3by9

Dare to explore

The other night I watched 50 Cent on Ustream. At first I was a bit dubious and some parts were challenging to listen to (because the audio quality deteriorated) but in the end I’m glad I watched him. I’m not a 50 Cent fan but I went from not particularly liking him from being neutral and having some respect for him in areas.

That would have never have happened listening to his music.
That probably wouldn’t have happened looking at an interview.
It happened because he was chilling, talking to his audience and his crew (Banks was there along with another guy I can’t remember what his name is).

Unfortunately for the other two (Banks and what’s his name) I walked away with a negative impression. So bad of a negative impression I don’t see how they could turn it around. See, it goes both ways. If you have an opportunity to interact with your audience by all means do so but all people aren’t meant to do that.

Back to 50 Cent, he made some very good points which is why he “won” some of my respect. He talked about business, handling business, not wanting to carry people to their success, how people change when they get money, talked about some of the business decisions he made, how current trends impact the music industry, etc. He talked about life, how people are supposed to transition and grow up (and how Banks wasn’t doing that), how there is much to experience and the different cultures he experienced.

I’m still tripping I watched 50 Cent. Not only watched it once, I went back a day or two later and watched it again. Actually I listened to it the majority of the time (while working) because they were just sitting there talking. When someone sent me the link I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He has a social site and I suppose the streams and videos will be apart of that site. I don’t like the site and I’ll probably write an article ripping it apart later but he was honest why he was doing it: so he wouldn’t need other social network sites.

But, I had to be open to the idea of watching 50 Cent in the first place. The notion of trying and not letting the perceptions I had get in the way. I’m glad I did.

Be open to trying new things. You might discover you like things you never thought you would.

There’s no other love…than your site(s)

We changed the posting schedule. Mike is on Monday. Scrivs is on Wednesday. Tyme is on Friday. Today’s my day! Let’s do this…

The following are lyrics from a song called Got Me Going by Day 26:

there’s no other love
there’s nobody else I’m thinking of
only a baby as special
how could I ever forget you
and let the moment slip away
we’ve been here for a while
and I just wanna take you away
you got me doing things I never do
I can’t stop feenin and dreaming about you
and about your love it feels so real to me
you know what to say
and you know just what to do
come get me
whatcha got for me
I wanna see
I’ve been waiting way too long
got me losing my cool
don’t know what I’m gonna do
you got me going

The song is about a man’s love for a woman but it can be applied to love in general. One person loves another person very much and wants to take it to another level. Further in the song they say “just let me be, be all that you need” because after waiting, the struggles, etc. it’s time to move forward - together. Passion, excitement, endurance, commitment, loyalty - the song has it all. Now that we have an understanding about love and passion, I’m about to apply this to writing online…because I’m smooth like that.

Passion shows…

It is somewhat easy to tell when someone is passionate about their writing and those that are doing it because it’s “the thing”. Those blogging because it’s the hot new thing are experiencing a crush with blogging. Bloggers that are expressing and sharing their passions are like the excerpted lyrics above.

When a person loves or is passionate about their blogging it shows. The person does not have to say, “I love to blog!” for it to show just like a person doesn’t have to say “I love you” for the person he or she loves to know it or know when someone loves you in return. Actions speak louder than words. Actions speak when there is silence.

The person that is passionate about their writing will embrace all aspects of it. The blogger will pick a decent host (to the best of their ability) and, if he or she encounters hosting problems, will rectify the situation. The person who is passionate about their content (meaning their content is important) will take steps to back it up in case something goes wrong. The person who is passionate about their blog will tweak it in an attempt to improve it. This does not mean the person will morph into a designer but the blog will look like a well-cared lawn - some look better than others but one can tell when a lawn is being maintained and when it is not.

When a person is passionate about their writing and cares about their users the blog will have the features a user would look for: about page, easy to subscribe to the blog, perhaps options to subscribe depending on the target audience, contact page, easy navigation, tags and or categories, interact with readers, etc. The content will be published when promised and the presentation of the content matters to ensure the user is able to easily read their content.

Round 6: May 7th, 2008

9rules has a new round coming up. When I look at blogs I look for the passion and love to show on the blog. When I load a blog in my browser and I’m puzzled about the direction of the blog, confused while reading an article what the author is trying to say or look at a site and my corneas are damaged because the site has colors that should be a sin to put together, I remember when I felt a lack of desire to blog and was blogging for reasons other than passion - and it showed. One of the reasons why we do not accept new blogs into 9rules is because so many people are excited about blogging and dive in, only to bow out a couple of months later.

