Month: May 2007

Wow, I just had an interesting thought this morning. I was thinking about my recent post about interconnected interdependencies and the need for working on a small handful of things in harmony at once instead of just focusing on one monolithic thing (i.e. “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”). Well what’s interesting is when I was thinking about this, an image came into my head, that being the symbol of chaos as shown below in black.

What’s also interesting is the asymmetrical symbol of chaos shown in red beside it. It’s almost as though if you want to make a major push in one direction (represented by a larger arrow) then you should be balancing yourself out (or achieving harmony) by doing a handful of smaller things in other directions as well (represented by the small arrows). I also like this symbol because it reminds me of the collective effort of a group of people (i.e. a business). Their efforts individually may be small but working collectively together they can achieve big things in the direction of their unified passion.

I’m in the process of adding a portfolio section to my site that shows some of the work I’ve done in the past (i.e. Squarespace work as well as HTML/CSS hand coding work before I started using Squarespace). Note that some of my older work was done with a team of people and therefore was a collaborative effort.

I’ll also be adding additional notes below each of these sites indicating what my contributions were to it and the story behind it. I’d really like to display a lot more of the older work I did with the web firm I used to work for (FirstWeb) but unfortunately it really depends upon if I can pull them off of the Internet Archive or not, since most of these sites are now gone, as they were developed a while ago (1998 – 2001).

It’s funny how things are so interconnected and interdependent upon one another. For example, you often hear people say “How am I supposed to get a job that requires experience if no one wants to hire me to get that experience?” Well along a similar approach, I was just thinking that most companies today want to see an online portfolio if they are going to consider hiring you for web work, as they find a resume insufficient. Yet the funny thing I find is that if I’m going to maintain a portfolio of all of my work online, I may as well continue doing freelance work full time since I’m pretty much advertising what I do in the first place. And ironically if I do start doing it full time again and start achieving the new approach I’ve set for myself, what’s the point of working elsewhere? Weird.

I guess it’s kind of like those job offers you hear from people, “Looking for partner for startup. No salary but percentage of profits.” I mean if I’m looking for work, why would I go work for someone else in a situation like that with no guarantee of salary when I could do the same thing on my own (with partners and ideas of my own choosing). I mean I’ve got a ton of ideas relating to online community magazines that I’d love to consider developing using the Squarespace web publishing system but passion alone doesn’t pay the bills. Sure over a longer period, an online magazine can be supported with ads but that usually takes at least six months to a year to start getting something remotely worthwhile. Therefore, it ironically goes back to the point that you need to go in a different direction (i.e. find paid work elsewhere), if you want to go in the direction you’d truly like (i.e. create an online magazine).

Again it seems somewhat like life in general. For example, if I want to be at my peak mentally (i.e. sitting at a computer and doing web work or writing), then I need to be physically active. In other words, I need to maintain different directions/approaches in my life to focus on my primary passions. If I don’t, if I spend all my time doing mental activities without being active then I find my physical state begins to suffer which in turn starts affecting my mental state. Actually when I was at my chiropractor the other week, I mentioned my new approach of “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” and he said it reminded him of a triangle approach relating to sports medicine. Basically it’s a holistic paradigm as an equilateral triangle with chemical, mental/emotional, and structural on each of the three sides and each interconnected and affecting the other (i.e. what you eat, being the chemical side, effects both your mental and structural sides).

What’s weird is that I’ve been working on a dream MMO game idea for a while now and I’m noticing the best approach to achieving gameplay is utilizing interconnected independencies again. Therefore, no single game element drives the experience of the entire game (thus preventing that single element from being taken advantage of) but instead it requires a handful of elements working together to achieve things. Actually for those who used to play Starcraft, that game is a perfect example of this approach, as it often required a multitude of different units working together to truly win out over an opponent. If you just focused on one primary unit type thoughout as your strength, it often turned into your primary weakness at the end of the game. Therefore diversity, being a group of different people or design elements, always seems to win out over a monolithic approach.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now but I’m noticing that I’m getting deadlocked into rigidity in my pursuit of finding the perfect words. Therefore to avoid this and to keep my thoughts flowing, I’m just going to dump my thoughts out, no matter how messy or confusing they may seem.

