HeyBigE

Another Startup Weekend under my belt – Day 1

May 21, 2012 by HeyBigE

Well, that was certainly quite a weekend! Talk about going from one extreme to the other.. but I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, a little about the space and the start of the weekend – I had heard about The Makers Space in the Twitterverse, and seen pictures from the opening night party and other events, but for some reason, I was thinking that it was down in South Lake Union, presumably because I remember reading about all those new condos on Lenora and just associated Lenora with SLU. So here I was researching parking options in SLU when I looked up the address to see where the building was only to discover that the building is actually in Belltown close to the Pike Place Market – whoops!

I busted out my trusty Seattle parking app (don’t park downtown without it!) and discovered a previously unknown parking garage at 61 Lenora that has inexpensive $6.00/evening parking from 4pm-1:30am.. highly recommended! Of course, it was $23.00/day on Saturday, but that was for 7am to 11:45pm which I don’t consider unreasonable at all.

The space was scheduled to open at 5pm, and I arrived shortly after that, with networking in full swing. I had some great conversations and met some really interesting people before the pitches started. My favorite conversation of the whole weekend was an extended conversation with @colindchapman about all things technical: Rails, ORM, MVCs and specifically Node.js + Express. Since it seemed we had similar tastes and complaints as far as MVCs go, he made a very persuasive case for exploring those, so that’s on the agenda for the week.

An aside – if you’re thinking about attending Startup Weekend, I would HIGHLY recommend attending the free Bootcamp in the days leading up to the event. You’ll get an idea of how to integrate your laptop with how everyone else will likely be configured (with regard to file/code sharing), but even more so, you’ll get a chance to network on a smaller scale, so when you arrive at the event, you already know a handful of people.

At my first SW, I just listened intently to the pitches, but I didn’t realize how many there were going to be, and how hard it would be to keep track of them all. When all the pitches were completed, I could barely remember which ideas I liked, and who pitched them. I was determined not to make that mistake again, so I was jotting names and notes during the pitches this time around. There were some interesting pitches (Bookstream: netflix for books, MyStructure: universal PIM API, Startup Stock Market simulator, a live QR/bar-code feedback system from @colindchapman actually that I didn’t catch the name of, among others) that I was surprised didn’t get more traction, and frankly some ideas that I was surprised did get traction. C’est la vie!

A tip if you’re going to pitch – state your name clearly at the beginning, speak clearly, and at least have a catchy name or phrase (doesn’t have to be your final brand name) to repeat through and/or close with. I took notes on every pitch, and I have maybe 20% of the pitches that I missed the person’s name because they didn’t say it, or they mumbled it, or the concept name wasn’t mentioned or wasn’t clear so I didn’t know what to call it. I think the reason some ideas don’t get more traction is that they are unmemorable or don’t stand out. If you don’t take notes (like I did), it’s hard to remember who said what, and having those things that stick in your memory really help!

I had planned to pitch this time – I contemplated several interesting ideas, had selected one which was solved a problem I am continuously having, had the pitch down in my head cold, and for whatever reason just didn’t feel like “going for it”. In retrospect, I wish I would have pitched (and hopefully made it to the team selection round) but hindsight is 20/20. In the end, there wasn’t any idea that I was super jazzed about – and I honestly just figured I would float around and see if anyone needed any help. It would give me a chance to meet and talk with everyone, and not have an uber-stressful weekend, plus I wanted to post more pictures, tweet and live-blog a bit more.

Well, that didn’t happen. I ended up talking to Saia Taumoefolau who was in from Chicago on a lark who managed to snag a ticket at the last minute and planned to pitch an idea about sub-prime auto loans, something he was extremely knowledgeable and passionate about. He had already picked up a team member Jessi who had abandoned her (I thought) really interesting Crossfit idea to join his team. So my options were: float and coast, or jump in and help. I jumped, though I had no idea what I was jumping into.

