence between my life and Dad's. It centers around the notion of congregation: a gathering of people that adhere to a common faith.
"Dad, I've just been to a conference called South By South West Interactive. It's a 4-day conference that celebrates the Internet and the people who are actively building upon it as an extension of their community."
"I see", he might say. Uh oh, I'm already losing his interest, time to try another approach.
"Let me try again. Dad, do you remember what it was like to work with people who really believed in the church organization, putting aside their petty desires and contributing selflessly to the group because it would uplift everyone? Not just people in the congregation, but everyone that the organization could reach?"
"Mmmm." Dad might accede, wondering when I would stop talking and let him get back to his online newspaper.
"That's the feeling I got from SXSW. On the surface, there were a lot of things being discussed: technical web design, blogging, and internet business models for example. There were lots of people who would be regarded as quite famous in their particular parts of the Internet too, so it was a little bit of a celebrity experience. Sort of like how you're well known in the Taiwan Church community for helping draft the Declaration of Human Rights, but not all that many people outside of the Church know this."
Dad wouldn't be saying anything by now, so I'd press on before he had a chance to take a nap or start cleaning some new part of the house I hadn't yet discovered was cleanable. But I think I have his attention.
"What I found most interesting was the nature of the attendees. The celebrities there, well-known designers and accomplished businessmen, tended to share a common thread that I don't see anywhere else. They were all contributors to some kind of community. They all either started it, gave back to it, or have brought people into it. These people are famous because they've empowered people with their ideas and tools, shared their knowledge, and have done what they could to promote those ideals. Every one of them. And everyone who I met at the conference believed, deep down, that this is the way things should be. By attending SXSW, I discovered that yes, there is a community I want to be a part of. I want to contribute to its growth in my own way by promoting these values. That's not to say I don't want to make money, but I know now for certain that there's a way to do it without dehumanizing the experience."
I would pause for a few minutes, as I am right now at the cafe, before continuing. My thoughts are with someone who I haven't thought of in a while, who would have been intensely interested in the transformative experience I'd had.
"I think Mom would have loved it."
Amen.
I finally created a Flickr account, and have uploaded my set of photos. Haven't finished tagging them with names. Help appreciated :-)
UPDATE: Here are a few more:
Packing it up, about to head to the airport. I really want to put on my badge one last time and head to the convention center, but it's back to the real world and to real work. On the positive side, I am excited and energized and ready to dive back into it with a new view of the world, with friends both new and old to tell about it.
It's feeling like the end of "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe", when you know that the kids can't return to Narnia (and before you were, ahem, told that there were more books in the series). Sad. A little wistful. Prematurely nolstagic. The difference is, of course, that I can go back next year :-)
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