I was bored so I drew on my bag -
I got scammed in LA when I bought some coins from a man off the street. They’re not real, but they’re beautiful. I have no regrets -
I love acting. I also do like developing software. I think that both of these things can be really creative. I’ll add that I really enjoy writing and drawing too.
My acting troupe, Magic Jester, puts on shows at the Timescal arts center every 2nd Friday of the month. The shows get people interested in improv theater. Often times people who see our shows end up taking the free classes that we offer on Sundays. So I guess that people find the shows worth watching.
Still, our audiences are not very large. Almost always it’s friends and family. I feel like that’s the way it goes for independent artists. It’s hard for us to get audiences and yet we need audiences in order to improve our craft. I wish it were easier. I’m going to see if I can come up with some ideas that will help pull the general public into our shows.
On that note, one thing has worked with another group I’ve been involved in. Up in Concord I work with an improv troupe that has been putting on benefit shows to raise money for causes. We did 3 shows for the public schools and another 3 shows for some other charity. I forget it’s name. We pulled in over 1000$ on each show. As performers we had A BLAST. And as for the charity, they made some money, but more importantly their members got together and had fun.
So that’s working. At least on a small scale. I wonder if it could be bigger though. Something to think about… sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.
They say that a blog is supposed to have posts about a specific topic or group of topics. That way readers know what it is that you, the poster, are going to be talking about and that will keep them coming back.
Thinking that way assumes that the goal of writing the blog in the first place is that the blog be read. I’d like to challenge that idea. I’ve been writing in a journal on paper every day for the past several months, and it’s been a real source of clarity for me in working out my own thoughts. I’ve found that writing for the sake of writing is much more fun and exciting for me than writing for some audience would ever be.
So this entry is dedicated to the process, may the process be its own reward.
I gave a presentation to the San Francisco Java Users’ Group on Flex development. The slides are here and the source is available on my web site at http://www.waltschlender.com
By far the most valuable thing I’ve ever done in terms of driving traffic to my site was to give away a wordpress template.
The funny thing is that I don’t own that site any longer. The domain wasn’t right – it was http://dice.cx – still, it shows up near the top when you search for schlender – my last name.
I’m getting ready to post an application I developed and running into that daunting “web-promotion” task again. The application itself is free – a set of 3 roll-able online dice that keep track of their own statistics. It’s all written in Flash though, and I have a feeling google is going to have a hard time making head or tail of it. I’d like to see it get used. You’ll be able to find it at http://www.free-online-dice.com.
Maybe I’ll release it as a widget on some of the widget sites as well — or a teaser version might do as well.
… for me to find myself working non-stop. I acutally quite like coming into a project when it’s been thought out in advance and I can just get it done. Execution is relaxing – I just sit down and figure out how to make ideas become reality, and so long as I’m not the one who has to come up with the ideas, it’s quite easy.
Case in point – this past week has found me doing contracting work for a design house in San Francisco. The project is very cool and has lots of neat technical challenges which have needed solutions. As usual, I’m challenging myself to complete the project (or at least features of the project) as quickly as possible… and we’ve built a BEAUTIFUL, MONSTER application in about a week and a half.
But most of the work was already done because WHAT to build had been figured out.
What can we measure that’s actionable? That’s a very important question. I think it varies from individual to individual. For instance if I give you a chart of your insulin levels for the past 12 months with great resolution, you’re probably not going to know what to make of it unless you’re a doctor.
I think that measured data needs to eventually map to a game a person can play – so for instance if I’m measuring my cholesterol and I don’t get enough information from my measurements to see how the things I do effect the levels of cholesterol then I’m unlikely to change my behavior. However, if I play snood – a little game in which the goal is to connect different colored balls together, it’s intuitive and RESPONSIVE enough that I quickly change my behaviour.
So your meeting with your doctor once per year in which he hands you a chart which says, “Your cholesterol is out of control” == not useful.
A game in which your goals are to change your PSA level or your cholesterol level or control your insilin. That’s what we need.
