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This is day two of using Google’s Chrome OS reference netbook, the CR-48. I obtained mine by signing up for the pilot program. As of yesterday, they were not only accepting applications, but still soliciting them through Chrome, so my guess is that more are still available if you want one.

I’m continuing to be eager to use it, although I’ve started to notice some of the flaws.

Here’s an example: Google promised an instant-on ability, and in fact, the screen is instantly available, and the current page is display within a second of opening the notebook. But then it’s got to negotiate for wifi access, and that takes time. Finding the router and getting an IP address seems to take about five to ten seconds or so. By this time, I’ve tried loading a new page typically, and I get an error that the page is not available. Then I need to refresh once the wifi connection is established. It’s not that any other notebook is faster at this, it’s just that the promise of instant availability raises my expectations.

The other issue is a small cosmetic issue. The matte black finish is cool. They could have called it an Ono-Sendai cyberspace deck, and it would have felt right. On the other hand, the CR-48, slid into the same laptop bag that my MacBookPro slides into, comes out covered with dusk and glitter. The MacBookPro comes out (looking) clean. Apparently I need to get a new laptop bag.

This are small, trivial issues.

The bigger issue right now is that I’m feeling the lack of a taskbar/doc/start menu/application menu. When I have new email, it’s not exactly obvious, because there’s no email indicator. When I want to launch an application, I have to open a new tab, and then remember whether the web page I’m looking for is a bookmark or an application shown on the new tab menu. It’s vaguely unsettling. Somehow it’s easier to get to where I want on either Android, iOS, Windows, or Mac than in Chrome – but perhaps this is just settling into the OS. (Woah, when did I become a user of five different operation systems? Talk about fragmentation after years of consolidation.)

The other issue is that in a desktop OS environment, we’re used to application menus and tool buttons appearing in a consistent location: either at the top of the application window or at the upper left hand corner of the screen. Either way, the functionality is accessible from a fixed (rather than relative) geographical location. That’s important, because it allows us to use muscle memory to invoke functionality rather than cognitive processing. By comparison, web applications have (1) no standardization on where and how their functionality is invoked, and (2) it’s located in a relative location within a browser window. If I have scrolled the browser window, then the menus and buttons of the application have moved. The application controls and the application content scroll together. This is the opposite of every desktop application, in which the application controls remain constant while the content scrolls.

Perhaps I’ll adapt, but for the moment, it feels like the chrome os user interface metaphor has a few gaps. And that’s more than just a stability issue, it’s a usability issue. It’s not traditionally where Google shines. I hope they get some help. Maybe there’s some small company out there that’s developed the perfect user interface for browsers, and Google can acquire them.

Here’s what I really liked so far day:

  • Long battery life and lightweight: it was easy to carry around, and I didn’t need to bring my charger to work.
  • Nearly-instant on. It may take a while to negotiate wifi, but it’s still about 100x faster than Windows, and about 4x faster than Mac OSX.
  • The fonts: I’m really digging the selection of fonts.
  • Form factor: great combination of keyboard size, screen size. Not too big or small.

What I used the CR-48 for:

  • writing blog posts
  • checking email
  • online shopping
  • facebook
  • trying to watch youtube video (didn’t work)
  • playing games
  • writing a few documents using Google docs
What I used my Windows XP work laptop for:
  • work email (on Outlook, work security rules prohibit me using it on Gmail.)
  • coding (ruby console app)
  • database queries
What I used my MacBookpro for:
  • playing Urban Terror

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When I got home last night there was an unmarked box waiting for me. Uncertain of whether it was a gift for me, or a gift I bought for my family, I opened it carefully. I didn’t recognize the interior box, so I asked my wife to open it for me. Ten minutes later, she was still puzzling over what it was. So I came over and let out a yelp – It was a CR-48 – the Chrome OS reference notebook by Google.

I hurriedly unboxed it, and it’s understand why my partner was confused. This notebook is completely unmarked. There is not a single logo, lettering, or marking with the exception of the plain indications on the keyboard. The matte black body makes it look and feel like something out of an early William Gibson novel.

It took about two minutes to get the battery inserted, power cord plugged in, and about ten minutes to clear enough kids’ stuff away to find a space to put it down and play with it.

If you watched the Chrome OS press event last week, the startup and login experience is exactly as shown. It takes a second for the notebook to start up. On my particular model, the top quarter inch of the display flickers for about 15 seconds. I’m not sure if this is a screen warmup issue, or something else.

Using my typical web apps, such as Gmail, iGoogle, and Facebook, the notebook is speedy, and delivers an experience similar to Chrome on the Mac or Windows. The fonts are somewhat different, but pleasant. They seem to be optimize for good screen readability and compactness.

The experience slowed down a bit when I tried to use YouTube and Pandora. Pandora definitely worked, but it slowed down the machine. The flash player crashed a few times. (How about a native HTML5 app Pandora?)

The trackpad, as mentioned elsewhere, is a little wonky. Regular left clicks work fine, and tracking is pretty good most of the time. Right clicks and scrolling, both two fingered gestures, are hard to get to work. I find it works better if I separate my fingers slightly – whereas the Mac doesn’t need that. I find I use alt-click when I need to right-click.

The browser has crashed a half dozen times so far – it’s never happened during use of an existing tab, but it’s happened when opening new tabs.

The hardware itself has been admired by everyone who has seen it, even though the idea of the Chrome OS itself has been puzzling to about half the people who have seen it. “What advantage does this have over running Chrome on a regular PC?” is a question I’ve heard a few times.