For some reason, I thought we had more members to our team. It didn’t really hit me until we actually sat down and started discussing the aspects of the project that I started to worry. We had no graphics people, we had no html/css wranglers and two people who had never been to a Startup Weekend before and thus had no idea what was going on or what to expect. It was going to be a long weekend..

(to be continued)

Filed Under: Seattle, Startup, Tech Tagged With: startupweekend

Getting ready for Startup Weekend again

May 18, 2012 by HeyBigE

Last time I was somewhat timid because I didn’t know what to expect – I didn’t pitch, and I didn’t contribute nearly as much as I could (for the reasons mentioned), but I’m pretty excited for the one this weekend. I’ve been up since 4:30am going over a handful of ideas, trying to figure out which one I’m going to pitch.

I’ll try and post details to my Twitter and Facebook feeds throughout the weekend.

Filed Under: Startup Tagged With: startupweekend

Rant of the Day: Facebook Timeline

May 15, 2012 by HeyBigE

Am I the only one that sees Facebook Timeline as a sub-feature instead of a complete interface? Strictly from a UX point of view, it doesn’t make sense – if you’re friends with someone, why do you (as a friend) need to go back and review that person’s history? I don’t need to have instant access to what my friends were doing 1-2-5 years ago, I (should) already know that – I care about what they’re doing now!

Now, I love the concept of Timeline, if it were delivered as a sub-function. How about a menu link called ‘Timeline’ that allows me to see the history of that person (assuming we’re friends). I might meet someone new, become FB friends and be curious about that person’s background – hey, great! But you don’t put all that stuff up front, especially for close friends (which is what Facebook is SUPPOSED to be for – duhh!).

Oddly, I’ve been hearing warnings about being forced to move to Timeline, but I’m still rocking the classic interface, and so are a lot of my friends. On pure speculation, I suspect that the people who have Timeline implemented on their profiles have a decreased activity level (reading, posts, sharing, likes, etc) that Facebook is picking up on. There has to be a reason, because they announced it in September 2011, and have made several announcements that Timeline will soon be ‘mandatory’ and yet there’s still a sizable segment of the audience who haven’t been converted.

I, for one, can’t stand Timeline as an interface – it’s haphazard and disjointed. Things are hard to follow chronologically, and it feels rightly squished, and I KNOW I’m not the only one. If I’m forced to switch over, I’ll probably find myself using Facebook less, maybe much less, and again, I KNOW I’m not the only one.

So Facebook – pay heed to the gripes of your (admittedly) freeloading ‘customers’, because your Timeline interface is the blinking, bizarre font colors of yesteryear’s Myspace..

UPDATE: Now I feel even more strongly that Timeline has been a negative for Facebook, per their new acqui-hire:

“Facebook tests product changes more frequently than nearly any service. Bringing in Nate Bolt and some of his teammates will help it understand exactly how users feel about changes and avoid blunders like Beacon.

Right now, Facebook typically pushes design changes to a tiny fraction of its user base through its Gatekeeper system. It then watches the usage data to see if users engage with new features or changes, and how engagement, sharing, and time-on-site change. Changes that improve these metrics often get pushed to the whole user base. Innovating and iterating in a way that pushes people’s boundaries is good, but Facebook needs to be careful not to roll out new features too far before its users are ready for the future.”

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: facebook

Sync AdBlockPlus list(s) across multiple computers

March 13, 2012 by HeyBigE

If you’re like me, you are militant about blocking all kinds of annoying crap on the web – fly-in and popup boxes, annoying backgrounds and animated graphics, and the rest of the things designers do to “engage” users. Now I’m extremely hypocritical about this because I have also used these tools when directing designers because I know they work, so I don’t begrudge them. That doesn’t mean I have to deal with them though either, especially if it’s for a site I know I want to come back to.

Enter AdBlockPlus (for both Chrome and Firefox) – an invaluable tool for navigating the web.