It’s hard to think of original content and that is where passion gives an edge. The person that is passionate about their blog will come up with original content, will track down that interview, will confirm whether a lead is accurate, will take extra care creating a tutorial, writing a review, explaining design or programming elements, etc. The extra effort isn’t a chore, it can be a joy, something exciting and fun. It’s an essential part of the process.

I hope if I look at your blog for Round 6, the passion shows. If you don’t feel the passion or the love for blogging, why are you doing it?

Business vs Personal

When you work with a group of people for an extended period of time relationships start to form. These could be simple friendships, romantic interests or just developing a group of people to go out with on the weekends. These relationships can conflict with your work though, but as humans we are inclined to social behavior so they are almost impossible to prevent. With our small group here these conflicts can reach an even grander scale because there is no where to hide.

I am great friends with Mike and Tyme and I like to believe I know them very well. Because of this I know what approaches work with them with regards to asking questions and assigning tasks and I know what will easily piss them off. The issue I use to have was always concerning myself whether our friendships would deterioriate because of how I treated them from a business standpoint.

Now we have had our rough patches, probably more than usual for a small company, but take into consideration we don’t get to see each other face to face so misunderstandings happen a lot and we sometimes deciphering sarcasm from brutal honesty can be difficult.

What I’ve come to realize that as much as we like to pretend that business and personal should be separated most of the time they just aren’t. If one of us is having a bad day then it is almost unfair to think that you should treat them as you have any other day because you are part of a business. If a person wants to take the time to tell me about the weekend they had between the hours of 9-5 who am I to complain about it? Really what is the difference?

I don’t think I am going out on a limb by saying that because of our business ties our friendships have been saved more times than not. I can name a number of occasions where if we were simply friends we would have all walked away from each other because as they say “who needs friends like these?” So while you may be sitting there cursing the gods for making Patty the hot girl in accounting work for the same company as you, I thank the gods daily for keeping Tyme and Mike in business with me otherwise they would have left me stranded with nothing but my 9rules pillow to call friend.

I fuck up a lot when it comes to communicating. It’s my selfish nature to cut people off, tease them or simply inquire why they are talking to me about a certain subject. Too often I separate the business with the friend and don’t realize that when we talk we are talking as friends who just happen to be in business together. It’s really the best of both worlds once you realize and get used to it.

When I started working for myself I always said the only aspect of company work that I missed was the ability to interact with others daily. Now I have that on an almost 24/7 basis and sometimes I find myself complaining about it. I just can’t seem to win with myself, but that is no surprise since idiots always lose.

So instead of thinking of it as business vs personal, maybe there should be a greater synergy between the two than you think. Besides, listening to Tyme talk about her WoW adventures or Mike tell a story of the dog making a mess of things will always be more entertaining than trying to figure out RSS aggregator issues.

Want to improve? Admit you suck.

It’s not a secret I play World of Warcraft. I look at a lot of PVP movies because I want to improve in that area. There is a PVP movie that is perfect to explain the point of this article. A guy makes a video series called I Suck at PVP. He plays a Mage and he shows how he loses a fight (approximately 5:30 into the video), explains what he did wrong, then does the fight again (fixing what he did wrong) and shows a successful fight (against opponents he shouldn’t be able to win against). Evertras has this basic approach when he starts a fight:

• You can win every fight.
• If you lose it’s your fault, not the game.
• Don’t beat yourself up over losing.
• Look back at the fight that was just lost. What could you have done differently.

Can he really win every fight? No, but he has an optimistic (and realistic) attitude. If he is up against an opponent that is better geared than he is, odds are he will lose but the reality: he could have had equal gear. Who’s fault is it that he doesn’t? Instead of beating himself up over it, he’ll grind to get better gear (if he is under geared), see what else he could improve from the mistakes he made, and try again.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could do that with life? When something doesn’t work, see why it failed, then do it again? We can…

Of course, it means learning from our experiences and other people’s experiences.

You can’t go back and redo the past (that’s important to note - what’s done is done) but it is possible to make sure the mistakes from the past don’t re-appear in the future. I don’t play a Mage in WoW but I suck at PVP. Yeah I said it, I suck at PVP. Admitting it is one of the first things I need to do to correct the situation.