A week or two ago the three words forming the subject of this post (connect, empower, inspire) flowed out of me. When I saw them, they felt right and I decided to change my site byline to them. I wasn’t sure why then but now I think I do. I’m realizing they’re sort of a mantra for the direction I’d like to go in with regards to my work. Let me try to explain what I mean by going over each word (and this is where I’m having the difficulty explaining things).

Connect

I want to help people connect with others. That’s what “connect” means to me at it’s simplest form. More specifically though, this really defines what I’ve been doing for years, that being building community sites on the web. That’s what communities are all about to me, people coming together, interacting, and connecting with one another.

Empower

I want to help empower people. I wasn’t sure at first how I could empower people but then it came to me. Simplicity. Today in this technological world, we are so overloaded with complex technology that it weighs down on us mentally, preventing us from doing the things we really want. However, when you find something (i.e. software, hardware, whatever) that’s been designed well, you really find it liberating and empowering. Therefore when I help people to connect, I want to be using simple enough things that they help empower these people instead of adding more complexity to their life.

Inspire

I want to help people inspire others. Inspired people do amazing things. They change the world. I want to start helping people who are doing emotionally meaningful things that are helping to change the world. While many of these things may be done only locally, it is often the small local actions that collectively change the world in a big way.

That’s enough for now. More to come later.

More often than not you’ll read how you “should” be blogging daily to attract and maintain a community around your site. I disagree with this statement. I don’t think it’s important to blog daily. I just think it’s important to be upfront with your community and let them know your frequency and patterns when blogging. For example, I’ve often indicated that I blog whenever I feel like it’s important for me to do so and I have something meaningful to say. Therefore, I’m assuming that most people who read my blog regularly aren’t upset when I don’t update daily because they’re fairly knowledgeable about my blogging patterns.

If anything this is very similar to real life. For example, think about your friends. Some of them you may interact with daily and talk about everything and anything, whereas other friends you may only interact with every couple of weeks or once a month even. There is nothing wrong with this. One isn’t better than the other. It’s just a different type of relationship.

In addition, it’s important to understand what a community really means. If you’re the only one talking then you really don’t have a community but more of an audience. For example, I have a very small community of people who comment on my blog from time to time with the remaining larger portion being an audience who just like reading what I have to say. I don’t mind this at all and in fact I actually enjoy having a smaller readership. For example, I’m totally amazed at how I can close my blog for a month and reopen it later to find that I’ve got more readers. Actually I’m amazed that I can not blog for a week or more and still be gaining readers. It seems weird, yet I’m guessing it might have something to do with what I write. Again I’m not interesting in the quantity of my posts but the quality or meaningfulness of them.

Looks like Google’s purchase of Jeffrey Veen’s Measure Map has come to fruition in the newly redesigned Google Analytics. You can find more details of the hard work behind this in Jeffrey’s post entitled What I’ve Been Working On.

What’s even more exciting though is what Jeffrey is now working on. He has a team of 30 designers at his disposal to now redesign the user experience of Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, the Office-like tools, Blogger, Orkut, Picasa, Talk, and more! This is simply unbelievable. I can’t wait to see the function and feel of these apps after he redesigns them.

I just realized something today and it has echoes of what was said by Paul Graham when he spoke about what business can learn from open source.

When I’m writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing. Half the time I’m sitting drinking a cup of tea, or walking around the neighborhood. This is a critical phase— this is where ideas come from— and yet I’d feel guilty doing this in most offices, with everyone else looking busy. Working in crappy informal spaces is one of the things startups do right without realizing it. As soon as you get into an office, work and life start to drift apart.

What I realized is that this applies to me as well and I need to start doing two things to promote this.

1. Get out and walk around my neighborhood more, primarily as a means to let my ideas flow (like they did today for me).
2. Also to carry a small pocket notebook or scratch pad to record my ideas that come to me when I’m out walking about. 

A canvas sets a boundary for an artist which allows for a limited expression of endless creativity to be displayed.