The Must Read List: The Top Five Posts for 2011

Last year around this time I dedicated myself to try and write everyday for 2011.  While I wasn't able to reach that goal - I feel very good about what I was able to accomplish.  I want to thank every single one of you who visited the site and read anything - even once!  It is humbling to think that anyone would read anything I am writing so thank you!

Here are the top five posts on laurent-courtines.com for 2011:

5. New York City is Awesome When.... February 17th, 2011
A list of the reasons I love my home town.

4. Reflections on Five Years at AOL. July 17th, 2011

My views on AOL and the great people I worked with.

3. Facebook is in trouble and here's why. May 27th, 2011

After Facebook made a change I summed up some issues I think they have.  I may rue the day I wrote this down.

2. My Hometown: East Harlem New York.  It has problems. March 12th, 2011
Living in and growing up in Manhattans last ghetto, I list it's problems. This one gets picked up my search. Read this one, I'm proud of it.

1. How I manage over 100 Facebook Fan Pages. April 8th, 2011.

A service piece I did explaining how managed the entire AOL Games social presence.

Thanks everyone,  all four-thousand plus who visited the site this year.  I'll keep trying to write and bring what I can to the table.

Get bored... get really bored. It's important.

I haven't been writing much.  I haven't been doing much of anything else but working.  I get up,  I take the train, I work, I go home - the cycle continues.  That's most peoples days, sure.  For me,  I have been spending every waking minute thinking, pondering, wondering about my new job.  It's very exciting and I am loving it.  The difficulty,  the expectations, the responsibility has been exhilarating.  There is one problem.  I have no time to be bored.

Being bored is important.  Being bored is the state in which we have to find something to occupy our brains or we go bananas.  When I am bored I look for new things to learn.  When I am bored I call friends.  When I am bored I can be creative to you know? Not be bored!  My new job isn't allowing me to be bored.  That's a good thing but I miss being bored.

I never thought I would miss being bored but I do.  Boredom is awesome.  

A sign of the times - Talking out of one's ass is exploding.

Just read a wonderful article titled I Don't Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore by Dan Parlotta.  While reading it I smiled from ear to ear.  We are in the midst of an bullshit explosion of epic proportions. (Maybe we always have been but I might be just paying attention)   I do not absolve myself of the problem. I talk bullshit with the rest of them.  What is happening is people don't know how to speak straight and to the point.  

Here is an example of the bullshit that's going on from Dan Parlotta:

"You should meet this guy with the SIO. He's sort of this kind of social entrepreneur thinking outside of the box in the sustainability space and working on these ideas around sort of web-based social media, and he's in a round two capital raise in the VP space with the people at SVNP." 

WHAT? Oookaaay.

What we need is to get back to calling people out on what they are saying.  When people say "Like" all the time, ask them... Like what?  What is this thing you are saying like?  Literally is it like that?  Explain it to me please.  If someone says "let's hit this out of the ball park" Ask, what if I am singles hitter, who can steal bases?  Do I have to hit with power?  Just mess with people.  We need to get back to a more natural language of people meaning what they say and saying what they mean.

Just read the article and enjoy.  And if you are a bullshit talker,  try just a little bit harder to reduce your bullshit. I know I will.

Steal this idea: Pogo for dudes.

Pitch:  Take Mochi Games and Armor game and add them together.
Put a paywall up on the top 10 Armor games.  
Rotate the games in and out of the pay system. Subscribers would get.perks, status etc.  All the fancy stuff memberships provide.

Yes,  its Pogo for dudes, but so what? Why wouldn't people pay for an awesome curated flash game experience?

What writing is about: Being wrong

Maybe people are afraid to write, post, tweet or whatever because they are afraid.  They are afraid to say what they mean,  they are afraid that someone will throw something back in their face or they are simply afraid they have nothing interesting to say.  Fundamentally, the issue is folks afraid of being wrong.  If you write regularly,  things you say and think will be frozen in the time you wrote them in the context you wrote them (yes, you can go back and edit, but you get my meaning)  You might state a political opinion or a projection and you'll might be wrong about something.

I say?  So what? So you are wrong.  If you are writing enough and people are reading enough then your opinions will come through and as long as we explain when we came to the idea when we did,  then well,  you should be fine. 

Just keep writing and don't be afraid -  you are going to be wrong and that is fine with us.

This post was inspired by Om Malik's post on 10 years of Blogging. It's a great read.

New Jobs and Learning

New jobs are great.  Everything gets reset and we have the opportunity to see our value separate from our former jobs and organizations.  We get to reestablish what we know,  apply what we did and bring fresh perspective to a new place that needs newness.  We are offered the opportunity to look back at where we came from and see what actually worked. 

It's cliche,  but you don't know what you've got until it's gone.  Going from a fading web giant in AOL to a pivoting game company in Oberon Media, everything comes into hyper focus.  What matters from one job comes painfully into focus in another.  Nothing focus's one's efforts like lack of resources.  Constraints are the mother of invention.  When you set constraints and put a goal within the context of those constraints,  all of a sudden, you are forced into the magical zone of creativity.  The mind goes into "How the fuck do I do that mode?"  There is no better feeling in the world than that.  

You are forced to learn,  to push,  to find solutions and get there quickly. Sometimes you fail,  sometimes you don't but the engagement of the mind is invaluable. 
I am so thankful to be in a new job that is crunching my brain.

Must keep on writing....

Inspired by the famous tech investor Fred Wilson in this post - Writing I am determined to continue to post.
It has been very hard to keep writing.  Not because I don't have anything to say but because it simply doesn't come to the top of my mind.

I recommend you all read his post.  What inspired me an I wholly agree with is:  Writing makes you a better writer.  Keep writing.  Don't stop.  Push and try and succeed.
In the piece,  Fred says he began writing at 42!  42! There is always time,  you can always pick up and do it.  The tools are there,  the opportunity is there.  It's simply a matter of focus and making it a priority.

The irony of my writing is.... I failed English three times in High School.  Did summer school twice and night school twice to get all the stupid HS English credits needed.  I'm proud of that fact.  It didn't matter.  All it made me think was that I couldn't write (and some of you may still think that...)  Well,  blogging says otherwise and I'll keep on posting when I can. 

As always this is an interactive process.  If you want hear my thoughts on anything,  please let me know and I will spout!

Thanks!

Steal This Idea: Threadless or Minted for Flash Games

Here is the pitch:

• Allow would-be game makers to submit flash games.
• Set rules on size, play area size so that it is standardized (Maybe even three game engines - Match 3, Snood and ???)
• Something simply - upload game piece images, background image and that's it! (with advanced options for nerds)
• Everyday have the community vote on the game
• Each game has a week to be voted on.
• Games that win are then sold or monetized with ads that GO to the game maker - (yes all of it)

The result should be a vibrant community of people sharing games and helping decide what games come next. People could laugh at silly games or marvel at wonderful art put into the context of games.  If there are a hundred variations of match 3 games (think Bejeweled) why not let there be ten thousand match 3 games with a community of creators?

Yes,  Gamesalad does this SOMEWHAT and so does Newgrounds SOMEWHAT- but both are niche

Am I right? Am I wrong? Can we democratize making flash games?

Flash games are a commodity - Here's how I know.

Games come in all shapes and sizes.  There are great games and there are shitty games.  There are so many games in fact,  they are nearly disposible.  But they are a commodity.  You can stand up a site and grab traffic faster than you can set up a twitter account.... 

I made this games site in the last 5 minutes.... yes,  it has every type of game you can think of.
If I can do this you can too.   

Steal this idea: the Etsy of games

Create an eCommerce platform for game developers, game affictionatos and game culturists of any shapes and sizes.
Get away from the current portal options of Steam, App Store or web portal (Big Fish Games, Trymedia, Yahoo) Focus on the art and craft of games and provide the tools for game makers to experiment, grow personal communities. 
Lastly and most importantly go beyond playable games to encompass culture of play.

Is this what it felt like to be English in 1919?

The United States it's so clearly in  decline that it is time to start looking toward our most logical historical equalent: The United Kingdom.

