Category: General

I was just thinking about what I want to do, not only with this site but also with my life in terms of work. Just thinking about this for a little bit, I kept coming back to communities. When I reflected on this some more, I realized what was drawing me to community building was creating the right kind of culture in these communities. And when I focused on that, a flood of memories came back to me.

You see when I was younger, I was highly introverted. While I did have a small handful of friends that I hung out with, I really didn’t interact with others in larger social situations or events that much. Part of this was because I was shy but the other part of it was I just didn’t like the way people treated each other. To some people, things like peer pressure are a normal part of school. To me, it just felt wrong and I decided I’d rather be independent doing my own things rather than tagging along like a dog being subservient to the whims of the social elitists of these groups.

When I grew up, those feelings stuck with me. And as I grew out of my shell, I become more and more vocal in striving to address these issues in any way I could. It’s also why I think I started delving into online communities as well. I was tired of seeing these negative environments around communities and wanted to help people by creating environments that were much more positive. And of course, as soon as I remembered that I realized something very important.

Remember my recent post where I said the words “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” felt right to me? Well I had said that I wasn’t quite sure what “empower” related to so I just assumed it meant technological software that was easy to use for people. Now I know what the word “empower” really means. Empower is about creating the right culture within the communities that I want to help build. In doing so, these positively cultured communities help to empower people, allowing them to do things they’ve never been able to do before, and thus more importantly inspire them to do things that they’ve only dreamed of. What’s that? Inspire them to follow their passions.

Therefore that’s what these trinity of words really mean to me.

1. Connect = Help connect people by building communities and environments for them to interact within.
2. Empower = Help to create positive empowering environments within these communities by defining the right culture within them from the very start.
3. Inspire = And finally by creating a positively empowered community environment, it allows the people within it to be inspired to focus on their passions.

So all three are interdependent upon one another but I think the most important aspect of this is really creating the right culture which empowers the people immersed within it to be the best that they can be, instead of being a negative culture that weighs upon them, forcing them to only be what they are told to be (i.e. “This is your cubicle. Don’t leave it.”).

Finally what’s really interesting about this is that this culture isn’t just an online thing. Actually if anything, the type of culture that a company is offline in their work environment will directly influence the culture created around their products online. In effect, they are interconnected and interdependent upon one another.

I made some changes to my site over the past few days but as soon as I made them, something felt “wrong”. I feel like I’m really really close to something but changing the approach of this site to “house” my business activities (i.e. web design, etc) is “wrong”. I just know it deep down in my gut intuitively (which is probably why I didn’t like doing it the first time I tried adding work stuff to it before).

The best way I could describe it is that I want this site to represent my inner core as a person. Not sure if you want to call it my values, culture, or whatever. I just know it’s not about selling something. It’s about giving something instead. It’s about sharing my experiences, feelings, and thoughts about things that are truly meaningful and important to me, whether they make sense to everyone or not. All I know is that in sharing them, possibly someone out there will connect with what I’m saying and it will make sense to them.

As for work (i.e. web design), well I’m still pursuing that but if I set something up, I’ll set it up on another site somewhere else. For now, I’ll keep my portfolio up here but once I get a business site setup elsewhere, I’ll transfer it there.

And for those who have been following my blog for a while and seem to get some insight from it into their own lives, I just want to reiterate something I’ve said in the past on this site and to others directly in emails. I don’t know everything. I’m just like many people in life who are winging it, trying to make meaning of their lives from day to day. I think that’s why I feel so strange hyping my own work (yet as a business I know you’re “supposed” to want to look “perfect” and to have the “spotlight” on yourself). I know some people think my work is great but I just feel like it’s ok and there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing instead.

Actually I’ll reiterate what I told someone else before. I have this feeling deep down inside of me (my intuition again I guess) that’s telling me that all of the skills and knowledge I’ve acquired over the years are not meant to draw attention to myself but instead to be used to draw attention to something else. Again the more emphasis I seem to place on myself, the more I feel like I’m going in the wrong direction. It’s almost as though I don’t want people to be looking at me but at something else that I’m supposed to be working on that is meaningfully important to me somehow in making the world a better place (even if just locally around me).

What is this work? I’m still not 100% sure yet but I feel like I’m really close to it though. For now, the best I can do is keep relaying the meaningful feelings and experiences I’m having because it feels “right” to do so and it seems to maintain my “flow”. Hopefully, with time, more will be revealed. One day at a time I guess (and that seems to be my new favorite phrase lately as I continue to work at putting the pieces of this puzzle together).

For those who have read my blog for a while, you’ll know that I keep reiterating a common metaphor about the “pieces” of a greater “puzzle” that I’m slowly discovering and putting together. And just like sport athletes who hit plateaus in improving themselves, discoveries often come in stages with plateaus afterwards where you may discover nothing for a while. That’s the way I’ve been feeling for a while but I think I may have just stepped off a plateau and started climbing again after discovering a site a couple of days ago.