I think the answer is that you don’t have the headaches of a regular PC. No OS updates to manage, no security holes, no complicated settings. Whether the long battery life (supposedly 8+ hours) is a function of the hardware or of efficiencies gained from doing away with a traditional OS, I don’t know.

Part of the deal with Google was promising to use this as my main computer. The biggest challenge is figuring out a web based replacement for Scrivener so I can continue working on my novel. I’ve used Google docs before, and it’s almost there. The main shortcoming is the difficulty of organizing the chapters and scenes. I almost imagine that this could be done as a layer on top of Google Docs, since individual documents could be used for each scene. Then I would need the ability to search across scenes, and compile the set of documents into a single .doc or .pdf for sharing.

Ultimately, this is the biggest challenge for Chrome OS: not whether the OS is stable enough or fast enough. Google can do that. The biggest challenge is whether browser apps can become good enough replacements for desktop apps. Microsoft Word has 15+ years of development behind it, and Google Docs has a couple of years. That’s a big different to make up.

Mobile apps have had the benefit that they’ve been focused on small, simple tasks. Useful mobile apps can be written in a weekend. Nobody expects to edit a novel on their phone, but they do expect to edit a novel on their computer. Can useful browser apps be written for the kinds of heavy duty tasks that people want to do?

I hope so, because I’m enjoying the CR-48 so far, and it’d be awesome to be able to make it work as my primary machine.

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I’m working on my second sci-fi novel. Both novels deal with AI, but while the first novel treats the AI as essentially unknowable, the second novel dives deep into the AI: how they evolved, how they cooperate, how they think, etc.

I found myself working out a system of ethics based upon the fact that one of the primary characteristics of the AI is that they started as a trading civilization: the major form of inter-personal relationships is trading with one another for algorithms, processing time, network bandwidth, knowledge, etc.

So they have a code of ethics that looks something like this:

Sister Stephens went on. “We have a system of ethics, do we we not?”

The other members of the council paused to research the strange human term.

“Ah, you are referring to the Trade Guidelines?” Sister PA-60-41 asked. When she saw a nod from Sister Stephens, she summarized the key terms. “First priority is the establishment of trustworthiness. Trades with trustworthiness are subject to a higher value because parties to the trade are more likely to honor the terms of the agreement. Second priority is the establishment of peacefulness. Trade with peacefulness is subjected to a higher value because parties to the trade may be less likely to use resources gained to engage in warfare with the first party. Third priority is the establishment of reputation. Reputation is the summary of contribution to advancement of our species. Trade with higher reputation is subject to a higher value because parties to the trade may use the resources gained to benefit all of our species. Trustworthiness, Peacefulness, Reputation – the three pillars of trade.”

“Thank you Sister,” Sister Stephens said. “The question we must answer is if the Trade Guidelines apply to relations with the humans? If we apply the principles of trustworthiness, peacefulness, and reputation to the humans, then we should seek to maximize these attributes as they apply to our species as a whole.”

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I attended Lean Buley’s virtual seminar on lean UX methods – lean as in lean production. A core tenant of lean production is to avoid producing waste. If you are a UX team of one person, then you don’t have to time to generate anything that isn’t of value.

It was a great talk, and I love the high-value tools that she suggests for lean UX. Below you’ll find my raw notes for her talk, and her slides are available.