The UK peaked as the ultimate world power in 1870 (give or take a few years) It took World War I and the Boer War to totally hammer it into ground. (By WW II the UK was toast and would have been occupied had it not been for the USA and Soviets)

History lesson aside, it is great example and an idea of what the US need to move towards. The US needs to become to China,  what the UK was to the US.  (if it isn't already) A big brother who shows them the way forward while hitching its political capital to the new power.

 The UK and the US always had the historical bonds and sat in the same side for two wars and reconstruction of Europe twice. It is during the war years that somehow the UK hitches its wagon to the US while simultaneously declining gracefully as a world power. (The end comes with India's independence) With the UK by its side the US has had a confidant and in its dealings with the world a partner who will always side with it.

Ths US is already in the role with China and we have a few items to sort out as the transition happens over the decades. (US and UK had a handful of these, Suez and Palestine come to mind)

The irony of it all is that China and the US while on the surface different, they are really the same. Both are run by a small oligarchy (in China the communist party, in the US the monied 1%) both are about profit at all costs and both completely control their people through legend, myth and media

Lastly both are completly petrified of the marginalized majority rising up to topple the status quo.

There is no book where you can look all this up and it all is just in my mind.  Knowing your history can really get your brain going when you see the big picture.

Digitization: the beast that devours

Will they never learn? Will any traditional media learn the mistakes of its brethren and survive the digital onslaught?
First music and newspapers next books and television.  The world will never learn that 1 and 0's will destroy trees, plastic.and actuals stores every time!
The latest to face full on attack is book publishers.  The are so completely doomed.  You watch.... books stores will go the way of record stores in ten years (if not sooner)

We are both the 1% and the 99%

 

Blaming the super-duper rich is an easy construct that does us
a disservice.  I do not obsolve, blame or take credit for anything. Nor do claim to sit in judgement. My mind wanders here and there and these are my thoughts.

Power is in the collective. 

While we all sat making money and buying big screen TV's we collectively, all 100% stood by.  We stood by as schools got worse, we stood by as Al-Qaeda grew. We stood by and borrowed. We stood by as real wealth shrank and thin wealth grew.  We let a government that is supposed to protect our freedoms get hijacked, piece by piece, year by year by vocal fringes.  We sat and waited. 

When everything fell apart, we still sat and wondered what happend.  

The time for sitting, waiting and blaming is over.  We are the 100% and we accept responsibility. We now demand our lives generate real value.  We build new institutions that create a new narritive for the future.  Lets build things that are built to last, not for quarterly profits.  Lets help co-workers be better at their work and not worry about our next raise. Build cars that last 30 years not 4. Make clothes guaranteed for life. Make stronger bonds to the earth. Get away from "look at what I have" to "look at what WE did"  Lets pull together get the very rich to pay their dues,  the middle to stand up for the rights of the poor and the poor to do everything they can to better themselves.  Lets not blame. Lets help each other.  No more I pay taxes so you can live. No more I made my money and I'm keeping it or I made it in this country, I'm slamming the door.  We all did well because of each others work.  Rich got rich through the safety of our laws.  The middle got its shot by aspiring to be better than our parents.  And the poor are poor through no fault of their own.  We all share responsibility.

I don't like percentages of a whole. Let's be whole.

Steal this idea: Games Portal as timeline

Idea: take the interface memolane.com (a horizontal timeline) and place games on the timeline as they are added to a site.

For the user, whenever they play a game, the play activity is added to their timeline. The value is that a user will be able to visualize what games they have played or downloaded. Over time additional events could be added (highscores, types of favorites, friends etc.)  This solves the player headache of not being able to find games they have played and gives a more pleasing visualization of games played.

To facilitate discovery, timelines could have text based filters.  Instead of search results, the game timeline would change to show.results.

Thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Please blow holes through my idea.

I could not be prouder... I married a model. Check out her pics

My wife Lisa, did a one day photo shoot for a old school New York furrier named Hy Fishman.  She did the photo shoot months ago,  but the site just went live.

Lisa and I went through it yesterday.... the results are, well,  astonishing. 

She is in the main banner and promotion... Amazing. Please click through.

http://www.hyfishmanfurs.com/ 

Two important books I think you should read

No, not Steve Jobs biography! If we think of human beings being measured on a bell-curve of intelligence, most of us are in the middle. Steve Jobs is on the far end of exceptional.  Trying to emulate him?  Is likely going to be futile.  However,  we can learn and read about what he did intuitively in two wonderful books.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

and 

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail 

Both books are covering the same thing - the fact that innovation andchange in companies need to work under different processes than an existing business.  Existing business and business practices work in a word of known markets and sustaining business.  New business or unknown markets work in a world where those rules and processes do not apply.  

I'll never be able to do justice to either book.  Instead I heartily recommend both books for anyone who 1.  Wants to know how real, new markets for products get built 2.  Understand why perfectly sound companies fail to see there own doom.

Read them both.  It's worth it.

This is the smell of victory (Plus, who doesn't like PopTarts)

Cookie Monster on what a computer really needs to do.

Best line "WHAT WHAT, YOU ALWAYS DENYING ME"

Thanks so much to mental floss.

Why are Online Game Sites Always Just The Same Old Playable Games?

I read a blog post about content curation problem of the web that referred to W.S.Burrough's Cut Up Technique and that led me down a path of questioning why all flash game sites only have games? 

 It would seem to me that the joy of playing quick hit little flash games could be mixed up with the internet memes of BuzzFeed or the image remixing of Moot's canv.as.  Where utter absurdity of content in flash games being chopped up,  split up and made into something new?

Wouldn't it be great if I could mix Angry Birds with Charlie Sheen's head?  Or put LOLCats into a hidden object game?  I wonder if there isn't some great product that can take the fun and wonderful world of flash games and mix it with the creativity and hilarity of internet memes and internet image mixing.

This of course takes me back to,  where the hell is the Tumblr Site with Flash games on it! After all,  there has never been a great platform that didn't have games built into it at some point.

Steal this idea: A mobile version of Addictinggames.com

Here is the pitch - create a mobile flash game, or HTML5 game portal with a handful of games that will work on the small screen. (Kongregate and Mochi Media have done this already) 

The difference in my story is that you borrow from the music business and cache any game that is being played so that it can be stored for offline use.

The reason this is compelling and different from an app of an individual game is that you can have a constantly updated catalog (the way Mochi, Kongregate and Addicting Games do) without being controlled by the draconian Apple Store.

The mobile web is coming and coming fast,  the faster you can replicate what the big established web portals are doing but as mobile experiences the better.

Down with the app tyranny!

Curation is good, aggregation is better

There is a lot of content out there today. I mean tons. So much that your face will melt. With all that content there is a belief that someone out there needs organize it.  Google took a stab at it with search. They succeed for a time.  Facebook is succeeding for now. But folks want more...

Within the internet community a buzz is brewing... we need curation! Someone, anyone, please tell me what the hell all this information means! What do I need to know! Help!

Lots of different sites are taking the stab at curation. What used to be the realm of news women is now problem for all of us. We're all fighting to figure out what is going to be the headline of my own daily
paper? What is the most important news of the day?  Sure we find sites that bring us their headlines but do we trust them? Are they giving us regurgitated news?

For businesses no one is winning on curation. The internet is littered with tiny, little sites all trying to curate smaller and smaller nitches of news. What wins on the internet (so far) is aggregation.  Taking in as much content as you possibly can and letting folks find what they want.  The best sites start with the vision of ALL:
Google wants to organize all the worlds information.
Facebook wants to organize all your friends.
Amazon started with all the books and now wants to sell you all things.
The New York Times sells "All the news that is fit to print".. See the problem there? How do you define fit? What if they just went to all the news!

Get into aggregation and the all business. 

Jordi's Got 99 Problems

via buzzfeed.com

Yes.... your moment of nerd.

The next run on the web is about to begin

Facebook is at it again! This time, the are taking their platform play to mobile.  Facebook recently relaunched their mobile experience as an HTML5 based rich functionality website.

Why this matters?
For the first time (ok not first, but its more dramatic), a major web player is transferring the deep functionality one expects from the desktop web to mobile. This means apps on Facebook will now work on mobile. (at least in theory) This means the way you navigate via mobile will begin to mimic the full browser. We are moving towards more unified experience.

Business impacts
Anything that is on the web helps the established web companies.and supports existing infrastructure. The Googles and Amazons of the world love when things stay on the web.  Anything open, hurts Apple.  Web native apps allow anyone to avoid Apples app store and tax (Apple gets 30% of all app store purchases) and draconian app store approval process.