One of the problems I’ve had is keeping my block lists sync’ed between laptop and desktop, and between Chrome and Firefox. Ideally, you block it in one place and have that block propagated everywhere. One way to do that is with your own custom block list.

I just created a file on one of my servers with an initial structure copying what one of the other block lists looked like. I then manually edited that list, adding in all the various elements from both my local block lists from my desktop and laptop, and from Chrome and Firefox. I recommend keeping related items together (whitelisted domains in one section, blocked DIV elements in another, etc) and sorted so that you don’t duplicate entries. I also put this file under Git so I could keep track of what’s been added or changed.

Then add that custom list to each of your ABP block lists. Any time you want to block something, you add it to the centralized custom list and it’s automatically blocked across all your ABP installs.

Filed Under: Tech

Google, you are losing your way

February 16, 2012 by HeyBigE

I have loved using Google since discovering it when everyone was still in love with Altavista. Lightweight, and blindingly fast – built by and for engineers. But something has gone terribly wrong over there it seems.

My prima facie evidence: Google Reader. I used to LOVE using GReader. Sure, I wish it had some additional bells and whistles, especially Yahoo Pipes-like filtering and being able to add/change the keyboard commands, but it was certainly functional and fast, and it worked equally well on both laptops and desktops.

But they decided to change it for some reason. First, the layout: just horrible, piss-poor design. Whoever approved this design should be immediately fired. Gone was the clean, tight, effective design. In its place: huge, clunky buttons with big gross chunks of stupid whitespace. Eventually they offered spacing options (Comfortable, Cozy and Compact) but even the Compact version can’t come close to the old interface.

I could live with the abysmal interface, because it’s still more functional than everything else I’ve looked at, but one thing that I almost can’t live with is the speed. It’s become molasses slow. The interface is all AJAX now, and it’s become disgustingly slow to update – almost to the point of being unusable. It’s so slow they had to install an “hourglass” animated globe that lets you know something’s happening in the background, otherwise you’d think something was broken. That’s not the Google I know – the Google that pushes technologies and techniques that lower page load times.

I’ve looked at a significant number of other solutions, and they’re as bad, if not worse. So I’m stuck at the moment – hoping either Google can pull their head out of their ass or another company comes up with the old version of GReader (preferably with added bells and whistles!)

And I’m not the only one. The Google Reader group was flooded (and is still flooded) with complaints about the page loading, the new UX/UI, and other changes they’ve made. The thing that bothers me about this is that Google launched this giant turd at the end of October, and it’s STILL looking and running like shit. Is anyone even working on this any more?

Of course, they did the same thing with Google Calendar. The old one was more than adequate – most people I know were perfectly happy. I had switched over to the new version to check it out, but switched back after a few days, mostly because I hated the translucent pastel colors that blended too easily with the white background. Now they’ve forced the new version on everyone so you’re forced to use the inferior version.

(hint: go to Settings > Labs and ‘Enable Background Images’, then upload a light grey image you create in Photoshop that you can set as your tiled background image to give some contrast with the white background)

Sure, you can install Greasemonkey or Stylish and change many of these settings, but I already have a problem with Firefox chewing up memory and those plugins seem to exacerbate the problem. Plus these products worked before – they shouldn’t have been broken being “upgraded”!

I mean clearly all these changes are focused on getting people to use Google+ and it’s readily apparent that Google is absolutely terrified of Facebook but so much so that I think they’ve completely lost who they are as a company. They are leveraging all their properties into pushing Google+ to respond to Facebook, and it’s negatively affecting their customers (things like the privacy settings changes).

And it’s not just the Facebook threat – there are other examples (like the Mocality fiasco, and hiding the search terms) that just don’t seem like the Google from before. What happened to that company?

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: google

New tool for weekly planning: Teux Deux

January 30, 2012 by HeyBigE

I’m not sure about you, but I struggle with planning and prioritizing things. My problem is that I’m too efficient at capturing thoughts and ideas, and I’m always overwhelmed by what things I should be doing because my ‘to do’ list is way too long!