I built an application over the weekend because I wanted it – basically it allows me to “measure everything” – track events in my life and correlate the events to how I feel day by day.
I’ve been doing something similar on an Excel Spreadsheet for a while, but there are a few problems with doing it this way. First, eventually I get to the point where I can’t see the column headers for the columns I’ve created. Second, I have to fill in each and every column every day – most of the independent variables are of the “I ate went jogging” variety, so this means that the answer to most of them is, “No I didn’t”. So I wanted a system where I could quickly just enter in the data with a couple of key strokes. Finally, although Excel has some excellent plotting capabilities, I don’t know how to use them that well (and I have a feeling other people are in the same boat).
So the application ended up being a pretty simple one programming wise, but somehow I think it’s one of the most valuable ones I’ve ever created, because it’s actually useful. I’m hoping that I can improve it in the coming months. For now it just helps me record my life. Ultimately I’d like it to help me analyze the records too.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. That’s my motivation.
Problem:
In the world, on any given day you walk by 1000s of people focused on EXACTLY the same stuff you’re focused on – and you don’t even know it – that’s broad – I’ll give you an example:
There are employers who want to hire you – and you want a job
Your research group embarks on a research project – and the research has already been done but you don’t know about it
You’re looking for a house and you walk past someone with a house to rent
You are looking to buy a motorcycle – you walk past people who have motorcycles to sell all the time
These are signaling problems – and they should be solvable. Imagine a world in which these problems were solved – companies would approach you when you ran into problems rather than constantly assulting you the way they do now. Job hunters and employeers would find one another. People within research groups would “hear” when other scientists with similar interests began talking about their topic and they could share their ideas and information. The barter economy would thrive – imagine an iphone app where you could say, “I want a motorcycle” and then as you walk to work, your phone “hooks you up” with someone who’s dying to get rid of his motorcycle.
Many of these problems already have web sites which are trying to “solve” the signaling problem. I think that they’re missing something critical though – these signals need to be mapped to space and time – otherwise how can you act when the opportunity presents itself.
So some practical ideas:
Job Push – jobs come to you – employers come to you when they’re seeking workers and you’re looking for work
Web Push – information comes to you – only fresh information – this way you can contact the person who’s talking about what you’re interested in WHILE THEY’RE STILL FOCUSING ON IT
Marketing Push – A sliver of web push – marketers can track “noise” on the web – IMPORTANTLY this lets them contact the noise maker to initiate a conversation – Much easier to get your PR don’t you think?
On mac they have Grizzly – A notification system which pops up notifications on a users’ desktop – Imagine creating systems which used grizzly to publish the signals I’m talking about here – better yet imagine something like that on the iPhone. It would be great don’t you think!?
You may never transition to building your own products. Why?
Because although you may be good at building ideas when they are well defined – read concrete, you are not good at figuring out what to build.
What are the skills that a service business develops that don’t translate well to the product business world?
Focus on implementation – you build stuff other people have already come up with. Coming up with something viable (and I’m talking about the process of burning through 1000s of ideas and prototypes to get to something that MIGHT actually work) and the other half — believing in your concept before it becomes successful is REALLY REALLY HARD… And it’s a process which product companies have to develop.
Hunt and pounce client acquisition – is what most service companies do – “We need to work up a bid for…” – which is totally different than, “Why aren’t people buying…” – The first tries to fit the business to the client the business is going after. The second tries to fit the client to what the business provides. These are two very different tasks.
Short term development – In my experience, service businesses rarely end up living with the results generated from the products they build. If the application they built doesn’t “generate the leads” or “get viral adoption” or “scale with load” or “solve AIDS” which are the true desired business outcomes of many of the projects we work on, we service businesses never really know & usually we don’t care. We have our money. We don’t have to live with the consequences of the code we write and so we never get to learn the lessons an off target project would teach us.
I think this post isn’t really complete… I’m still thinking about it. There may be a follow up post in the future.
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