A new user land grab
Mobile game developers are likely going to flock to the new platform.  Any HTML5 game that jumps on board will likely have free, new eyeballs to check out their game. Facebook is using the same playbook it used on the web to grow its mobile experience - open platforms and free viral marketing.

Get ready folks, we're in for another wild ride, not for a run to Facebook or Apple but for a run from the desktop web, to the mobile web.

Occupy Wall Street stands for one thing. Find.out what it is.

My favorite politcal economist Umair Haque says it the Occupyists stand for one thing: 

Rebellion. 

I wholly agree.  We are living in a world with institutional damage and corruption.  I know the vitrol for the Wall Street workers is a bit unfair (See Fred, I know its not you) but it is about what Wall Street represents. Wall Street represents the power, corruption and our damaged institutions.  We could just as easily have Occupy Congress, or Occupy Health Insurance or Occupy Education.  Wall Street is simply the most visible of the damaged institutions.

I want to sum it up this way for my nerdy-Star Wars-aged friends.
Rebel Alliance : Galactic Empire :: Occupy Wall Street : Big Four Banks

I mean? Who would really support the Empire?

Want to win at your job? Translate this to what you do.

Startup Metrics for Pirates

View more presentations from Dave McClure

The next run on the web is about to begin

Facebook is at it again! This time, the are taking their platform play to mobile.  Facebook recently relaunched their mobile experience as an HTML5 based rich functionality website.

Why this matters?
For the first time (ok not first, but its more dramatic), a major web player is transferring the deep functionality one expects from the desktop web to mobile. This means apps on Facebook will now work on mobile. (at least in theory) This means the way you navigate via mobile will begin to mimic the full browser. We are moving towards more unified experience.

Business impacts
Anything that is on the web helps the established web companies.and supports existing infrastructure. The Googles and Amazons of the world love when things stay on the web.  Anything open, hurts Apple.  Web native apps allow anyone to avoid Apples app store and tax (Apple gets 30% of all app store purchases) and draconian app store approval process.

A new user land grab
Mobile game developers are likely going to flock to the new platform.  Any HTML5 game that jumps on board will likely have free, new eyeballs to check out their game. Facebook is using the same playbook it used on the web to grow its mobile experience - open platforms and free viral marketing.

Get ready folks, we're in for another wild ride, not for a run to Facebook or Apple but for a run from the desktop web, to the mobile web.

Steal this game idea: Flash Game Roulette

This just came to me so be cool. Take a giant flash game repository, something like all of Mochi Media or every single Kongregate game, add all of them to a single game container.   It could be AJAX or Flash, whatever will make game load fast enough.
Add a chat room, a next game spin button and share game with a room button.
Key items will be a cool display while the randomizer runs (this will hide the game loading and some payoff for finding a new game or popular game
Optional items, avatars, graphical representation of the room.

Ok? Punch holes? Why would this not be a fun way to consume flash games and discover new ones?

Brooklyn: Hype verses reality

Dear new jack Brooklyn folks...  STFU already! (look up stfu, or focus on the FU) Its over.  I went to high school in Brooklyn, lived in Brooklyn and have taken my pants off in a bar in Brooklyn.  I get the place. However its is not, will not nor will every be "The City"

The hype:
Its cool
Cleaner
Cheaper
More community
Nicer people
More authentic
Less corporate

The reality:
Its everything you hated about Manhattan, except more pretention because its still fucking Brooklyn.

The fact is what made Brooklyn great was the authenticity of the people who lived there before you got there.  From the Irish working class of Park Slope to the very Italians of Carroll Gardens or the soulful Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy, their culture permiates the borough. Its their honesty of living that makes you feel Brooklyn-y. These very people who created those communities and have slowly but surely been displaced are what made Brooklyn. Can the new jacka replace 100 years of culture? Not likely.

PS.  I am a provential "uptown" kid from Manhattan. Do with this post what you please.

Having Steve Jobs as hero is a mistake

I know, I know I'm an asshole... How could I possibly say that having Steve Jobs, the greatest entrepeneur of the 21st century, as a hero is a mistake?  One word: perfection.
Steve Jobs is the patron saint of all the perfectionists.  He is venerated for his never give in, make it perfect, do it over ideals.  Those who compromised his vision were dispatched, vanquished and left for dead.  We all want to have our great ideas excecuted with Jobsian vision.
Here is the problem, perfection is the enemy of excecution.  If you try and actually drive people to perfection, you will 1. Not have many friends, 2. Be disappointed all the time.  Perfection does not exist.  Not for Apple products, not for life and not in work.
If you try and hold up the perfectionist virture of Steve Jobs, nothing will ever satisfy you, nothing will ever see the light of day and it will still not be perfect.

Things that can never be perfect:
Your marrige
Your kids
Your personality
Your parents
Your siblings
Your power point presentation
A painting
A story you are writing
How you treat people
Your clothes
Your physique
Your weight
How you are doing at work

Be good to yourself, stop trying for perfect.

Question everything you ever learned

I just finished reading "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" and I cannot recommend it more.  I have a degree in history and I am pretty knowledgeable regarding American history but this book is jarring.  We've been taught by a an educational machine that reinforced what boils down to American propaganda.  The feeling that everything you've learned as fact is much more nuanced or in fact a lie is troubling. 

Challenge everything you think you know

Question,  push and find out truth for yourself. Ask questions,  be skeptical about assumptions and keep on learning.  It's very difficult to undo everything you think, but your views on things and the world should be changing consistently.  Your thoughts when you were 18 years old shouldn't be the same as when you are 25, or 30 or 50.  Life should evolve.  Only by questioning your everyday assumptions, either in history,  work or ideas can we change and move forward.

PS.  Reading is fucking awesome!

Getting peaceful to get awesome

Three months ago I moved to Forest Hills, Queens and everything
changed. For a Manhattan born and raised person, this is a shock.
Forest Hills for me, is essentially the country for normal people.
Here's the thing? I needed to go.

While we're not always aware of what we need, sometimes we're able to
realize it after the fact. Living in Manhattan, on the street I grew
up on held me back. I would never be more than what I am by staying
where I was. We need change, challenge and pushing to develop.
Moving provides those challenges and getting into uncomfortable
situations pushes us forward.
My dear friend Jon seems to have always known that. He puts himself
in impossible situations, on the brink financial catastrophe or mental
disaster and finally come out on the other side more radical than
ever.

I needed Queens to get into a more relaxed and capable place. My
weakness is that I have no systems in place to relax. I simply
function with a constant low level of stress, pressure, anxiety or
whatever you want to call it. Staying in El Barrio was not helping.
So moving has been the best thing.

I'm here sitting in a garden and blogging.... that sounds like a
system for relaxing?

Steal this game idea: Tumblr based online Flash game arcades.

I'm shocked that there has not been a Tumblr based arcade of flash games made yet.  It seems to be the Tumblr is a the perfect platform for the viral, silly,  quick-play world of flash games.  If there can be a an entire site dedicated to Girl Games and hundreds of Tumblr sites dedicated to GIF's of the latest Glee episodes then it stands to reason that a Tumblr based Flash game site would be next.  

For the love over all things Glee-k,  someone please build a Flash game theme for Tumblr.

Rules should not always be applied

At my job we're presented with a unique opportunity.  We have existing products with revenue and partnerships and work systems that are either broken or never existed. We are fixing all of these issues.

We are in the process of forming our own guidelines and question every assumption about the business.  Interestingly the team is divided into two camps, one that prefers process/requirements (not me) and one that wants no process (me). 
Nearly all lunches we debate the merits of both philosophies.  On one hand strict process ensures repeatable actions where vision is clearly defined while lack of process allows for flexibility, adaptability and a little built in confusion.

I argue for less process.  I feel that too much process hinders creativity, problem-solving and forces us to focus too much on the process itself rather than tasks at hand.  Process and rules feel like a form distrust.  Every thought, idea, moment of discovery get bogged down in proceeses.