One of the productivity steps I’ve read about but had problems implementing was planning out the major things I’d like to get accomplished in the week ahead. All the techniques I tried to visualize and track this data never seemed to work for me until I remembered a piece of software I had demo’ed long ago – Teux Deux:

I love the layout – perfect for visualizing the tasks allocated each day for the whole week. If you don’t finish the tasks for a day, they’re automatically moved to the next day which is helpful. Once you enter a string/task, you can re-arrange the order (or move to another day) by dragging and dropping. You can also check off the task once it’s done (shows a line drawn through the task) or click an ‘x’ at the end of the line to delete it. ~~Unfortunately, to edit a string, you need to delete it and re-add it which is kind of stupid~~. Helps to read the FAQ: you can edit a string by dragging to the inpput box! But it does have an iPhone app now so you can take your list with you.

Give it a try and see if it can’t help you focus on getting more major accomplishments done each week!

Filed Under: Consulting, Review, Tech Tagged With: productivity

Cooling Stand for Mac Book Pro from Mad Minds

January 27, 2012 by HeyBigE

I just wanted to pass along a tip to those of you with Mac Book Pros. As you well know, the bottom can get pretty hot, especially when it’s sitting in your lap! I had another cheap wedge-shaped plastic pad that I had doctored up with non-slip drawer lattice to keep it from sliding around. It actually worked great, but I ran across The Tilt from Mad Minds a while back:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themadminds/the-tilt-multimedia-stand-for-the-macbook-pro

I had ordered it in mid-December and it was on backorder, but it finally arrived this week and it’s slick! It clips on firmly to the bottom of the MBP, and it has a USB plug-in to power the fan which is remarkably capable of keeping things cool without adding too much thickness or weight to things.

I highly recommend it to anyone with a Mac Book Pro!

Filed Under: Review, Tech Tagged With: mac

Rain City Burgers

January 26, 2012 by HeyBigE

I have to give a quick shout out to Rain City Burgers on the corner of 65th and Roosevelt. I stopped in there recently and had an unbelievable bacon double cheeseburger (my Yelp review). Highly recommended!

Filed Under: Food, Review, Seattle

Thoughts about Startup Weekend

January 20, 2012 by HeyBigE

It’s taken me a few days to gather my thoughts about Startup Weekend (and ok, I was slightly distracted by the snowpocalypse this week).

I’m not going to give you a play-by-play because I’m not sure I could improve upon Dwight’s perfect summation (part 1, part 2, part 3) – he really captures what it was like to be there and be involved.

I had said before in my previous Startup Weekend post, I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. Some of my fears were confirmed, but I was pleasantly surprised in many other areas.

First, my overall experience was incredible. Everyone (literally everyone!) there was super nice, really excited to be there, eager to meet you, find out about you, etc. It didn’t matter who you are or what you do – people were enthusiastic talking with you. Definitely a very friendly, gregarious crowd.

Based on the raise-your-hand survey at the begining, it appeared that most of the room were first-timers which was surprising. For some reason, I expected more grizzled veterns.

One of the other things I was surprised about was the amount of abandonment by team members throughout the weekend. I heard that other teams had people leaving because they couldn’t get along or didn’t want to take part any more. Even on our own team, we lost one person the first night, and one person the second night. So strange!

As for my team, there were some really talented people on it. Our team leader and pitch’er (Eric Butler) turned out to be the guy who wrote FireSheep (Firefox extension that demonstrates HTTP session hijacking attacks) which made a big splash when he released it, so he’s famous! (well, internet famous – at least to technical people). I didn’t know this when I first talked to him about joining his team, but I was certainly impressed when I learned this.

But that basically confirmed my worst fear – being on a team with tons of über-level talent. What exactly could I contribute? Even worse, the code was being done in Ruby on Rails, something I have ZERO experience with. I spent quite a bit of time getting my own RoR setup configured and running our source code which is another post in-and-of itself. Ugh!