Steve Pavlina has a very popular site relating to personal development for “smart people” that I’ve never heard of until now. Now I’ve seen people and sites somewhat similar to this before and I’ve always read about a paragraph or two before I intuitively feel this “wrongness” with the person. In effect, they really aren’t out to help but are only interested in your money. With Steve’s site, this feeling immediately changed after reading a few paragraphs of one of his posts and then after reading more than a few of them, I felt that I had stumbled onto something that was just “right” to me. What brought this feeling of “rightness”? Synchronicity.

After reading a few posts, I was somewhat dumbfounded at the similar thoughts I had with Steve. Even more so, these thoughts were ones that I knew deep down where correct but I had been having a difficult time putting them into words for others. Steve, the way he worded things, removed that complexity and relayed my thoughts and feelings with direct simplicity. If I had to compare it to something else, I’d probably have to say it equates to when I first read The Cluetrain Manifesto and was blown away that someone had finally put to words what I have been feeling for so long.

Below are a couple of examples of quotes from Steve’s site. I’ve also bolded synchronous thoughts that match my own (that often go against mainstream thinking).

“Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.“

“I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging.  You have to be driven by something much deeper.  Money is just frosting.  It’s the cake underneath that matters.  My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings.  That’s my passion.  Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.”

How to Make Money From Your Blog

“Think about the effect you want your writing to have on people. Since I write about personal growth, I want my writing to change people for the better. I want to expand people’s thinking, to raise their consciousness, and to help them eliminate fear from their lives. If my writing doesn’t change people’s thinking, actions, or awareness, then my value isn’t being transferred well enough.”

“Strong content is universally valued.  It’s hard work to create it, but in the long run it generates lots of long-term referral traffic.  I’d rather write one article I’m really proud of than 25 smaller posts.  It’s been my experience that the best articles I write will outperform all the forgettable little posts I’ve made.  Quality is more important than quantity.  Quantity without quality, however, is easier, which is one reason so many people use that strategy.  Ultimately, however, the Internet already contains more quantity than any one of us can absorb in our lifetimes, but there will always be a place for good quality content that stands out from the crowd.”

How to Build a High-Traffic Website (or Blog)

“If there’s one insider’s secret I can offer to how to become an A-list blogger, this is it: Treat your blog as your primary outlet for contribution to the world. Make it your legacy. Write to pass on knowledge and ideas that you think will really benefit people. Focus first and foremost on providing value. If you can do that, the rest is relatively easy. Value builds referrals. Referrals build traffic. Traffic generates income. Income increases your ability to contribute, which in turn helps you provide even more value. The keys to unlocking this positive spiral are contribution, contribution, contribution.”

“There’s still a potential dark side to this lifestyle, however.  I’ve seen many bloggers fall into the trap of turning their blogs into their lives.  They sit at their computers all day, answering email, reading RSS feeds, and cranking out posts.  That’s not a lifestyle I’d choose to emulate.  I had my RSS subscriptions down to just 5 feeds total, and I recently eliminated those as well, so I don’t subscribe to any other feeds at all, nor do I read or watch the news or visit any daily web sites.  I prefer to use real life, not cyberspace, as my primary source of inspiration.  I also try to limit my email to about 15 minutes a day, 30 minutes max.  On weekends I like to get away from the computer and go out with my family.  When I want more input, I read books or talk to people face to face.  Blogging can too easily devolve into a pattern of Internet addiction, and I want to steer clear of that.”

Confessions of an A-List Blogger

More than anything though, I think Steve’s articles have gotten me back on a path that I was distracted from. I had previously believed that certain things weren’t possible, without fully exploring them, but now I see that they are possible. It just takes a little bit of perseverance and focus.

Oh and one last thing. Every time I stumble across a site or book that helps me advance my pursuits and passions, I always ask myself the typical question of “Why didn’t I find or see this sooner?” As soon as I ask the question, I know the answer. It was because I wasn’t ready to see it yet. Something in my thoughts or approach was blinding me from it. Therefore, while discovering Steve’s site will help me to learn many things, it’s also important for me to discover what thoughts or approaches were blinding me from it as well. Off the top of my head, I think focus and perseverance, as I just mentioned above, are two factors that I need to focus on.

It’s funny. I remember taking martial arts long ago and after achieving my next belt my master informed me that I still needed to work on my focus. I never fully understood that but I think it’s slowly dawning on me now.

Guy Kawasaki interviewed Penelope Trunk and the first question he asked her was about happiness.

Question: How much money does it take to be happy?

Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in—that’s splitting hairs because peoples’ happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.

So very true! $40,000 is what I would call a sustainable income for Vancouver. You could easily live comfortably here with it, even with the high cost of rent here.

At the same time, I remembered when I used to work for a web firm in town and they were talking of raising my salary from $45,000 to $60,000 because I helped out so much with the company in so many different ways. What was my response? I said it was nice of them to offer but I’d rather see the working environment improve.