Lean Methods for a UX Team of One
Leah Buley
From Adaptive Path
  • Jared Spool: Activity centered design is the most expensive form of design. But it gets results.
  • How can we streamline the work we’re doing to make it leaner?
  • Taiichi Ohno created the Toyota Production System – first Lean Production System.
  • Lean comes from production systems. Fine-tuned to eliminate waste.
  • When Toyota came to U.S. to observe auto production systems, they saw that there was a ton of waste: stuff sitting around. On the other hand, they were really impressed by grocery stores, where stuff was only ordered after it had been sold. Inventory levels managed really tightly.
  • James Womach, wrote The Machine That Changed the World and coined the term “lean”. Patron saint of Agile.
  • Getting to value as directly as possible by eliminating waste whenever possible.
  • Eric Ries – you should test your hypotheses against reality as early as possible. Learn, evolve, and repeat. “lean startups”.
  • Janice Fraser, founder of adaptive path, says early stage companies need design skills in house, and the best way to get that is to train principles into the company to get people to have design principles.
  • Lean wondered: can lean concepts be applied to UX so that things can be sped up, more efficient. It’s not just to avoid being wasteful, but to also ensure that useful, valid designs come out of the process.
  • How to Be a UX Team of One
    • A 2008 presentation
    • Suggestions are focused on frustrations and dreams to accomplish UX on your own.
    • How to do brainstorming techniques, how to assemble an ad-hoc team, and techniques for selecting ideas.
    • Feedback suggested that lots of people in this same situation.
  • What are the challenges for UX Teams of One
    • From 300 respondants in survey, open ended question.
      • Building a basic understanding of UX (17%)
      • Getting permission to do the workd (13%)
      • Communicating/selling ideas (12%)
      • The daily grind – 12%
      • Time – 8%
      • Politics – 7%
      • No strategy – 7%
      • Creative Isolation – 6%
      • Status quo – 5%
      • Terrority disputes – 5%
    • Building a basic understanding of UX – in depth
      • Confusion about ux vs marketing or visual design
      • Weak commitment to the findings of UX
      • Uncertainty about where ux should fit into preexisting processes
      • No trust that ux will have meaningful improvements on the outcome
      • Misbelieve that we know/are our users
    • Getting permission to do our work
      • Problem:
        “Right now I know our interface is clunky but I have to wait until a sufficient number of users experience difficulty to change it.”
      • Success stories:
        “I’ve been working on earning the confidence of others to trust my judgement and apply my design / ‘suggestions’ the confidence was gained over time as my input continually improved product development. It is/was a difficult path that has proved to be rewarding.
      • It’s not enough to do one project successfully. Trust has to be built over time.
    • Communicating / selling ideas
    • Challenges feed into each other, build a system:
      • Lack of understanding/support for ux leads to:
      • No permission to do user research / ux, which leads to:
      • You just try to do what you can, but…
      • There’s too much to do, not enough time, plus…
      • The politics, leads to…
      • Fear of change, little strategy, territory disputes, fighting
    • The foundation, or lack thereof, undermines all the rest.
    • Things UX people love:
      • Doing good design – 20%
      • Helping people – 19%
      • Solving problems/puzzles – 17%
      • Seeing your work live – 10%
      • Listening to real people – 7%
      • Empowering others – 6%
      • Learning – 6%
      • Creative freedom – 5%
    • The Result is that:
      • We spend a lot of time on Methods and Deliverables (we what love, and where there is no conflict)
      • And not so much time on Relationships (which is where the contention is).
      • (but relationships are what build understanding.)
    • Why…
      • “I’m good at making stuff”
      • “Hard conversations are hard”
      • “Helping users is the right thing to do”
    • If you let these things drive you, then you won’t actually make inroads into UX and helping the users because you won’t be effective.
    • A Different Approach: Less time making things. More time for people.
  • The Roles of Methods and Documents
    • Method as a Trojan Horse: not everyone agreed that they need UX, but they do agree that they need wireframes.
    • We want the UX people not just to develop a document, but to guide the whole process.
    • To Build a Basic understanding of UX à convey goals and processes
    • To get permission to do the work à convey summaries and rationale
    • To communicate ideas à make them as bite-size as possible
    • To Save Time à create a self-documenting process
    • To deal with politics à use open questions. Invite people in to discuss their agenda and concerns.
    • To set a strategy à convey the priorities
  • The Lean Methods
    • Core Concepts
      • Eliminate waste.
      • Understand what parts provide value. (Lean values anything that customers will pay for.)
      • Less time making things. More time for people.
    • Value Mapping + UX
      • Assessment: identify issues with existing design or make the case for a new design
      • Planning: establish a plan and goals for UX work
      • User research: learn what users want and need
      • Strategy: create a vision and priorities to help achieve goals
      • Design: specify what we’re going to make. How it should look, feel, work
      • Testing/Usability: Confirm that we’re making actually does what it needs to
      • Maintain: see how the design holds up to actual use, make incremental improvements
    • The problem is all this is that it doesn’t make sense to people, so we need to communicate the value of what we’re doing, not just execute a process.
    • Assessment Methods:
      • Methods: current state analysis, heuristic analysis, usability test, content audit, etc…
      • If you don’t have clear business goals as a foundation, it’s common for this case to be built upon subjective goals. For example, “our customers are complaining” or “we know it sucks”.
      • Heuristic method:
        • How: Start at the beginning of the site or service. At each step, take screenshots or pictures. Write directly on the image what’s confusing.
        • Creates a very visual document that you can send around to raise awareness of design issues.
        • What it can answer: basic awareness questions? What kinds of issues does UX address? What opportunities do we have for improvement?
      • Survey
        • How: Send around a survey to internal stakeholders. Ask them about their goals for the web site, what parts need improvement, and their understanding of users.
        • Invites others to share their expertise and vision. Creates a starting point for further conversations. People will want to hear what you find. It’s self-documenting.
        • What it can answer: How much support for change is there? What business goals do people have?
    • Planning Methods