The case for process is clear you get what you write down and the.comittee agrees to. Process frees everyone from responsibility.  You can always say "it wasn't part of the process/requirements so we didn't do it".  Appreciative if the hard work of thinking everything through, I understand the desire for process.  It FEELS like the right.thing to do.  It FEELS like you have.control of outcomes. But is it? Do people like working within rigid frame works? I know I don't

We admire rule breakers, outlaws and trouble makers. We hold up those who think differently and challenge but we expect people to work within a process?
Does that make sense?

Be a little weird everyday

A friend tweeted yesterday that life is too short not to wear funky socks. That put the thought in my mind to talk about being  weird.

If you dont know me personally, you may not know i'm loud-mouthed-know-it-all-curse-like-a-sailor blowhard. I say this about myself as a positive thing.  I'm odd, I'm not your everyday person.  I'm nosey, I make esoteric historical references and like to talk about race and ethnicity a little too much for my own good.

All these oddities, make me, me. I'm always this way. I don't pretend to be someone else or tone down who I am.  In short, I'm memorable. 

You may not like me (very common) or you may feel happy I'm there stirring it up.
All this self-assesment is in the name of making a point.  Be weird. Be a squeaky wheel. Be heard.  If your idea of a good day at work is you getting out of there with no one knowing you are there, then I think you might be in trouble.

More than anything, dont try and fit in. Most people will get used to you and you'll feel better about yourself.

Like my pal said life is too short to be normal.

Blaming the victim and blaming ourselves

Reading about the financial crisis around the world, how we're getting ready for a second dip and the apparent complete lack of middle class activism has got me thinking? Why?  

Why aren't there more protests? (in the US at least) 

Why aren't people fired up?  

Where is our natural desire to right the wrongs? 

Where is the classic American exceptionalism we've all had blasted into our heads?  

Looks like it's no where to be found.

I have one thought on this:

-  We blame ourselves

The prevailing ethos of American supermen conquering the frontier doesn't leave much room for failure to live up to that myth. If you aren't kicking ass and making your own luck, then it's your own damn fault.  Americans on the whole think that their failings are there own doing.  

That it's their fault that they are poor, that it's their fault they are failing in school and it's their fault that their behind on their mortgage. Some how some Randian philosophical myth has trickled down to the working classes to get them to believe it's their own fault they aren't what they thought they should be.

It's against the established America propaganda myth to think - 

Maybe the deck was stacked against me the whole time?"  

Maybe who I know, how I was educated, where I lived mattered in my success or failure?

Maybe their are class divisions in the United States. 

Maybe the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer?  

Maybe we do have a neo-american aristocracy that's grown on the back of our labor.  

Maybe their has been a re-distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich?  

Maybe I've been fucked this whole time and no one told me.

I am sure these questions will get me labeled a communist or unamerican.  I am sure some one who had advantages (Like I did) will step up and toe the party line of Victorian era, individualism, blaming the poor.  I am sure it will happen.  The facts are the facts.  As citizens we need to ask questions of our government and find out what is going on,  who knows what, who is doing what, and why.  

Government only has the power we give it.  If we want it back,  we need to demand it,

Friction is good - Why making things hard to do might be a good thing

There is trend to remove friction from everything we do.  We're in a constant state of trying to make things easier, faster, simple, almost to the point of thoughtless action.  This is a problem.  Friction (in the business sense) are barriers towards doing things.  Things like, having to register for a site before you can purchase something, making people click past an ad before you can read an article or having to actually go to a store to buy something are considered friction.  Online,  friction is product death sentence.  Making people think about anything is a puzzle to be solved.  Engineers and entrepreneurs want to make our lives easier and with less friction. 

We want you to be able to order anything from your desktop then anything off your phone. We want you to be able to communicate without typing too many letters or share your life withour explicitly saying so. 

The problem with frictionless life is you lose free will.  You don't have to decide to do anything. You don't decide to share.  You don't decide what you want to buy, it's recommended.  We're driving ourselves into a decision free world.  What happens when we lose the capacity to think about what we want to do? Should I share this or that?

Friction also creates work for people.  The more efficient we make things the less people need to actually do it.  If we can make shopping so friction-less we don't need stores,  what do all the people do that worked in those stores?

If we make decision making friction-less where are our debates going to come in about where to go?  What to do?  How to do it.

Friction is the basis for fire, for change.  When things are problematic,  we have to fight against friction.  Arguments are a form of friction.  Debate is a form of friction.  We need to continue to have friction in our lives to move forward and tackle new problems

Like Televison said... "Gimme Friction"!

Moneyball applied metrics to friends.

Moneyball is a book about how statistical analysis allowed a small market baseball team to compete with the large market teams.  Moneyball created the blue print for measuring what mattered in baseball and being hyper-focused on the undervalued baseball player.

We live in a measured,  quantitative world.  Everything is being measured, re-measured, counted and double checked to make sure we've got the right data.  How the data is applied? Well, that's another story.  What we're doing with the data sometimes run into moral hazard - (Hello banks!) However, fundamentally,  the last fifteen years have been about processing information.  

What if we started applying statistical analysis to our friends?  Could we keep stats on our friends behaviors?  What would the ideal stats be?  Which stats would correlate best with true great friends?  Is it different for everyone?  When do you need a certain friend for a certain thing?  

Here are a few stats it would be funny to see:

How many times they are late?  

How many times you have to call them to get them somewhere? 

 Do they answer when you call them?  

Number of times they were too drunk and you had to take them home?   

Number of times out and sat in the corner?

Number of times out and they immediately interacted with new people?

Number of times laughed at jokes?

Number of times they didn't laugh?

Number of times invited to a party and showed up?

Time spent being annoying?

Number of topics they can competently discuss?

Times they got offended? 

And on and on....

I guess what I am driving at is,  is there a match.com or eHarmony.com for friends?  Can we algorithmicly determine who are good people to be friends with? 

And the writing will continue... Re-committing to blogging in the fall

I just read this post on 25 Insights to Becoming a Better Writer and decided I MUST continue to blog.  My New Years resolution for 2011 was to write something everyday on my blog.  I did very well!  It was an ambitious goal and I did manage to crank out about 4-5 posts a week for about 7 months.  However,  moving,  a new job and the general upheaval of change put blogging on the back burner.  

Recently, two things happened: 

1. I've starting to get more comfortable in my new home of Forest Hills, Queens.

2. Friends have asked (ok one friend, thank you Christien!) asked how I managed to write as much as I did.

Those two items and one list blog post are enough to remind me to continue.  I have to get all this shit in my head OUT!

I feel good enough to blog again.  Look for more from me be ready to comment while I re-commit to posting SOMETHING everyday.  

Writing feels good!  Getting thoughts out into the ether feels good.  Ultimately, I do this for myself and appreciate every single individual person who has read even one of my posts.

Thank God for you

Don't give Facebook too much credit for timelines

There will be a lot of news of how Facebook has changed the world and
kicked Google's ass in the next few days. Our technology news will
cover the whole thing like it's a Sunday match up in the NFL. (Have
you noticed everything is covered like Sports now?) But don't quite go
there yet. Facebook's new time line stream and music stream were
items that were already available that they knew were coming and had
to adapt to. I give them credit for making the radical changes they
have but the heavy lifting of visioning was done.

Time lines of your social media life live on sites like memolane.com.
Sites that bake in social music like spotify.com already exist.
Facebook, strangely is already in a defensive mode. They are in the
co-op of features mode. It's natural and it happens.

What I am trying to stress is that Facebook is a business just like
any other. They are finding new ways to help the companies that pay
their bills access out lives and have more locations to remind us they
are there.

Facebook is in the business of selling the aggregation of our lives,
dreams, friends, pictures, stories and ideas. Without it's users
content, they would have nothing to sell.

Feeling bothered by all the 9/11 memorial coverage? Me too.

I'm really not an unfeeling douche bag, I'm really not. People lost
their lives, families will never get those people back. I get it.
It's very, very sad and I don't intend any malice or negativity toward
anyone.

What bothers me is the over the top sentimentality. It's offensive.
It's too much. We get it it. It was a horror, it was terrible. Do you
think the people whose lives were affected want
phony-manipulated-over-the-top-grandstanding-dis-ingenuousness? I'm
pretty sure they don't. I'm guessing they simply want to think of
their loved ones, cry and reflect.

Do people really want sledgehammer absurdist wall to wall coverage of
the death of their loved ones? I can't imagine they do.