Thus if they paid me the extra money, I’d reinvest it in the people in the company in anyway I could so as to make their work environment more enjoyable. For example, I used to bring in bagels for breakfast, buy birthday cakes, treat staff to lunch, and so on using money from my own pocket. I felt these people deserved some visible form of appreciation, no matter how small or simple it may have been (i.e. bringing in bagels for breakfast). In effect, it wasn’t about the amount of money you had but what you did with it.

JR at Cambrian House forgot his laptop while coming into work a few days ago. Of course, you’d think his world would end without the access and connectivity of his machine? Wrong. Sounds like he had one of his most productive days yet, as the constraints placed upon him allowed him to be more creative with his productivity.

I think this is a perfect example of the irony of computer connectivity. The more connected we are by machines, the less we feel connected inside. That’s why I think we need a balance or harmony between the two (and I kind of hinted at this at the end of my Paradox: In Giving, You Make Yourself Stronger post a while ago). In effect, just as much as we try to find ways to weave our offline activities online, we should also be finding ways to weave our online activities offline.

BTW I’m not saying computers are evil here. I’m just saying that the design of computers hasn’t evolved enough yet to let people interact face to face without the machine still being in the way. Design advancements are being made though, such as Jeff Han’s touch screen displays, that allow people to collectively collaborate together more intuitively, thus maintaining the physical and visual presence of one another while working with computer technology.

Funny, I just remembered a multiplayer gaming center called Bliink Interactive that I used to work at a long time ago before it closed its doors. I think this is the primary reason why I enjoyed the environment of it so much. You had all of these people connected both offline and online, thus you could not only see their actions playing a computer game online but also see their facial expressions and feelings offline as well.

I read on Wikipedia the other day that Dave ‘Zoid’ Kirsch, the creator of Quake Capture The Flag, was working at NCsoft now, so I popped over to their site to check out what they did. Surprised, I realized they were the company behind the popular massively multiplayer game Guild Wars.

Guild Wars

Digging further, I decided to check out their job postings and found one for a Community Manager as well as another for a Web Content Writer/Community Liaison which is a job classification I’ve never heard of before.

The Web Content Writer/Community Liaison will join a team of people working on public NCsoft MMO game web sites that strive to both entice and inform game players about our virtual worlds. This person is responsible for quickly converting content into web pages, and posting them to the appropriate sections of the web site.

Other Responsibilities include:

•  Analyzes community information needs and plans for short and long-term site development.
• Writes a considerable amount of new content, some technical and some fictional.
• Will become responsible for several areas of various NCsoft game web sites.
• Maintain those sections, adding and removing content as necessary, including converting other departments’ documents into HTML.
• Work with PR, Community, and Marketing Team members to write and publish content covering new game marketing and sales programs including email marketing campaigns.
• Will need to become very familiar with the MMO industry, NCsoft products, and to be able to write and answer questions about various NCsoft games.
• Regular communication with external community/fan sites, establishing relationships with these sites and pitching NCsoft products and key messages to these sites.

 Qualifications:

• 3 years experience in web-related work
• Proven web site design, implementation, and maintenance (include URLs with application) preferably with other MMOs either through employment with a game company, or through third party gaming websites.
• At least 3 samples of previous sites developed REQUIRED.
• Mid-level HTML coding knowledge
• Expert knowledge of English grammar
• Expert knowledge of web copywriting techniques
• Knowledge of website usability
• Experience with Movable Type and Macromedia Contribute a plus.
• Photoshop and other graphics creation/editing skills
• Excellent writing skills (writing samples requested) both technical and fictional
• Ability to understand and learn MMO games quickly
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team
• Ability to correspond with the public, good judgment

Now get a load of what they’d prefer to have in a candidate.

Preferred: 

• The ideal candidate will already be familiar and have experience with MMOs and NCsoft games.
• The ideal candidate for this position is a game industry veteran familiar with creating centralized websites for gamers to learn everything they need to know about their favorite game.
• Terms like +4% to INT shouldn’t be unfamiliar or scary to you.
• If you have written player guides, strategy guides, or created intricate stats tables for no good reason other than to help your fellow gamers, you are one of us and we would love to see your work.
• Previous experience as a writer/editor for a computer game blog and/or community site is a big plus.

All in all, I’d say I meet 80% to 90% of this job’s qualifications (and my portfolio work with large game publishers, like Sierra and Activision, as well as my previous community fan site experience displays this). As usual though, the company is based elsewhere (Austin, Texas) and it looks like they need someone to work locally. I find this somewhat frustrating since you’re primarily working in a virtual environment online and thus should be able to work from anywhere, yet I realize the critical aspects of the job are probably internal collaboration within the company and that’s really difficult to do if you’re not face to face (and I’ve had experience with that myself).

On the plus side of things, a job posting like this is really nice to see and gives me hope. To me it solidifies a lot of the work and research I’ve been doing with communities and their cultures. It proves that there are companies out there who value a strong relationship with their customers and are willing to work hard at building a community hub of information and guides with which people can immerse themselves within (versus just creating a ‘brochure site’ that provides no more information than the back of a game box).

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.