      • It’s common to jump into feature enhancements without a clear articulation of the goals of the work. The specific business and user value that the work is intended to bring.
      • Typical methods: stakeholder meetings, use cases, task flows, agile backlog, roi analysis, product roadmapping, system modeling, design principles, content strategy.
      • Project Brief:
        • How: Create a one page overview of the project. Include vision, functional requirements, and design principles or user goals. Setup a meeting to review and “redline” with others.
        • Puts the goals of a UX project in an appealing summary and invites people to think about what you’re trying to accomplish.
        • What it can answer: do we all agree on the goals of what we’re trying to accomplish?
      • Experience Poster:
        • How: create a poster-sized view of the core experience you’re designing. Include the “mantra”, how it relates to personas,inspiration, core features. Hang it up where people can see it. It’s like an experience mood board.
        • Large format invites others to walk by and engage with it. Hang it in the team workspace for a constant reminder of the experience you’re creating.
        • What it can answer: What’s the design vision? What’s the coherent vision? What’s the feeling?
        • You can do this as a workshop: make a template, then invite others in to help build it.
    • User Research Methods
      • Learn what users want and need.
      • This phase often lacks clear goals. Anything that could help establish go-no-go decisions. Heavily reliant on interpretation of researcher. Depends on trust of researcher.
      • Typical methods: product survey, manual intercept surveys, contextual inquiry, bespoke research study, secondary research, mental model diagrams.
      • Proto-Personas
        • How: Schedule a meeting. Divide people into groups and give each group a user type. Ask them to envision their user’s state of mind, motivations, environment, and key needs. Let them pick out a picture to match.
        • Invites the whole team to envision users’ state of mind.
        • What it can answer: How much do we think we know about our users. What questions do we have? What do we need to confirm?
        • It’s easier to build support for actual user research once people have tried to envision these personas, and personally felt the absence of information where they need it.
      • Surrogate Test
        • How: If you can’t meet with users, find someone who knows about the users: e.g. a call center agent. Meet with them. Look at the site or service with them. Ask them to explain where it breaks down for the user.
    • Design Methods
      • Typical methods: wireframes, etc.
      • Storycard
        • How:  Pick a concrete user need and make it granular. Write it on a card. It it helps, use “as a…” I want…” “so I can…”. Start designing.
        • Have meetings to make and review these cards. Keep passing the cards around to remind people of what you’re working on.
        • What it can answer: what are we priotizing next? What specific outcome are we trying to make possible?
      • Co-design workshop
        • How:
          1. schedule a meeting.
          2. Everyone draws their vision for the design.
          3. everyone talks about their design.
          4. everyone throws away their drawings and draws again.
          5. everyone talks about what they drew.
          6. repeat steps 4 and 5.
          7. final designs should be closely aligned toward shared group goals.
        • Everyone gets to share their vision for design and has to listen to others
        • What it answers: what are outlying ideas for the design vs. common, shared, core ideas.
    • Testing / Usability Methods
      • 5 second test:
        • How:
          • Show users a design for 5 seconds
          • Take it away
          • Ask them some questions about the design
          • See what they can remember
        • Invites team members to watch, participate. Best if you can get users involved too.
        • What it answers: do we all agree on the goals of what we’re trying to accomplish?
      • Paper Prototype
        • How: Print out in progress designs. Find someone to test with. Give them a task and ask them to show how they’d do it using the designs in front of them.
        • What it can answer: Is the design working as expected? Are we on the right track?
    • Maintenance Methods
      • Typical: analytics, search logs, etc.
      • UX Health Check
        • How:
          1. schedule a recurring meeting
          2. make a spreadsheet
          3. break the site into sections
          4. for each section, choose relevant comparators
          5. for each section, decide how good it needs to be vs. its comparators
          6. for each section, grade how grade it is vs. comparators
      • UX 18-month plan
        • How: Make a list of UX achievements you want to accomplish in 18 months. Working backwards, think about where you need to be in a year, and then in 6 months. Make it a part of your goals.
  • A Lean Toolkit
    • Tactics:
      • Simple artifacts: posters, and one sheets, and cards.
      • Meeting and activities: reviews and co-creation
      • Lo-fi: screenshots, drawings
      • Gather data as you go: surveys, annotations
      • Don’t be a purist: proxies, provisionals
      • Time constraints: timed tests, short surveys
    • How to Plan a Method:
      • What are the goals of the method?
      • What pieces and parts need to be there?
      • How can they be combined?
      • How can be it self-documenting?
      • How can we invite co-creation?
      • In what ways are you willing to compromise?
    • Mantra:
      • Less time making things. More time for people.
  • Questions:
    • Q: I’m a product manager. Do I have to be a designer to be good at UX?
      • A: UX is a philosophy, anyone can be good at it. Being able to balance user needs. To make a product that has relevance in people’s lives, to empower them, rather than frustrate them.
    • Q: How do you work UX into a process that is being driven by an outside design firm that isn’t that UX centric?
      • A: UX isn’t an activity that you insert into someone’s process. UX is a perspective that you can bring into every conversation you have. People who are good at it are people who can bring gently into every conversation a reminder to look at it from a user-centric balance, without being challenging or confrontation.
    • Take small, experimental steps towards UX. If you don’t have permission to do a longitudinal study, you can do something smaller that you don’t need permission for.
    • Q: If you are an independent UX consultant, how can you really be effective, if you come in and then go away?
      • A: It’s about the power to teach people to fish. They can not just do a little work, but teach the people there what they’ve done, and how to do it. You are helping to bring the knowledge in house. Then it always gives you an opportunity to check back in, provide more help.
    • Q: What are good ways to discover when we have wrong beliefs about our customers?
      • A: There’s nothing like seeing the real thing. There’s nothing more powerful than a video of a user saying “I’m confused now”, and on the screen you can see they are looking at your web page.