Here are some things that I've been thinking about on the ten year anniversary.

1. The attacks signaled the beginning of the end of United States excellence.

2. The attacks marked the moment the United States left the
international community.

3. The attacks marked the beginning of ramp up to a war with Iraq
THAT WE HAD NO BUSINESS being in.

4. The attacks gave a small group of ideologues the power to shape
the United States for a decade.

5. The attacks caused an over reaction of the Federal Reserve to free
up credit and cause our run up to the 2008 collapse.

6. The attacks cost United States it's focus on the new century. We
focused on war rather than the technological transition.

7. In the name of fighting for freedom, we live in far, far less
free society. (See flying, privacy, opportunity)

8. In the name of those lost in the attack we extracted our pound of
flesh from the Iraqi and Afghanistani people.
Does it feel better? Did it bring anyone back? Was it worth
squandering a decade of possible prosperity?

9. The attacks began a period of United States reactionary action
instead of world leadership.

10. What should have been a rallying towards the United States we
drove the world away from us.

Please,please remember that this is not a personal attack or dismissal
of anyone's feelings towards what happened. It's merely my feelings.
What I feel, what affects my heart and soul.
I hate what has happened, and I hate the fall out of what came to be
in the name of an attack on my home town.

I am ashamed at the goodwill we squandered in the name of United
States honor and the lives lost.

Feeling bothered by all the 9/11 memorial coverage? Me too.

I'm really not an unfeeling douche bag, I'm really not. People lost
their lives, families will never get those people back. I get it.
It's very, very sad and I don't intend any malice or negativity toward
anyone.

What bothers me is the over the top sentimentality. It's offensive.
It's too much. We get it it. It was a horror, it was terrible. Do you
think the people whose lives were affected want
phony-manipulated-over-the-top-grandstanding-dis-ingenuousness? I'm
pretty sure they don't. I'm guessing they simply want to think of
their loved ones, cry and reflect.

Do people really want sledgehammer absurdist wall to wall coverage of
the death of their loved ones? I can't imagine they do.

Here are some things that I've been thinking about on the ten year anniversary.
1. The attacks signaled the beginning of the end of United States excellence.
2. The attacks marked the moment the United States left the
international community.
3. The attacks marked the beginning of ramp up to a war with Iraq
THAT WE HAD NO BUSINESS being in.
4. The attacks gave a small group of ideologues the power to shape
the United States for a decade.
5. The attacks caused an over reaction of the Federal Reserve to free
up credit and cause our run up to the 2008 collapse.
6. The attacks cost United States it's focus on the new century. We
focused on war rather than the technological transition.
7. In the name of fighting for freedom, we live in far, far less
free society. (See flying, privacy, opportunity)
8. In the name of those lost in the attack we extracted our pound of
flesh from the Iraqi and Afghanistani people.
Does it feel better? Did it bring anyone back? Was it worth
squandering a decade of possible prosperity?
9. The attacks began a period of United States reactionary action
instead of world leadership.
10. What should have been a rallying towards the United States we
drove the world away from us.

Please,please remember that this is not a personal attack or dismissal
of anyone's feelings towards what happened. It's merely my feelings.
What I feel, what affects my heart and soul.
I hate what has happened, and I hate the fall out of what came to be
in the name of an attack on my home town.

I am ashamed at the goodwill we squandered in the name of United
States honor and the lives lost.

"An Apostrophe Is the Difference Between..." [Quotables]

via feeds.gawker.com

Nice. I need to learn my English language rules.

Tumblr, That Thingamablog, Keeps Exploding (The rise of the stream as a content consumption model)

Trumblr keeps growing astronomically, but meanwhile even the tech mavens don’t have a clear niche defined for Tumblr.

Jennifer Van Grove, Tumblr Tops 13 Million U.S. Uniques in July

Tumblr, the simple sharing service and blog alternative, continues to attract a record number of visitors each month.

According to comScore, Tumblr scored 13.4 million unique visitors in the U.S. in July — up 218% from the same time last year.

The blog-meets-social-network service has seen its most explosive growth in the past few months, according to comScore’s data, upping its unique visitor count by more than 5 million from April to July.

Here’s one try at defining Tumblr.

Tumblr could be lumped in with other ‘social media’, but only in the most general meaning, as a term that covers social networks, blogging, check in apps, photo sharing, social commerce, etc.

Blogging, a la Blogger and Wordpress, is actually not very social, basically a personal publishing model, with comments as a sort of afterthought. Blogging is also considered as text-centric, while Tumblr is very rich on other media types.

The big shift from blogging tools to Tumblr and Twitter is the advent of the stream, the context in which posts are experienced. This breaks away from RSS readers and other organizing devices, used to aggregate the content of blogs into a context.

Tumblr has a chameleon quality, since non-tumblr users who visit a tumblr blog see it as a more or less plain-vanilla blog: they don’t see the social network behind the scenes. And they can use RSS and other old school approaches to aggregate with non-Tumblr blogs as well. To get behind the scenes and really experience Tumblr, you have to create an account and start following people.

Here’s a analogy: imagine participating in Twitter without an account. You could go to various Twitter users’ pages, and read what they were saying, but you could never reply, repost, or get @mentioned. That’s what Tumblr is like for non-users. It’s only when you sign in that you see your own stream of incoming tweets, or in the case of Tumblr, incoming posts from those that you follow.

If Twitter is a social microstreaming network, then Tumblr is a social streaming network. There is no inherent limit to the length of Tumblr posts, as there is in Twitter, so I drop the micro. But the experience is dominated by the stream form factor, not the size of posts.

Side note: I am fascinated by the surging hype around Google+, and how rare it is to have that service compared to Tumblr. But Twitter and Tumblr are the two social streaming tools that are most advanced, in my mind. The Google+ fan boys are endlessly comparing it to Twitter, but hardly a murmur about Tumblr.

via stoweboyd.com

Facebook's killer app is the stream. The sooner more web based properties learn and adapt the stream consumption model the better.
Where is the stream in the game world? I don't know?

Generic terms for streams mapped

via flowingdata.com

Love the idea of language. Very, very cool and interesting.

You need to read these books if you want to keep your job

You work hard, you know your stuff but the dial isn't moving forward at work.  Why is that?  You've heard about outsourcing and you are scared your job might be next.  What are you going to do?  

These questions are top of mind for a lot of us. Worrying about work keeps us up at night and turn our hairs gray.  How do we get better at the game of work?  Keep learning!   Keep reading and keep taking action.  I am not advocating learning just for learnings sake. That in and of itself is a form of procrastinating.  I am asking you to learn and in the process of learning, take action.

A few books have driven me over the last year that have taught me and pushed me to take actions:

Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik
- a crash course in web analytics and outcome based marketing. (I've mentioned this book more than once)

Lynchpin by Seth Godin
- an empowering book asking you to push based punching the clock and start really working on something you love

The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman
- demystifies the MBA.  Teaches what you need to know to run, you know, an actual business.
and
Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click by Susan Weinschenk
- a quick read on applying neurological research to web design. (Very simply, but usable)

All three books have helped me in different ways and all three have immediate actions outlined in their pages.  If you want to do better work,  be less afraid and push past punching the clock, read these books.

* This post was inspired by a section of What Makes Them Click regarding two things: people reacting to fear and our natural narcissism.

Quick hits returns. Thoughts on new jobs, the ER and my awesome wife.

Quick hits are back! So I only did it once, its my blog, I do what I want.

First full week of work at Oberon Media
So far so good.  Lots to learn, lots to digest, head spinning but less and less so everyday.  I'm very impressed with my new co-workers.  They are smart, with it and know the space.  There appears to be some of the old AOL feeling of being a little beaten down, but not too much.  Looking forward to making great products!

First visit to the emergency room
Yesterday morning I woke up with a pain that morphed very quickly into a severe pain.  My wife jumped to action.  Got us to a cab, to the right emergency room (not Elmhurst Hospital or Jamaica) in Mt. Sinai of Queens in Astoria and my pain settled pretty quickly with a dose of morphine.  Turns out I have a kidney stone.  I was hoping to avoid my family ailment, but alas I could not.  My father, sister and brother have all had stones. (My dad, more than one, poor bastard).
I could not have had a better experience at Mt. Sinai Queens. They were attentive, understanding and capable.  Fairly impressed with the results. Plus, I worked with one of clerks years earlier, who helped extridite things.