I contributed what I could in various other aspects, but I did feel a little marginalized. It’s clear Eric had thought about this idea quite a bit, including researching competition, sketching wireframes, mocking up icons, and figuring out how to monetize it. This being my first time, I surely didn’t want to overstep my bounds or step on any toes by trying to take on too much oversight.

Here’s a guy who has a lot invested in his project, and extremely busy writing the backend code, and seemingly did not want (or is not able time-wise) to be the project manager, but also did not want to relinquish control of the project – it was definitely an awkward situation.

I was ok being a cog-in-the-wheel the first time around though. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I didn’t get thrown into the deep end and being primarily responsible for the technical aspects of a project. I got a chance to see how the process worked (and how I might handle or manage the process differently) and it was a very valuable experience. I did find out at the end that there was at least one team that didn’t have a developer though. I wonder how it might have worked out if I’d have found that out and migrated to that team? I’m sure it would have been a completely different experience!

There were some incredible teams coming out of the event – some teams I thought were well on their way to forming an actual company and making a go of it.

In the end, I really had a great time – met a lot of great people, got some extremely valuable experience that I will be applying to my next Startup Weekend:

I will definitely blog/photograph/tweet more. Documentation!
I will definitely take notes (and possibly even photos) during the pitches. I had a hard time remembering all the pitches, what they were about, who pitched, etc. 54+ pitches in an hour or so – very hard to keep track of!
I am definitely going to pitch next time! I don’t feel bad that I didn’t the first time around, but now that I have a better idea of what pitching is all about, it’s something I really want to do.
Picking the right team – pick a team that you can contribute to, and something that you feel strongly about.
Confirming that I really need to tighten up my technical chops in some areas that I’m lacking (especially front-end work)

My last thought: this SW was held at http://www.thehubseattle.com in Pioneer Square so I was wandering around the streets morning, noon and night. I can’t believe how far the area has fallen with regard to hustle and bustle. Granted, it was the weekend so maybe the foot traffic was less than it might be during a normal 9-to-5 weekday but Friday and Saturday night were D-E-A-DEAD! I remember back in the 90’s when it was THE place to be, and now, nothing. No one in the bars, no one walking around on the street. Nothing. How sad.

Filed Under: Seattle, Startup Tagged With: startupweekend

Pre-Startup Weekend Bootcamp

January 13, 2012 by HeyBigE

I had my pre-Startup Weekend bootcamp last night at the co-working facility StartPad. The premise was to get Startup Weekend participants’ laptops set up with Google AppEngine, Bootstrap, jQuery and GitHub, since those tools were likely to be in use over the weekend.

The only one of those tools I didn’t know much about was Google AppEngine (cloud-based Java/Python service), but that was primarily because I don’t know how to code in either Java or Python. Still, I set it up anyway to get the experience and see how it worked. The service itself was pretty cool, but the Mac-based software used to interface to it was a mess.. installing shit all over the place on my MacBookPro. (sigh)

An aside: I really hate installing package software because it has a tendency to install things in various places. Give me a straight source-code install every time to specific directory location. That way, I know where it was installed, what it installed and can easily remove it or update it.

Having my own servers and doing all my own sys admin, I don’t often use cloud services. Plus I don’t write in Java, Python or Ruby on Rails which is what most cloud services seem to be focused on these days. I’ve used PHPFog before and it’s a neat service. If I had something that really needed to scale, I wouldn’t hestitate to use them, or set up Amazon EC2 servers.

Anyway, the valuable part of the bootcamp was getting to know my fellow participants and being able to ask questions of the more experienced leaders of the group, like @mckoss and @kavla. I had questions like, “So everyone works on something together, who owns what?” and how the team selection process works. Getting them answered beforehand really gave me a good idea of what to expect which put me much more at ease.

Filed Under: Startup Tagged With: startupweekend