Following The Green

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ComputerWorld posted an article that greatly disturbs me. In the article, it shows the growth of CS courses after a steady decline from the ’03-’04 school year to ’07 and how many are switching majors from business. It also mentions that students were making a similar swap back in the late 90’s towards tech.

Bryant said he expects that the troubles on Wall Street will likely influence some students to switch majors in the coming months from business to other fields, including computer science. He also urges caution to those students.

These students are obviously in it for the green, they followed it to business and now that it collapsed they’re following it to the next big thing. What we need are people passionate about what they do, not people that are only passionate about money, key examples abound in the Financial Sector right now. I think we should find people who actually want to do these jobs, and not just for the money.

With the economy as weak as it is, if your a small company it’s going to be even more important for you to find passionate people, just read Jason Calacanis’ latest post (recommend signing up to his mailing list), excerpt below.

3. Firing the average people: Again, it’s totally politically
incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or
average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is
critical. You wouldn’t put a “good” swimmer in a relay, would you?
Don’t have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with
the great. ~ Jason Calacanis

You know who are probably not going to be average, the people who are passionate about what they are doing. The passionate employee may spend more of their personal time on learning more about they’re area, and be willing to take a pay cut to keep they’re position.

So we need to find a way to deter people from following the money, in the next few years we will see a large rise in un-passionate employees in the Tech Industry. This will hurt companies that invest in people that only got into the area for the cash. What happens when the cashflow slows, or another bubble happens, and how can we stop them now?

Start Me Up: Interview With Calley Nye About Dashbuzz

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With the economy the way it is and VC’s tightening the reigns on the funding they are giving out, a startup is hard to do right now, especially without a prototype. Recently, I came across Calley Nye(SiliconCalley) through a tweet from social media genius Gary Vaynerchuk, and they spoke about a stealth site that she was quite tight lipped about.

Yesterday, was the day that she finally shared some information about this site it will be called Dashbuzz. However, she currently doesn’t have a prototype to present to venture firms, so she is seeking to raise twenty-five thousand in grassroots funding through a program she’s calling Start Me Up. I decided to interview her to see if I could get more details that what she had given on her post. She gladly provided answers and I would like to see this service get funded as it looks like an amazing marketing tool.
I have provided the interview below.

I understand that your site is still in pre-alpha stages correct?

Yes, Dashbuzz is currently in very early stages(pre-alpha), but we are moving along quickly and hope to come out with a beta in early 2009.

Is Dashbuzz a marketing tool, and who do you plan on the service targeting, professional marketers or the general public?

The roots of the idea lies in marketing, but not traditional marketing. My marketing experience is in social media marketing and using grassroot techniques. Rather than coming out with a tool that is solely for marketing companies and professional marketers, I’ve decided to provide the general public with the tools that they need for marketing, in hopes that it opens the social media marketing industry to everyone.

It will be a freemium service so there will be different levels; they will range from average social media usage(1-5 services) to extreme social media usage(5+ services). I feel like the site everyone has the right to understand how to get their content out there, whether it be a blog, art, music, films, or their business. We will eventually offer and enterprise size application that will take advantage of the usage statistics from the other users.

What value do you see this service providing to this group?

It will offer a new way to look at how we use social media. Currently, we are using all these services, but we don’t know what kind of activity sparks what kind of traffic and sales. Maybe when you post at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Facebook, you get more page views than you do at 10:30 o’clock in the morning. Have you ever had a spike and didn’t know where it came from? These are all things that we are attempting to figure out, and I think the knowledge of such events will offer great value to our users.

What other ventures have you been involved with and how successful were they?

This is my first company that offers a real product. I had a social media marketing company for several years, but that was a service, so it wasn’t scalable at all. I made good money for awhile, but couldn’t build it up too much. I decided I wanted to start building things, instead of building things up for other people. So, I started my blog SiliconCalley to learn more about startups. After a brief stint writing for TechCrunch, I started an LA based tech news blog called TechNews.LA. It hasn’t been around that long, but it’s doing very well.

What will the people investing in your service this early be receiving for their assistance?

They will be enrolled on the beta tester list to be the first people to use the service. They will also receive discounts on the site when we open up the premium memberships. Bloggers who invest will then be the first people to write about the service. Service providers and advertisers( and potential partners) who invest will also be considered first when the time comes the top 100 investors will receive free lifetime memberships.

If anyone is interested in providing funding to help start this company please visit her site here, where you can read what she’s written about this, donate to the cause, or contact her for further information.

Issues That Windows And The Government Share

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While jotting down some notes for another post; I wrote 3 issues that the government and Windows share. This lead to me coming up with more and more so I decide I’d give you a list of what I came up with. I would love it if you shared any that you can think of.

  1. When your in the direst of need for there services an error occurs in which everything must be restarted.
  2. They are bloated trying to provide everything to everyone.
  3. They have services you didn’t know about consuming precious resources.
  4. They come with programs that are never used.
  5. The user interface can be horrible, it always looks great but doesn’t always respond.
  6. If you’ve got the money you can get a better experience.
  7. Pretty much everyone knows about these issues but the majority don’t mind and continue to use it.

Come on people share any that you can come up with.

Learn While Working

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Skimming through my library this afternoon, I came across Rich Dad, Poor Dad and it has maybe one section worth reading, ‘Work to Learn’. This is a great idea that I employed in my job search, over the last couple of months.This is one of approach that many people don’t think about though it’s one of the best ways to search for a job.