Instead of whining like a little bitch that my character won’t do what I want it to do.

The other (harder) part is putting in the time and effort needed to correct the situation. Hahaha it means losing for a while to win the bigger battles later. I can’t put into words how much I hate to lose but a girl has to do what a girl has to do. Tyme wants to be a PVP Queen so I have work to do.

What Does This Mean to You?

No one is perfect, there is always room for improvement. Many times the opportunity is there to avoid a situation from happening if one would open their eyes to what happened previously (or to others) and correct the situation. If you have a blog on technology, you’ve had it for over a year, you submit your entries to Digg, Reddit, etc. and your articles never make it to the front page is it because the Digg community is “mean” or your articles aren’t as good as the others submitted that day?

If you want to start a business and your main competition admitted that although successful, they would have went in a different direction, why would you start a business following the same path the competition took without safe-guarding against those hurdles?

If you know people are getting fired for the things they put online for public consumption, why would you put yourself (potentially) in the same position?

Just like in PVP, the people who win the fight think smarter (and yes, take advantage of their opponent’s weakness). In life those who succeed think smarter (and don’t repeat mistakes they are already aware of).

Chances

Today I was thinking of what makes working for yourself an easy task. There are definitely tough aspects of it, but then I got to thinking specifically about the person I am and the trouble I had when working for other people. I’m not the type of person who looks like they know what they are talking about when it comes to this web and technology thing. I’m not the type of person that walks into a room and people turn and nod assuredly knowing that I’ve done wonderful things that they can only dream of.

I was never that person and never will be that person. I’m the person that has to prove himself and help people see past the outward appearance. I’m the type of person that can make you laugh and have a good time, but if you want to talk serious then I might need to sit down at a computer and type it out.

On paper am I qualified to run a company? Not in the slightest. Maybe a lemondae stand, but only during seasons when it is guaranteed someone will buy the lemonade. Do I think I could step into a position at a major company and take on a leadership role? Most certainly.

Sometimes you go on your own because there are obstacles you would rather avoid and if that means taking the tougher road then so be it because at least you have yourself to depend on. It may not be because you have the greatest idea in the world or because you have enough cash lined up to take the chance. There may come a time where you can’t take one aspect of your life and the only change you can make is the one that makes the least amount of sense to everyone around you.

You see sometimes you only need one reason to take a leap even if nobody else agrees with that reason. As corny as it sounds sometimes you really do have to follow your heart and where it is trying to guide you. Using our brains can get us into trouble believe it or not and force us to take a path we know we will not be happy with.

This entry wasn’t meant to have a purpose except for those people who walk away with something from it. If you don’t get it then just move along and maybe I will write a piece you understand next week.

Stop Following Everybody, Stop Information Diarrhea, Start Being Interesting, Start Thinking For Yourself

This post is dedicated to people who feel that in order to be the most informed they can be, they need to hear all information from all parties at all times of the day across all mediums. It’s a fallacy. It makes you unproductive. It dilutes your opinions. Stop doing it. And stop perpetuating it.

FriendFeed and Socialthing are services that let you facilitate information overload and you should stay away from them. Yes, many people I know use these services, and I’m saying they’re bad for your mental health. The reason they are bad is because they trick you into thinking that each item you read is useful and important to understanding what your “friend” is currently thinking & doing when you don’t need to know everything that your “friend” is currently thinking & doing. Granted, posting your inner thought process as a human being into Twitter is the culprit for this type of informational diarrhea, so tell your friends (and yourself) to stop doing that as well. I don’t care what you’re thinking about at the moment, what you’re contemplating, when you’re done contemplating, what you’ve decided to do, any of that. None of that is interesting and the publication of such information furthers the trends of Twitter streams being uninteresting and annoying.

People that write blog entries — when they have nothing interesting to say — just so that they can say they blogged today are the same types of people who post random thoughts to Twitter just because they know those thoughts will get blasted out to all their followers. This is a horrible practice and it needs to stop. Push your ego and vanity aside and only publish things that are interesting. Remember that with the advent of FriendFeed and Socialthing, your posts are replicated to the screens of many others, so make sure your words matter.

Matt Linderman points out the words of Ricardo Semler on minimizing your information intake:

“I estimate that the ratio of useless to relevant reading material is about 20 to 1. With that in mind, my advice is to reduce the literary inflow to a maximum of two newspapers a day, two weekly magazines, and two publications in a specialized field. Start being proud of not being aware of everything. The reward will be an opportunity to THINK.”