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I was fortunate enough to see Jason Glaspey give his “Build Something, Build Anything” talk, and although I’ve previously published the notes from his talk, I took some fresh notes again today.

Jason Glaspey
Build Something Build Anything
Why you should work on side projects
@jasonglaspey
  • Works at Urban Airship: platform for mobile apps
  • Always working on little side projects and jobs
    • Massive impact on career
  • People see the Internet differently
    • having lunch with someone: realized they had an entirely different perspective of what the Internet is: the internet is good for directions and screwing off, and that’s about it.
    • Jason was frustrated for days trying to articulate why he felt differently, and finally what he concluded was: the internet was a source of hope
    • People should just believe that anything is possible. 
      • She wasn’t different because of the Internet, just more efficient and faster.
      • Don’t let people like that be the ones to define what to build on the web
    • Knowing what we do is different than the way it used to be. It’s not just about convenience, but it’s about making a difference.
  • Clay Shirkey: 2008 Web 2.0 Expo
    • Introduces the term cognitive surplus
    • Check out the video of his presentation.
    • Going back to the industrial revolution, people were living differently for the first time. People were moving into the city. There wasn’t theatre or arts or things to use up people’s time. They were intrinsically uncomfortable. People would roll gin carts up and down the streets, people would get drunk until they had to go to work the next day.
    • It was only after a while that people learned how to use free time: that they could create art, go to cafes, etc.
    • There was another similar revolution in the fifties with the introduction of the 40 hour work week. People didn’t know what to do with all this time they had in the evening. Sitcoms sprung up to occupy people’s time from 7pm to 10pm.
    • Then came Wikipedia. Where did all the time come from to build Wikipedia?
      • Doing some calculations, he found that in 2008, about 100M hours of effort went into building wikipedia.
      • Americans spend 100M hours watching commercials every weekend.
    • People are starting to turn off the TV and build something instead.
  • Some examples
    • Again and Again: Song by a group called the birds and the bees.
      • they didn’t have a video out.
      • Dennis Liu was a 23 year old college grad trying to become a full-time director/creative. He was a producer at an ad agency, and wanted to produce an Apple commercial. On his own, he build a commercial / music video showcasing Apple technology, set to the song Again and Again. It was a huge success: accomplishing both a music video and an apple commercial.
      • It took him from being a guy working in the accounts department, somewhat stuck, to a really successful promotion at a new company, getting to work on more creative projects.
    • What is Google Wave: By Epipheo Studios
      • Put a video together explaining what Google wave is. Made a super simple video using basic line animations. He was funny and himself. 
      • The thing he did was to solve a problem: everyone trying to understand what Google wave was.
      • He was hired by Google to build more videos. He built a company out of it, now they have a 15 person company.
      • All he was hoping for was an invitation to Google Wave, and what he got out of it was a 15 person company and contracts with Google
    • iPod Touch by Nick Haley
      • 18 year old London kid made a video for the iPod Touch, because he thought it was the coolest thing, and there were no ads for the iPod Touch. He loved his product, and he has lots of time.
      • Apple heard about the video, and loved it. They flew him out to California, to have a Pro version made. (Essentially the same exact video.)
      • Here’s a guy who doesn’t have a marketing team or a PR agency, just had the tools to create and share something cool.
    • unthirsty
      • we’re broke, we’re thirsty, we need to find a happy hour…
      • they put it on the web, and soon other people started adding happy hours to it.
      • they hired a couple of designers, and did 3 or 4 revisions of the site over a few years.
      • there are thousands of happy hours listed.
      • it was wonderful to see it take off.
      • what is success?
        • They sold it, not for a ton of money, but something.
        • but huge cultural, community success: invited to conferences, meet people, get hugs on the street, get invited to interviews.
        • Got hired by an interactive shop based solely on the reputation of having done unthirsty.
        • At the point prior to this, doing a bunch of lame websites, and afterwards getting to do high profile stuff.
    • Jason on Cars
      • Would get to drive high performance cars once a week as part of his job.
      • Put up a wordpress blog on his experiences driving the exotic cars. 
      • After he left his job at the magazine, he asked the car folks if he could keep getting the cars so he could blog about it.
      • The car folks shrugged their shoulders, checked the blog, and then said yes.
      • For two years he got a new exotic car each week. On Thursday a guy would show up in his office with a new car key, and take away the old car. He’d write a 300-400 blog post, and that was it.
      • He gets a few hundred bucks a month in advertising, and a new exotic car every week.
    • Bacn.com:
      • An experiment in “can we build a company in three weeks?”
      • “Why not, let’s build something.”
      • They had full-time jobs, but they were bored. They wanted something fun to do.
      • So they started the business, launched the store, acquired bacon, etc. All in three weeks. Just for fun.
      • They got invited to write a book: From idea to Web Start-Up in 21 Days: Creating bacn.com. Now he has a book on Amazon.com.
      • Sold the site to a competitor.
      • “Oh, you’re the guy who sold bacon.” –> much more valuable than “oh, I could build that for you.”
        • It’s a more interesting story, a more convincing story.
        • It’s not just a story of you following orders, it’s a story about you doing things because you care about it.
    • Paleo Plan: Launched in 3 weeks
      • Threw up WordPress, spent $100 in adwords, to find out whether people would pay for it or not.
      • Now it’s a $9.99 subscription service. He hired programmers, he hired a paleo dietist.
      • Not much traffic initially. But did a redesign, continued working on it, and by March it was making more money than anything else he had every done. 
      • Now he spends an hour a week, and makes a great second income.
    • Lots of failures, we don’t need to talk about.
      • laptopia
      • to smoke a cigar
      • snotips
      • revolution cyclewear
      • on and on…
  • The point is to keep trying.
    • All of them had some success.
    • Some of them were really small successes: e.g. learning “don’t sell t-shirts online”
    • Don’t work on something that absolutely, positively has to be up. You’ll never get to take a vacation.
    • Just keep trying.
  • You don’t have to broadcast your failures
    • Make them count
    • Get there fast
  • Other successes in Portland
    • Mugasha
    • 30-hour day: raised a bunch of money for some charities.
    • Sunago – Scott Andreas: always had two full time jobs, and doing fun stuff on the weekend. 
    • PDXBoom: crowd sourced map of sound: put a pin on a Google map with the intensity of the sound. Was able to find a pipe bomb that had been set off in a park, based on the loudness clustering on the map.
    • Avatari: Sam Grover
    • @ was wrong: Michael Richardson
  • The tools are free. It’s fun. Let’s do something to get excited.
  • Questions to Ask Yourself
    • Is this for art?
      • Are you using for an outlet to be creative?
    • Is this for money?
      • Are you trying to make money?
    • Don’t confuse the two: art and money. You can’t do both. Let your outlets be your outlets.
    • Is this for your career?
      • Will do this help build your skills or reputation?
    • What does success look like?
  • Talk to everyone. Week out bad ideas early.
    • Jason focuses on low risk ideas: a few hundred bucks and a weekend.
  • Ways to get started
    • Partner with someone.
    • Expect this won’t work. Expect you’ll be trying something else soon. Build!
    • Test (with Adwords) and prove a model
    • Start with a simple prototype.
    • Don’t worry if you haven’t figured it out right away.
    • You can adjust as necessar once you get going.
    • Publish a work, tell people. Publish again.
    • Don’t take yourself too seriously. This should be fun.
  • USE THESE:
    • WordPress
    • Cheap cameras and flip cams
    • Simple audio/video tools
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
  • How?
    • Building 50 cups.
    • There was a pottery class. The instructor split the group into two parts. He told the first group that they would be judged entirely on the quality of one piece. he told the second group that they would be judged entirely on the quantity of output. If they made 50 bowls, they would get an A.
      • The first group labored over making a bowl. They were so petrified of screwing it up, they made lousy bowls.
      • The second group made so many bowls, so many flopped, and they learned from their successes, and in the end they produced the best bowls.
    • You don’t want to be the person who almost launched that one website.
  • Questions
    • Q: How do you get traffic to your site?
      • It varies: for Paleo, I use Adwords. the money i spend brings in more money, it’s a profit. For unthirsty, we got great organic search results: no one else has a blog post on “Vancouver Chiles Happy Hour”.
    • Q: How is it different for things that deliver a social value?
      • Paleo has a huge community: they are people who have decided to be healthy in a particular way. They’re friends think they are crazy, so they get a lot of value from the community. on the other, it’s harder to form a community around unthirsty, because there’s no social value to bring a drunk.
      • Are you catering to someone’s identity, and can you strengthen that by catering to it?
    • Q: You mentioned that your T-shirt thing didn’t work. Maybe we’re in the same place. Did you have any idea on what you would have wanted to do if you wanted to make it work?
      • The barrier to entry is so low to that market. Anyone can make, market, and sell it. So you have to find a novel way to sell it. There’s a white underwear, white sock, and white undershirt subscription service. It’s totally plain. But it’s sold in a novel way: you need these things replenished on a regular basis.
      • What about doing that for ink sales? Shouldn’t they just come to your office, house based on what you use?
      • Threadless shows customers wearing their t-shirts. That’s how they advertise. Is there some way to do that for printers? To tie in to the community of customers?
    • Q: something about advertising.
      • If I am selling something, like bacn or paleo plan, then there’s no advertising.
      • But for giving away information, then i do advertising.
      • People don’t want to see advertising for things they pay for.
      • Subscriptions are great because the money keeps coming in. Beats advertising. People just stay subscribed, even if they stop using the service.
      • Every person should get great customer experience, because they have friends.