Sweet ass Queens
We're a week into our new home and all the boxes have been emptied!  Now comes the tough part of finding where the hell we put everything!  There are still minor things to fix (anyone good with a single stem faucet replacement? I had a helluva time). The only issue so far is my commute is a bit longer than expected.  From Forest Hills to Battery Park City is 55 minutes on the train with an added 15 minutes of walking to and from the subway.  Hopefully Oberon will be moving soon and I can get 20 minutes back. 

An ode to my wife. 
I am so thankful she was there to save the day for me in my most urgent moment with my stone. She stayed level headed, focused and in charge.  Even though I was wimpering and writhing in pain, she stayed strong and never made it about her or her anxiety. (Which I might do). In that two hour window of my pain, there was a lot of fear in the room and she showed tremendous courage.  I could not be prouder or more in love with my wife.

If you have anything you want to know my thoughts on feel free to shout them out.  I've got a lot to say!

Companies that sell downloadable things are doomed.

The idea of the hardcopy software and download products are doomed.  The web, networked storage and processing is coming for you and will destroy you. For companies still in download business, change NOW! (You may already be too late) Don't wait, don't say "you don't understand, our business is different", call your people together get a road map set up for being completely web/cloud based and fast. 

Look around? Everything that is content in a physical form is either destroyed or in the process of being destroyed. (Books, music, movies, TV) Oh sure, they will stick around for some, but fundamentally its over. If you think people will wait for a download game when on an iPad games play in 30 seconds? Or pay monthly for cable channels they never watched, needed or asked for? Your customers will find alternatives if you don't give them a reason to stay.

Working in the (I'll say it, sleepy) casual game business I've seen countless opportunities go by the wayside for fear and the ever present "That's not our demographic". The casual game business audience is perceived to made up of technology laggards. If some one uses the AOL client, they are a casual game player.   This has hurt the industry and slowed it down. Download games didn't have to get swamped in the Facebook/Zynga wake, they chose to. By holding themselves back on "not our demo" they mostly got squashed.  Software needs to be a service. Constantly evolving and growing as folks interact with it. A standalone download product with release candidate, gold disks and patches simply isn't going to fly.

Destroy your business before it gets destroyed.

So what is my new job? (And my first day at work)

After five years at AOL, I've moved on to Oberon Media as a product manager.  I'm still working in digital games, but more focused on the download game space.   It’s going to be a challenge but I'm up for it!

Why Oberon?  Since October of 2010 I've had my ear to the ground on leaving AOL.  There had just been too much turmoil, too much change and as they say "there was a new sheriff in town". The new sheriff wasn't interested, nor did he believe in the team he inherited and made it known by his actions. 

Oberon impressed me with passionate people who had a plan for what they wanted to do.  I cannot tell you how valuable it is to work at a place with direction.  Everyone I interviewed with was honest, discussed the problems Oberon has face and to a person, relayed the same message.  That consistency in voice and clarity in focus made accepting the job at Oberon easy.  Give me a place that knows what it wants to be and do any day of the week.

I interviewed at agencies for social media specific jobs and while I didn't get any of those jobs, I learned a ton from the process.  I learned that I was being too narrow in my search and that I had more value than just being a social media flavor of the month hire. I knew product and specifically games product. 

Interviewing has so much value for what you can learn. You learn about expectations of knowledge, what you know and forces you to examine what your own expertise is.  While in the interview process I got a real handle on what I was professionally. Go on interviews!  It's actually fun and a great learning experience. 

The first day of work is always a shock.  Everything is different.  All your comforts are gone and your brain is in hyper-activity mode.  You're just trying to process everything all at once.  From setting up your desk, to finding the coffee machine and locating the bathroom, the first day at work is exhausting....

 

I know no one wants to read this much... ask me questions about my new job in the comments.

Reflections on five years at AOL

I'm on the subway heading to my final day at AOL.  Wow!  I have worked at AOL during one of the most interesting times the web has seen.  Within a few months of starting at AOL, Facebook opened up to everyone and launched its developers platform. That single event started the social web explosion (before social we called it Web 2.0)

I have been at AOL during that upheaval.  Hired to do one thing but never actually having the platform built, I threw myself into the social web era and became the change agent within my small corner of AOL as part of Games.com.  My boss (Greg, love you man) thought I was insane and actually wanted to let me go (your life would have been a helluva lot easier if you did!) But somehow (I still don't know what I did) I was held onto and able to learn so much from each one of my co-workers.

At AOL I became a professional. (Yes folks, I was worse) Sure I had been working for ten years before but fundamentally I didn't take work as seriously as I should have,  At AOL I had a career, a focus and my ideas mattered (even if there were way, way, way too many of them). Even though we missed some major opportunities I feel very proud of the work we did and could not have asked for a better bunch of co-workers. 

Fundamentally, what I will miss is my collegues.  As a group they are the most respectful, competant and hardworking group of people I may ever work with.  To a person, they always put the the group first. There was never a personal agenda, ever! We had the "secret". We worked as a team, understood our roles and acted as a unit.  When given opportunity to work, we were effiecient, quick and without parallel.  Sure, there were struggles here and there, disagreements about direction, but over all we worked with mutual respect and caring.

AOL itself? Well that's a different story.  All you have to is go through Silicon Alley Insider posts on AOL to see all the absurdity and ridiculousness that went on.  Most of the leaks and internal documents were and are correct.  It was a made worse with schizophrenic direction and directives.  From month to month and quarter to quarter, goals and strategy changed.  From everything being labeled AOL to basically detroying the brand with mini-brands (we got up to 57) and now rolling everything back under Huffington Post, we did everything. Just in the games group we had five different VP's in 18 months. We went from being for sale (just games) to status quo to doubling down. 

I would say that all things considered? Tim Armstrong has done a good job.  Tasked with turning around a ocean liner with a steam engine, he's gotten us to be a second hand pleasure boat that at least runs on gasoline. (Don't know what that means but go with it). What I can say is that he's trying.  People want a turn-around and he's trying to find the right mix.  Sure, one could be critical of the individual decisions taken one at a time, but when looking at the whole picture you can see what he's trying to do.  Create sellable content at scale that has some brand-trustworthyness.  Not easy to do, but he's trying.

So, to quote my favorite cartoons,  "Thats all folks!"
Deep, deep thanks go out to:
Greg Mills
Ben Zackheim
Libe Goad
John Logsdon
Sharon White
Jim Watson
Sarah Watkins
John Worrell
John Benyamine
Dan Sormaz
Robin Yang
Hing Yen
Ken H. Lai
Joanna De La Cruz
Leanne Cabrera 
Nicole Opas
Ralph Rivera
Raj Nijar
Avinash Ramani
Won Mu Hur
James Brightman
Miguel Ferrer
Mario Torrez
Ivis Mas
Patty Green
Laura Palau
Charisse Beamon
Michael Mullen
James Fleenor
Bill Mitchell
Mark Ludlow 
Rob Mitchell 
Alina Zafirescu
Kevin Jackson
Anthony Anderson
Steve Setlik 
Lindsay Duffy
Alex Ressi
Britney Buchan
Joe Osborne
Chris Buffa
and everyone one else I crossed paths with and didn't add 

 

 

Meetings suck, don't work (And it's your fault)

Just read Fred Wilson's post on meetings as a VC, Bored of Directors.  He details the issues with being on a board of a start up and how often the meetings are unproductive.  The views outlined are similar to all meetings.  I am at my core, a meeting hater.  Sure we need them and they can be productive but mostly they suck.  They suck because they are impersonal, usually held on a phone and a simply rehashing of stuff we already know. 
Fred detailed a few things that make his meetings productive:

1) get everyone in the room

2) less reporting

3) more discussing

Yes,  yes and more yes. When every thing is equal and the efficiency of the web becomes common place what will be the competitive advantage for a meeting?  That's right!  Physical presence and charisma!  

Meetings suck mostly because they are run by humans.  It's our fault because the x factor in every meeting is the people in the room.  You can try and set agendas,  outline everything in advance and do as much work as possible before hand to try and un-suck the meeting but ultimately,  the people in the room will muck it up.  People want to be active in a meeting.  Running through reports is boring and un-productive.  We humans want to have fun and talk.  Going through slides and statistics blows.  Just get in there and talk about real issues and do discuss things that people want to talk about

Your status and why it matters.

