Category: General

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.

There’s a belief that I have had for a while that I recently mentioned when talking about using WoW to learn about community building and teamwork.

I honestly believe that games have the potential to be so much more than just about fun. A young fox cub chasing a butterfly through a field is more than just having fun. It is learning how to hunt. So too do games have the opportunity to teach us more about ourselves, which we can then take back into the real world.

With this thought in mind and while visiting Raph Koster’s website today, I was reminded of a profession that might just possibly be the next stepping stone that I’m looking for. Raph mentioned that his game company is looking to hire more people and one of those people is a senior community manager. Now while I don’t think I can apply for their position, primarily because it looks like you need to work in San Diego (although I’m still not 100% sure), it still seems like I’m seeing a lot of connections between what I’ve done in the past and the requirements for a community manager. For example, let me go over some of the points in the job posting for Areae’s Senior Community Manager to show you what I mean.

The Senior Online Community Manager will have proven experience in building, growing and nurturing a strong, positive community.

Even though this wasn’t my “official” job description while developing and maintaining sites for Sierra and other publishers, this was always my internal goal. I was basically first and foremost a strong user advocate. I believed that for a community to truly exist, you needed two way communication. Therefore, it’s not just about you as a company communicating your message to your customers but you should be actively gathering the input of your customers as well. Yes via emails but more importantly by just observing and listening to the community on an active basis (i.e. reading forums, in game chatter, etc).

• Develop information roll-out plans to foster community growth through the regular release of product features.

I believe this is critical before a game is even released. You should have a plan to build up prior to release and a plan after release as well. All of it is critical to the overall game experience (which happens inside and outside the game). Did this happen with the community sites I built? Not often. Why? Because we often didn’t get the final say, even though the team I worked with knew more about their customers than they did (and one exec even mentioned this once to us).

• Build positive relationships with key community leaders and product advocates.

This is actually one of the beliefs of my In Giving You Make Yourself Stronger approach which is why I’ve always disliked the “exclusive” route that game magazines take with game publishers. You should be giving and supporting to the whole community around you as much as possible, not just one exclusive group. The more you give and draw attention to those who truly love your games and products, the more they will give and draw attention to you in return.

• Help provide development direction by being the voice of the player community.

Indeed! And this is what I meant above about a two way communication for a community relationship to work. The funny thing that I’ve noticed in these situations is often times those who the complain the most in the communities around you are often the ones who truly love your product the most. Of course, while it’s important to listen to the feedback of your customers, it also important to ensure the original vision of the game, therefore you can’t listen to everyone if they start suggesting things that will dilute the primary focus of the game (i.e. “Ya we should have dragons and rocket launchers!”).

• 3+ years of experience managing large online communities
• Previous experience launching and building new online communities

Yes to both of these. I worked for a firm in town for 3 years and we built and maintained community sites around various large gaming publishers (with Sierra/Vivendi being the largest). These community sites were often a combination of product sites (with frequent content updates) and moderated forums.

Now funnily enough, I’ve actually been posting my resume online at Craigslist over the past few months looking specifically for an online community “developer” position (you can see my cover letter shown below) but maybe what I should be looking for is an online community manager position, since it would allow me to focus on more of the things I love (i.e. communities, culture, interacting, connecting, etc) rather than the backend coding stuff.

Experienced Online Community Developer Seeking Startup To Help

What I’ve Done

I’m a professional web developer with over 10 years of experience developing online websites and communities. Most notably I previously worked as the Senior Web Developer for a small web firm in Vancouver that assisted in the development of online communities for some of the largest computer gaming publishers in the world such as Sierra/Vivendi, Activision, and Konami on some of their biggest brands, such as Half Life, Star Trek, and ESPN. I was also a focal point within this small company, assisting and providing advice in a wide variety of operational areas and roles, be it with web development, community development, standards/process development, information architecture, usability, branding, proposal writing, computer support, business advice, and more.

What I’m Looking For

I’m looking for a full-time position within a Vancouver startup company, or a small established company with a startup culture, with which I can pass on my knowledge and experience on a company wide level. Of particular note, I’m looking for a company that has a very open, sharing, and caring culture within it whereby all team members can actively participate and contribute towards the development of the company. I am not, however, interested in startups which are looking to ‘flip’ or ‘sellout’ quickly but instead are committed to building a product or service with which a long term sustainable community can be built around.

What I Can Offer

If you’re a startup looking for an individual who can assist your company in a diverse variety of roles, including business advice, than I believe I’m that person. If you’re a company looking for an expert / specialist / rocket scientist with unbelievable skills in one specific area then I’m most definitely not that person. If you’ve read 37 Signals book called Getting Real, I’m what they would define as a “quick learning generalist”. Therefore I rapidly learn skills whenever I need them, usually to the point that I have an above average working knowledge when utilizing them. It is this ability which allowed me to be so effective as a team lead, since it allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the various professional roles that I was leading (i.e. graphic designers, web developers, web programmers, etc) similar to how an orchestra conductor must have fairly good understanding of the various instrumentalists he is conducting.

Therefore, in closing, if you’re looking for someone who is part web developer, part company evangelist, part community manager, and part startup business advisor, I believe I can most definitely help you.

Nollind Whachell
nollind@whachell.com

PS. If you’d like to get a better feel for me and learn more about my community and cultural interests, feel free to visit my web site at the address below.

http://nollind.whachell.com/

Hmm, and a final note to self, maybe I should be categorizing a lot of my previous posts that relate to community and culture development. That way when people come to my site, they can easily see a train of thought focused around a specific subject (i.e. gaming, community, culture, etc).

Dave seemed to be a little down this weekend and I understand how he feels. The questions he asks himself are often the same questions I ask myself.

In thinking about what he had to say though, I reflected back on a few things. I thought about two recent posts. One being Touching The World and another entitled Inspired where I said the following.

I don’t want to be informed or entertained. I want to be inspired.

And I also glanced at my About page, particularly the following quote.

I’m passionate about changing the world and making it a better place through the propagation of positive cultural values within the communities and/or organizations we are immersed within, be they online or off.

When I put this all together, I realized what I wanted to do (and it’s small enough to be a mantra of sorts).

I want to touch the world and inspire people.

Now as for the exact details of this work, I’ll still have to figure out that next step. However as Dave said in his post and something I’ve spoken about before, I believe this has a lot to do with stirring meaningful emotions within people and making them feel connected to something larger than themselves, yet something that they themselves are an integral part of.

One thing I do know for sure though is that the direction I’m wanting to go in seems to tie in much more closely with a creative artist, poet, writer, or musician than a technical developer or consultant. It’s funny because I used to draw, write stories, compose music, and write lyrics when I was younger. Yet I haven’t done any of these things in many many years.

Is this my inner self trying to pull me back on a path that I deviated from long ago? I think it might be.

PS. I want my work to not only inspire others but in turn to inspire me as well. Therefore if I can find some way to cumulatively gather this new creative work around me (online and offline), it should hopefully inspire and motivate me daily (as well as others around me).