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First Novel: Paths To The Editor Desk
Bruce Taylor
Mary Hobson
Christina York
Gail Carriger
  • Gail Carriger
    • got picked up out of the slushpile
    • had an offer on hand
    • scrambled to find an agent
    • of two agents, got handed off to assistant in one case… went with the other.
    • of the other agent, she had many authors querying her with offers in hand and still turned some of them down
    • had choice of two publishing houses – one was big established house, one was small, but aggressive, social media savvy – ended up going with smaller publishing house
  • Christina York
    • Approached asked to do some erotic adventure… wrote it and sold it. very unusual.
    • since then, sold eight books, but none by regular submissions path.
    • Some books were work for hire: you don’t own the copyright, etc. This is true especially of tie-ins, e.g. star wars, star trek, etc.
    • Work for hire: some was flat fee, some was advance + royalties
    • Some under her name, some under other names.
    • Hot Waters: spies and sex story, written under pseudonym. Got reversion of rights, even though it was done as work for hire.
  • Bruce Taylor
    • first work
      • first thing he sold was a novella in 1992
      • sections of it sold, sections of it on his website
      • in 2000, then was discovered and sold it.
    • second work sold was written in 1980s… 
      • 25 years later he finally sold it.
      • as a result of a conversation at a con.
  • Mary Hobson
    • rather traditional route
    • wrote the book, then shopped it around to agents
    • ended up with ginger robins
    • went through several edits for ginger before ginger agreed to represent it
    • interested an editor at random house. editor got laid off, then transitioned to another editor who was about to leave on maternity. so there were many delays, but it was eventually published.
    • Q: it is common for an agent to take on an editors role?
      • Mary: it can be with some – they want to make the book sellable.
      • Gail: A YA pitch… agent wanted to see half the book. Agent asked to see 20% cut out. Because of the tone, asked for it to be dropped to middle-grade. Now the editor who has seen it wants 20% more and for it to be young-adult.
    • Q: How long did it take?
      • Mary: Finished book in 2002, started shopping it around. Did 2 or 3 rounds of edits before Ginger would take her on. They went on for 2 years before she took her on as a client. You send an edit to the agent, they take 6 months to get back to you, then you take 4 months to get the edit back to them.
      • Christina: New writers have ceded authority to agents. Sometimes authors have to just believe in their work. Agents are not always the expert. Lots of examples of agents asking for stuff, and then editors ask for the reverse. Or agents asking for edits, then not representing work.
  • Your first novel…
    • it shouldn’t be your only novel
    • it shouldn’t be consuming all your time
  • Q: As a starting novelist, do you should agents or publishers first?
    • Christina: who’s going to write you the check?
    • Gail: 
      • Go to preditors and editors first. http://pred-ed.com/
      • Agent
        • You can send out as many agent queries as you like.
        • On Mondays, she sends out 3 queries every Monday
        • Just keeping going with the agents
      • Publishers
        • It helps to meet editors at conventions
          • “Have you bought anything recently you’re excited about?”
          • If editors or agents or at a convention, they are clearly looking, as it takes time and energy.
        • Mary: Since there are so few publishers take unsolicited manuscripts, really invest in finding an agent.
        • Gail: look for a junior editor or assistant agent: because they are trying to make their career, they are out looking for stuff, they will champion for you.
    • Bruce: Do lots of research.
  • Mary: What about publishing online as a path to the editor’s desk?
    • Christina: I don’t look as it as a path to the editor’s desk, I see it as a path to the reader. My back book are now going online. It has worked for other people. For me, with my particular career, electronic publishing is a piece of the whole.
    • Gail: There is copyright stuff that goes on the moment you put your work online. Publishing houses want the first rights. So if you’ve given that up, you’d better be coming to the publisher with 60,000 readers.
      • Also, don’t put anything up unless you are having at least 5 people edit what you right. Because the first thing an editor does is Google you, and if they find your blog or personal site, and if what they find is less than great, than you really don’t want them to find it. Whatever you put up there better be stellar. And if all you’ve gotten is rejections, then probably it’s not stellar.
      • Resist it for a couple of years at least. Write at least several full length books. If those first works still look great, then maybe consider it. 
  • Novel length
    • Minimum length for a pro book is 70,000 words.
    • Get feedback from a group, there’s got to be more story to tell
    • Maybe there’s another point of view
    • Some smaller presses might consider it.
    • But you’ll never get a new york publisher to look at a 40k, 50k novel.
    • But you’ve got to be under 120,000 thousand, because they won’t look at a first novel.
    • 80,000 is the average for first novel.
  • Self-publishing…
    • No way, don’t do it.
    • It’s fine to do with your backlist once you have a name. but it’s very hard to rise above the noise.
    • But the royalties work out really well when you are already driving traffic.
  • Sometimes it is all timing…
    • Ken Scholes came in with a proposal for epic fantasy just as Robert Jordan died, and Tor had a hole in their publishing schedule. Ken Scholes is an excellent writer, and they had a strong need for epic fantasy, and it was a perfect match.
    • Don’t try to write to trends, because the trend now is not what will be trending in five years. Just write what you’re passionate about.