The work you do should rub off on you in positive ways that add to your value as a person, provides a skill or increases your abilities. In the formal education system we choose our education to help us get work when we’re done. Many  people don’t choose a job for what value it will add to their skills but for what it will add to their wallet. This principle is best suited for the younger job seekers, late teens-early 30’s. The older age groups may gain something from it but with far less potential for reinvesting those skills.

A great example is myself and how this principle has improved me. I’ve been socially inept all my life, except for close friends I didn’t enjoy dealing with people. Even in college I only interacted with the people I had to and friends from high school. However, just over a month ago, I got a job as a rental agent and have become a much more social person. I have to interact with people every day, settling complaints, providing them directions, and helping them find assistance if I can provide it. I have seen this skill improve as I’m more comfortable sharing with people than ever before. I went from a secluded introvert to a secluded extrovert(geographically secluded, for now).

I’m also working on several web projects. These projects have provided me a way to learn more languages and study them deeper, than I would if I was just doing it for fun, though it is. I have increased my knowledge in this area though it’s still inefficient and everything is in the red. Several hundred dollars versus several thousand for school though put’s it in perspective 40-60 hrs/week vs. 80-100 hrs/week. It seems like a fair trade; though, it punishes me if I want to go search for a job at a top Tech Company.

This is example of how successful it can be, I learned how to socialize and that wouldn’t have been taught to me in any school. If you wanted to learn skills through interaction; try and find a position, or create one, where you are forced to learn the valuable lessons, relating to that skill. Think about it your getting paid to increase your personal assets that you can take elsewhere, if you hate the job pick a new skill.

Back Your Shit Up

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That’s something a friend told me several months ago. It means doing what you want and stop dicking around, procrastinating ,and lying about who you are or what you’re doing. This hit me hard yesterday, chatting with some people on Ustream, a guy pointed out that you can’t call it a start-up if you haven’t started, yet, it’s just a project. The reason this hit me so hard is because I had heard it here 

from Gary Vaynerchuk when he spoke about the crowd that tries to flip their businesses without monetizing during your way to the top, “Make some cash along the way.”

If you want to get anywhere in this new social society, where transparency is so necessary, you are going to have to back your shit up. If you say something you better make sure you have the details right or your going to have your ass handed to you. You have to be able to provide your crowd of followers what they want and if you say your going to do something, you better <omitted> do it. I am going to keep doing this for myself but, I will continue to post it for my crowd.

DWYSYWD, saw those letters on a license plate in North Carolina, several years ago. I thought about what those letters meant for probably half an hour and finally came up with something that fit, ” Do what you said you would do.” Doing what you said you would do is the key to backing your shit up and, it will simplify your life. When you follow through and stop lying you remove the need to continue lying and you become transparent and open to these people. This is key to building your brand.

“Stop dicking around and back your shit up. Do what you said you would do.”

Being Fluid In Your Motions

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The world is changing so quickly that if your not readily adaptable to this change; you will have trouble keeping up with people who are ready. One of the best things that you can do is be fluid in your motions. Be able to adapt to what’s coming, view yourself as the water that sits behind a dam. If you want to get past that wall you can’t be a stone or you’ll never get past it. Thus, we must all be fluid and able to seep through the cracks, overflow the boundaries, or breakthrough with so much force we obliterate the wall.

Seeping Through is going to be slower than the other two ways to get through the path, but it will be more reserved and rational. This is a reasonable choice if you fear an abrupt change that would destroy the majority of progress that you made. You can still manage to get past the  wall, though you may be surpassed by others in the Overflow or Breakthrough categories.

Overflowing the Boundaries will be the most level of these ideas as it has an adequate pace and will fill the other side of the dam quite rapidly. This is for those who don’t mind risking a bit of their assets if something were to happen. You can outpace those that are just trying to Seep Through to gain ground and, also have a more consistent pace than that of someone who is trying to Breakthrough. This is the way to go if you want to be able to more reliably adapt and still move quickly.

Breakthrough is going to be the quickest once it happens, but the pace will be hard to maintain, without prior planning. You can destroy the barrier and quickly decimate your competition in the short-term, however, if you didn’t plan properly a change can ruin you just as quickly. If you pass the first dam and hit another down the line, you may not have enough pressure to cause it to buckle. Breaking through will not be for everyone, except for a few people who have it together, most people should try to just Overflow the boundaries or slowly Seep through.

If you were a stone you will sit at the bottom for ever and never find a path through to the otherside of  the dam. You may never know what lie on the other side and be just as happy and complacent for ever, slowly being wittled down by those that flowed past you. You do not want to be a stone do you? Most of all, be yourself and find a way to adapt to the change, pass  through the barriers and achieve your goals.

Motivation Through Over-Extension (A Pragmatic Approach At Decision Making)

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I find that I’m either completely open or completely self repressed, complete bipolar personality. If I crack the door to possibility and opportunity, slightly ajar to the point of all or nothing. I’m going to follow through even if it effects something else I’m doing in a negative way. So, recently I developed a way for me to find a middle path that gives me some flexibility in what I do.

I make a decision early on that is an over-extension of what I’m capable of doing at this time. However, I allow myself time to achieve this over-extended goal with any problems that may arise(not so good for large short-term goals).

“Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again”~Harry Truman

I follow Truman’s outlook very pragmatically. I make the decision, but I allow my self to make shorter term goals as I advance toward the larger goal. This provides a less stressful approach to completing a task that doesn’t have a rigidly defined deadline.

One large thing that this could help with would be a Bucket List. Your not going to go running out and have all of these things planned to happen; you just want them to happen and along the way you find ways to make them happen. It is perfect example of pragmatic decision making is that you can still change the order of the smaller goals to slowly overcome the larger goal of things to do before you die, or some age limit.