For the digirati, the status update is the building block of a persons relationship with friends.  It is how they know what each other are doing online or on the go via mobile phone. 
The status update is the building block of conversation.  All the bits, bobs, digibits and nuggets make up the fabric of the new relationship.  Without all those little pieces of information, the digital people would have a hard time having points of reference to talk about. 

Today I saw a friend (Jon, I need ya) for the first time in five years.  We're close so we had enough to talk about but what was interesting was that he knew what had been going on in my life much more than I knew about his.  He had the advantage of my updates.  He's on the networks but doesn't share much.  He admitted to me that he felt like he just didn't have much to say.  I disagreed!  I wanted his mundane updates, I wanted to hear about the traffic to the Dodger game or that he wasn't so into fixing cars any more. Without him sharing there was a one way flow of information.

If you are like my friend and don't think your updates are imporant think again.  Updates

• - provide day to day stories about your life
• - let folks know you are ok.  And strangely that you are thinking of them (weird but seeing folks post brings closeness)
• - allows for a conversation to start anytime you feel the need.  There isn't that barrier of entry of picking up the phone.
• - weaves a fabric of your life that your friends want to know about.

Am I crazy? Am I off?  Let me know.

Views on online communities from a ten-year online community manager

I spoke with a co-worker yesterday whose goal at work is to create new community here at AOL.  We had a great conversation about the whole process and we came to a couple of great conclusions.

- Having lots of social technology on your site does not make it have a community.

Placing buttons that float and social engineering software does not create a community. Yes, it may bring referrals but is that a community?

- Most organizations treat community as an afterthought.

Historically,  communities online have been ignored by business people.  Starting with message boards on to chat rooms and through the social network phenomenon, C-level management has made community an afterthought.  Very rarely has time,  resources and investment been directed towards community progress.

- The content creators for your site need to take a stance and have personality.

Starting conversations about content written specifically to be impartial is hard.  Having an opinion or at least infusing the authors personality into your pieces helps with building community.  If a community member reads an authors posts regularly, that reader should "know" the author over time.

- Authors are usually bad at engaging with community.

Strangely enough,  writer write and critics, critique and the two shall not meet.  Having content creators be the primary source of community engagement and moderation simply does not work.  The dynamics of creating content and then leading the conversation on the created content don't jive.  I liken it to cooking a meal and then judging the merits of that meal, objectively.  A cook simply can't critique their own meal.

- Creating community is hard work.

There is no magic, there is no secret and there is no secret formula. You need good content,  a good product and people who are willing to talk about things.   Creating a strong and dynamic community takes nuanced, a heavy hand and unwavering consistency.  From dealing with message trolls,  to spam and back around to community revolts a community managers job is hard and thankless.  When there aren't comments we're asked to manufacture them and when there are too many we're asked to stop them.  The community manager is the front lines of the Internet.

What are your thoughts?  Do you have anything at all you want to add? I'd love to hear it.

Impartiality in journalism is completely modern bogus

I was reading The Foxification of news on The Economist and came across the quote below:

"The idea that journalists should be impartial in reporting news is a relatively recent one. “A lot of newspaper people treat it as one true religion, when it’s an artefact of a certain set of economic and historical circumstances,” says Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab. America’s Founding Fathers nurtured a vibrant, fiercely partisan press with no licensing of newspapers or policing of content. During the 19th century newspapers gradually adopted a more objective stance, for several reasons. By appealing to a wider audience, they were able to increase their circulation and hence their advertising revenue. Consolidation, and the emergence of local newspaper monopolies, also promoted impartiality. “When you are the only paper in town, you can’t risk pissing off liberals by being too conservative, or vice versa,” says Mr Benton."

I have been harping on this point for ages.  The idea in journalism that you have to be impartial is modern and current.  It was a business decision.  The faster your own site, blog or articles have you and your personality in them in them the quicker you'll be able to build a community, kinship and comments on posts.

You have to have an opinion.  Everything boils down to sports for me.  You are doomed if you are mediocre. Either be the best,  or be the worst,  the middle is death.

Why Facebook succeeded (And why Google+ can succeed too)

Why did Facebook explode?
One word with a second word follow up: Apps and Games. 

Working in the game space I've long thought that a significant reason Facebook succeeded is the games (mostly Zynga games)  that people built on top of the platform (the platform itself is a major technical achievement)

Jason Calacanis (Internet blowhard and entrepreneur of mild success) basically said what I have always thought:

"Without Mark’s (Pincus of Zynga)  innovations driving 20% to 35% of the traffic on Facebook (in my estimation), Facebook would be half the company it is today. In fact, don’t be surprised if Zynga is responsible -- even at this late date -- for 25% of the time spent on Facebook and a third of its earnings.  We will find out when Facebook files its IPO."

Read Jason's whole post here

If you want to look for the sure signs of success of Google+,  look for the games to arrive. If they do? Then you know Google has a winner on their hands

Sunk costs in sunk processes

Eighty percent of my understanding about economics comes from following baseball and the statistical revolution that changed the game over the last twenty years. One of the key principles about was the idea of sunk costs.

When applied to players it basically says, once the money is spent, it’s gone and trying to extract value from it is futile. If you pay a player fifteen million dollars over three years and they get hurt in the first year the cost of that player is a sunk cost. It can't be recovered, you can't derive value from and you might as well move on.

Unfortunately, the irrational human mind doesn't work that way. By spending that money on a person, object or system we act differently towards it. We hold on to it, try and make it work without regards for whether there is any value to be exacted from it. Our minds have pegged the value at what was paid for it.

This principle applies to processes at work. We hold onto sunken processes even though their value has long since dissipated. Think of old platforms that you work on that no longer function or the office adage "that's the way we've always done it". Those sunken processes are held onto despite the fact that there is no value being derived from it anymore.

Here are a couple of sunken processes that I am sure you run into:

•  A weekly meeting that we all have to attend but no one knows why.
•  a progress report that is the same every week that everyone has access to but you have to send an email for.
•  Companywide employee evaluations that have no bearing on career advancement or change in responsibilities.
•  using publishing or work platforms that no longer function, or are being supported.
•  keeping departments whose sole purpose is to perpetuate their own existence.
•  keeping partnerships that no longer function.

What other sunk processes can you think of?

The Real Reason Google+ Will Succeed (And it has nothing to do with Technology)

You mom (Her mom jeans and her mom jean wearing friends), your grandparents, your creepy uncle and three job's worth of co-workers aren't on it.

Sunk costs in sunk processes

Eighty percent of my understanding about economics comes from following baseball and the statistical revolution that changed the game over the last twenty years. One of the key principles about was the idea of sunk costs.

When applied to players it basically says, once the money is spent, it’s gone and trying to extract value from it is futile. If you pay a player fifteen million dollars over three years and they get hurt in the first year the cost of that player is a sunk cost. It can't be recovered, you can't derive value from and you might as well move on.

Unfortunately, the irrational human mind doesn't work that way. By spending that money on a person, object or system we act differently towards it. We hold on to it, try and make it work without regards for whether there is any value to be exacted from it. Our minds have pegged the value at what was paid for it.

This principle applies to processes at work. We hold onto sunken processes even though their value has long since dissipated. Think of old platforms that you work on that no longer function or the office adage "that's the way we've always done it". Those sunken processes are held onto despite the fact that there is no value being derived from it anymore.

Here are a couple of sunken processes that I am sure you run into:

•  A weekly meeting that we all have to attend but no one knows why.
•  a progress report that is the same every week that everyone has access to but you have to send an email for.
•  Companywide employee evaluations that have no bearing on career advancement or change in responsibilities.
•  using publishing or work platforms that no longer function, or are being supported.
•  keeping departments whose sole purpose is to perpetuate their own existence.
•  keeping partnerships that no longer function.

What other sunk processes can you think of?

The five jerks you meet at work.