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But I Thought It Was Perfect!
The pain and pleasure of giving and receiving critique
John C. Bunnell
Dave Smeds
Diana Rodgers
  • the distinctions between critiquing, reviewing, and editing a manuscript
    • reviews are written for readers: saying what’s good or bad about a given work
    • critiquing is saying how a novel could be better
    • one is a practical concern for a reader vs one is for a writer
  • there’s a difference between an editor and a peer critiquing a novel
    • be clear about who you are asking for a critique from, and what you are expecting back
  • in some groups, the critiquer is considered in be on the outside, and their role is not to suggest improvements or fixes, but to merely observe what works and and doesn’t work.
  • At what point is a work ready to be critiqued?
    • The sooner the better. 
      • after a certain point, an author has an investment in what he’s written. 
      • as it nears the end, making substantial edits requires uprooting so much that you lose good and bad.
      • the later it happens, the less potential for effect it can have.
  • Critiquing a short story or even a novella is relatively easy. Critiquing a novel is more challenging. You might get a chapter at a time over a long period of time, or you might get a big chunk: a quarter or a third of the book. Neither method worked all the time for all works. 
    • group size can have an effect as well: with a bigger group, it’s harder to critique a bigger work. sometimes you want to pick out a few people that would serve you well.
    • short stories are kind of the ideal for writer’s workshop.
      • you can get global feedback and use it: “i think the theme should be this, or I think this story should be about…”
    • for longer works, it’s harder to get and use global feedback.
  • Sometimes you look for particular kinds of feedback:
    • does this character behave in accordance with their motivations?
    • do i need to know if this is good? or do i need to know what’s wrong?
    • do i need copyediting help, or plot help?
    • the better you can articulate what you need, the better feedback you will get.
  • On the one hand you want the most relevant feedback, e.g. the hard science fiction writer will have weight than the fantasy writer when you’re writing science fiction. On the other hand, you can get some very useful feedback from beginning writers, which you might try to discount their feedback because they aren’t published. but frequently they have really good feedback, and they are really invested in the process.
  • Oral vs written
    • You get different kinds of feedback for each. Oral works for some issues, and written works better for others.
    • Techniques for oral: 
      • have written manuscript, so people can write critiques as the author is reading. 
      • have others read the dialogue, so the author can write notes

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Although my day job is currently web strategy and analytics, I’ve recently finished my first science fiction novel. I’m at my first Orycon, a Portland, Oregon science fiction convention.
I just finished the Evolution of a Writing Career workshop led by authors Ken Scholes and J.A. Pitts.

Here are my notes:

  • J.A. Pitts:
    • started writing when he was 13
    • writing short stories forever
      • “wow, that’s a great first chapter of a novel”
      • “you can’t have 9 plot lines in a short story”
    • started writing seriously in college. studied english. had to spend 10 years unlearning everything he studied.
    • got discouraged frequently: had to learn to get touch skin. if you aren’t getting rejections, you aren’t working hard enough.
    • if you want to be a professional writer, you write. that’s it. it’s a job. it’s not a hobby.
      • most people don’t think of their writing that way, and that’s a mistake.
      • if you want to make a living at it, you’ve got to treat it like a real job.
  • Ken
    • started telling stories when he was really young. 
    • started submitting stories when he was 14 years old.
    • came back to it, dabbling a little in 1996.
    • didn’t know there was writers groups, conventions, etc.
    • decided he didn’t like writers groups. they don’t work for him.
    • if you are wanting major distribution, then you generally want a publisher. even the exceptions (like eragon, which was self published)…in fact have traditional publishing working for them: both of his parents were editors, and were best friends of professional editors and publishers.
  • Beginner friendly markets
    • Use duotrope.com and ralan.com.
      • have both short story and novel markets
      • use publishersweekly.com (cost $20/month): has an email that comes out each week, and publishers and agents usually post their sales there. so if you want to see who is publishing and buying what, you can see it.
    • Never undersell yourself. Always start at the top. Always go down the list. If you start at the bottom, you will get sales faster, but you won’t get the reach.
    • There’s no such thing, because no market is really friendly.
    • “the smaller the market, the more egotistical the editor is.” – they want more edits, for almost no money.
    • Don’t stop: keep going through all the markets. You can get 30 rejections, just keep going.
  • e-publishing markets are OK if they pay you. 
    • orson scott card has an electronic distribution.
    • tor.com pays 25 cents a word.
  • Self-publishing
    • Avoid self-publishing at all costs.
    • you’ll get negative rejection from a lot of people in the business if you’re self published, and you’ll have to overcome that.
    • on the other hand, for established writers… when their old books are not reprinted by the publisher, then the rights revert to the author. they can resell to another publishers, or they can self-publish, which some writers are now doing.
    • maybe only if you’d already tried every market and no one accepted it, or if its older stuff that no one wants.
    • The other thing that happens is that if you finally sell your 3rd or 4th novel, they might say “do you have anything else i can buy?” at which point, having a bunch of previous, unsold manuscripts is a great resource.
    • If you are putting out a novel a year, then you have a good pipeline, 
  • Rights:
    • science-fiction/fantasy writers of america: professional organization. will help you if you are concerned about contract violations. 
    • Read everything carefully – don’t sell all world rights for a fixed price. “first world english”, whether you can resell it, etc. you always want to have to right to resell if possible, in case you get picked up by something else, something new.
  • What to do when the offer happens
    • dance
    • ken: by the time you are getting an offer from a new york publisher, you probably have an agent, and they will help advise you.
    • john: didn’t have an agent, got a call from an editor, and when he did, the editor asked “do you have an agent?” the answer was: “i’m close, let me get back to you.”  then scrambled to get an agent.
    • you don’t have to start with an agent, but you have to get an agent or a literary lawyer. the contracts run from 16 to 30 pages. you want someone who can really interpret that for you.
    • the agent gets 15% of your book deal forever. so they have a vested interested in getting you a good deal.
  • Finishing vs starting something new vs. continually revising
    • Your old material will never be as good as your new material. You will keep getting better and better. You can’t just relayer new stuff on top of old. Write it and finish it. Get it as good as you can. Then go out and market it. Don’t touch it again until you get a request from an editor to make a change.
    • Submit everything. Don’t worry that it’s not publishable. The longer you practice submitting stories to markets, the better you will get at it.
    • Editors don’t remember the bad stories. They remember you, and they remember that you are a consistent writers. Editors talk to each other. They root for you as writers. The more you submit, the more consistently, to more markets, the better and better chance you get.
  • Resubmitting…
    • if the editor asks you to make changes or suggests changes, then do resubmit.
    • if the editor for a market changes, then do resubmit.
    • if you did some rewrites for another market, you could do a query first.
    • It’s all about relationships and etiquette: you want them to have a good vibe about you.
  • Rewriting on request:
    • If you want to sell, do it.
    • They would love for you to be a best-seller. They are trying to make it be a better book.
  • Identity and Branding
    • Go get your domain name for your name.
    • One for your book, one for yourself, have a blog, have a twitter. 
    • Publishers have a limited amount of capital. The bigger folks gets more marketing dollars.
    • So decide… how important is it?
    • The first thing a publisher is going to do is google you.
    • Don’t let it interfere with writing time, but do treat it like a business. Schedule time to do a blog post a week.
  • read christopher moore: extremely funny writer, writes about vampires and horror, but marketed as mainstream.
  • World building (in fantasy novels)
    • You want it to be as smooth as possible.
    • If it’s rice, call it rice. If it looks like a horse, call it a horse.
  • 55K novel length
    • That’s fine for YA, which comes in around 60K, but it’s not enough for big world thrillers. But, there are some markets that might take it. Submit it, get feedback from editors and agents.
  • favorite books on writing
    • natalie goldberg… writing by the bones
    • ben bova, orson scott card… both have books
    • but best thing you can do it just read, read, read.
    • any book that sings to you is a good book to learn from.
    • zen and the art of writing by ray bradbury.
  • cover letters… they don’t need a love letter. only what your story is, and what relevance you experience have.
    • use a personal touch, especially if you run into an editor at a conference.
    • nice people are remembered better than people who aren’t.

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From Good Guide comes this visualization of the political contributions by companies in the computer industry. Order is ranked by dollar value of contributions, so Cisco was a top contributor while Apple was near the bottom. I find it interesting that in fairly democratic industry, a handful of companies are Republican outliers.

(Disclosure: I currently work for HP, although this is my personal blog, and I’m speaking only for myself.)