Getting things done in a work environment can be difficult. We run into all sorts of roadblocks (process, hardware, legacy, scope, costs) even before we think about the most unpredictable of elements, people. Interestingly, people can be facilitators of getting things done and hindrances all in one day. They can shift within one conversation from helping to hurting. I've boiled down the five types of hindrances that we see at work. I'm confident in these archetypes because, at some point or another I've been all of them:

The "no" guy:
Everything with them starts with no and usually ends with no. Nothing will stop the no. He will pound you with no until you can't take no ‘Mo!

The "metrics/stats" guy:
New on the scene, the metrics man avoids making decisions or taking actions because there are no stats or metrics behind an idea. Here is the thing with metrics man... innovation or change has no metrics because you didn't do anything yet. Metrics guy is the ultimate cover your ass man.

The "we need X" guy:
With "we need" there is always a resource that is missing that prevents us from completing our task. We need another developer, chair, projector, hardware, coffee or sandwich. "We need" needs to accept that the need isn't coming and start finding answers to the need.

The "what about X or did you think about Y" guy:
The questioners and tackers on try to filibuster progress with increasing scope and finding issues before we even start handling the problem we're started with. Overthinkers are needed but not at the hindrance of shipping.

The "we thought of this already" guy: (This is my deadliest sin)
Saying out loud you thought of something already when you have no visible product shipped of that idea means nothing. All it does is slow down conversations and serves the blurters ego. The "already" guy wants everyone to know that they know things.

 

Have you meet a jerk or committed one of the five jerks moves?

Keep f*cking writing!

Just a quick note.  This week on two separate occasions friends have said in not so many words,  they are writing but I am just not publishing their posts.  Both gave me praise for continuing to post these tiny missives but (albeit, a bit more infrequently, I blame Twitter) lamented at their own inability to post.  

My thoughts were,  just post.  Just click the send button,  don't check the spelling and get it out into the world.  Once you've got your work, your words or your thoughts out there,  nothing can stop you.  You are free.  The post isn't sitting there staring at you,  the ideas are done, no words can be added.  You have been liberated from your own self-imposed rules of what a good post can be. My advice is be selfish.  Write for yourself, don't go for perfection and go for completion.  The wonder of the web is that its never finished.  You can always go back, edit add a link, a video or whatever.  But you have to post it FIRST.  If it's sitting hiding, no one will ever see it nor is the urgency to fix it.  

As many, many of my friends have pointed out,  my posts have errors,  there are grammatical errors and generally,  I am "doing it wrong" You know what?  My posts are out there.  The content is out there.  It's my problem to fix them and I do, or don't. (I don't have an editors eye for errors) 

So, I will just keep fucking writing because it makes me feel good.  (This blog was a New Years Resolution that I would post everyday, I've missed many, but I'm fighting the good fight)

What do you say?  Are you ready to start posting?

The Must Read New York City Book List

Aside from growing up in New York City,  I have an unhealthy obsession with it's history.  If I had to guess,  I've read five to seven books (looks like nine) just about New York City. The need to know stems from searching for identity.  Who exactly am I and what did it mean to be me.  I chose being a New Yorker as my definitive trait. For me,  without New York, I was nothing.  With that foundation in place, the more I could learn about New York City,  the more I learned about myself.  (See? Crazy!)   

Anyway,  the list is below:

Must Reads:

The Power Broker by Robert Caro.

Low Life by Luc Sante.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr (The only novel on the list)

Ladies and Gentlemen The Bronx is Burning by Jonathan Mahler (Covers only 1977 but is a snapshot into the post-Moses New York)

Gotham: A History of the City of New York to 1898 by E. Burrows and M. Wallace.

The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Not necessary but you might find interesting:

New York: An Illustrated History (Companion book to the PBS Series 'New York' which is a must!)

The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History by Edward Ellis

The Gangs of New York by Herbert Ashbery

There are others,  but these are the ones that I have read (That I remember)  Not counted on these lists are the New York memoirs or baseball related books.

Did I miss any?  Please let me know if you'd like more detail on any of these books 

The Web Is Not Dead as a Games Platform.

Portals still have a huge shot in the high-tech, high-stakes world of games.  I just read an article in Entrepreneur Magazine profiling, Peter Relan (Crowdstar, OpenFeint) where he said as much.  Here is the money quote:

"Nobody has yet come up with a way to make large web portals a social game,"  "What kind of games can be played if you're in Hotmail or on Yahoo Messenger? How can that be wrapped up in one of our games?" 

There is huge value to be extracted in the breaking down of the silos between social, mobile and web.  Opportunities abound on the so called "dead" portals. 

My hometown: East Harlem, New York City. It has problems.

New York City is huge.  There are over 8 million residents and well over 20 million people come through NYC everyday.  New Yorkers are labeled with one tag, New Yorkers.  There is some borough  allegiance but that is fading (sorry Brooklyn, you lost your juice) What is forgotten is the neighborhood allegiances that we hold.  The city is really broken down into tiny fiefdoms, measured by blocks, housing projects and parks. East Harlem is my slice of New York.

El Barrio (its other name - translated from Spanish as "The Neighborhood") is bordered on the south by 96th street, with its northern border being 125th street.  On the east its bound by the East River and on the west, Madison Avenue.  Within this large swath of northeast Manhattan there are sub-divisions based on public housing projects.  Each project is its own fiefdom and community.  

Growing up, the kids I knew from El Barrio boasted about the toughness of their housing project. It wasn't uncommon to hear "Yo, fuck Wagner (houses), Carver will house your shit" That might not be exact but something along those lines.  I always felt left out of those debates because I lived in a tenement, we didn't have the size to boast so we resorted to simply boasting about our block, 102nd street.  It wasn't much but its what we had.  

Fast forward to today and El Barrio appears to have the same feel. Much of the physical structures are the same and asthetically, it hasn't changed in my 36 years. The same housing projects are there, the same nickle and dime stores are around, the same poverty is everywhere. Oh sure, there are some minor signs of the New York 90's - 2000's revival but not too much.  A few national chains, a few new condos (mostly on 1st avenue, decidedly not my turf) but mostly the same. 

The sameness hurts me.  I want to see progress! I want to see weath growing and new different types of stores, nightlife, anything that will show that El Barrio is moving forward.  Why can Williamsburg explode but not El Barrio? Why can the Meat Packing district explode but not El Barrio? Why is Hell's Kitchen slowly becoming Clinton Hill, with barely a sniff of its hellish reputation but not El Barrio? I have my thoughts and I'll list them out:

- The environment and architecture

Large swaths of public housing with there brown monolithic structure. The streets that they cut off from traffic and the setting of buildings off the corners.  What you live in matters.  What it looks like matters.  The look types of buildings in a neighborhood matter.  Without the bones to change,  a neighborhood can never recover.

- The derelict buildings

Walk down Third Avenue on the east side of the street and look across at the buildings on the west side - what do you notice? Store fronts, with boarded up apartments.  We have a single slum lord who prevents development of mixed use buildings. Mixed use is important.  What happens today is that when the stores close,  there is no life on the streets.  Having mixed or a living neighborhood is essential to change. People need to live, stores need to be open and a street should be alive as many hours as possible.

- Poor education

I don't have the numbers but just from looking around at the numbers of teen mothers and kids around during the day, that something is amiss with El Barrio's education. This is a city problem but it affects every neihborhood.

- Poor health

There are very few healthy food options. Which can contribute to getting sick. Sick people, lead to missed work, lead to missed school, lead to poverty. I know, it sounds insane but its a fact. 

- Filth and dilapidation.

This is not the fault of the residents or a an indictment on them. The neighborhood suffers from neglect by the city.  The subway stations are rotting. (specifically 103rd Street which floods). The street lights are dim or out, garbage is on the street which leads to rats running around, which lead to illness. Everything is connected. Not a place to feel awesome about.

- Apathy and defeat a.k.a. ghetto mentality

All of the above make it hard for the residents of El Barrio to feel there is a way out or a chance.  Their physical environment, health and general well-being is dragged down so their spirits naturally are dragged down.  Having grown up there, that feeling of helplessness seeped into my ethos. The feeling that you aren't good enough, that the world doesn't care about you and why should you give a fuck. I am not saying everyone feels this way, but the desperation is on peoples faces. The poor face a hurdle that is never discussed, the mental hurdle of feeling like anything you do matters in the greater scheme of things.

I understand I am not offering solutions just yet,  but I will.  Mark my words I will. Stay tuned.  What do you think we should do to help El Barrio?