Seeing words past by your head from 16,000 people you follow does not make you a more competent and thoughtful being. It makes your opinions blend into everyone else’s until you have no more real opinions, you just have 16,000 things you read and you picked one to agree with. Once this happens, posting original thought to your blog is nearly impossible and you resort to the easy way out of analyzing someone else’s viewpoint because it’s easier than writing your own good article. It’s almost unbelievable to me how little original thought is now posted to blogs (if you want good original thought, head to Tyme Said and Expert Idiot) because posting a well-written and original article to a blog now is almost as foreign as RSS feeds were a few years ago.

Dealing With Information

I am subscribed to 38 feeds in Bloglines, and 8 of those are feeds from 9rules or Chawlk. I follow 65 people on Twitter but 1) I don’t have Twitter updates sent to my phone, and 2) I only visit or post to Twitter once every couple days, so there’s little overload there. I don’t use Socialthing or FriendFeed or any other similar service. I do read a lot of websites, but the act of reading them is deliberate and I actually visit the site instead of plugging it into Bloglines and seeing the titles scroll by in the mash of all other titles. When I decide to read a blog entry that I find via my Bloglines subscriptions, I click over and read it on the site.

Everything I choose to absorb into my brain is deliberate. Every topic I read about I do so because I’m honestly interested in it, not because 16,000 of my “friends” posted about it and it entered my subconscious due to visual repetition. I’m careful about what I consider to be a good source of information, and don’t succumb to the informational spew that some crave.

In short, I pay attention to things that matter to me, and don’t pay attention to things that don’t. I only write about things I care about, and don’t write about things that I don’t. If you apply these principals to the information you output and the information you input, then you’re on your way to having a perspective that’s untarnished by the informational diarrhea outputted by the masses.

Birds of a feather flock together

I cannot remember who told me this but I was told (in school) for every positive (pro) there is a negative (con). The pro of the internet being cheap is that everyone (just about) can get on the internet. A con is that people think they have business skills they don’t have and start projects they normally wouldn’t start if a substantial financial investment was required.

Another pro for the internet is that it can be relatively easy to have a presence online. A con is that most people do not realize the impact of the decisions they make.

On Saturday night I went out with my friends and we decided to chill out after. One of the conversations led to ex-boyfriends/girlfriends and someone wanted to show us their ex. He pulled up his Facebook profile and the look on his face was priceless, I wish I had the camera ready to take a picture. Then he said, “HELL NAW!!!” and he started taking deep breaths. When he logged on he was presented with pictures his friend uploaded. Normally that is a good thing.

His friend was pictured with someone he couldn’t stand and to make it worse, a link to the both of their profiles so anyone looking at his profile could jump to the profile of the person he didn’t like. Yes, I know the guy could have micro-managed what was displayed on his profile but he didn’t want to deal with that. The better solution, for him, was to un-friend and that was the default reaction of the group (and that is what they said their friends did as well) for consistency. On Twitter the ability to micro-manage is not available.

I’m not going to bring up the thought of having to maintain friends like this across multiple sites.

That is a very interesting situation. His friend had every right to take and upload pictures to his account. The guy with us had every right to not want someone he didn’t like on his front page. I can see both sides of this issue. The guy with us thought about it for a minute and made the statement he was going to un-friend the guy. I understood that too.

This started a separate discussion about friends online and the difference between true friends and connections. An interesting point came up that I honestly did not think about (but I understand the logic). Let’s say someone comes across one of your profiles where your friends are visible. The person is considering being your “friend” and looks through your current friends. Unfortunately, the person finds someone he or she doesn’t like. The trend I realized last night: if the dislike is stronger than the positive feeling he or she has for you, the person will not be your friend online. Essentially, by subscribing to people you don’t really care about one way or the other could be prohibiting people from interacting with you because, in this wave of public interaction, they would see interaction with people they don’t like showing up on their profiles. With Twitter it would be @ responses. Facebook, it could be pictures.

I know I do this offline. I will not associate closely with someone who is too closely attached to someone I dislike. I dislike people for reasons like inability to trust, no ethics, lack of honesty, manipulator, etc. meaning, anyone that would want to associate with someone like that isn’t someone I want to be around. As long as I’ve been online I rarely cross paths with people I prefer not to interact with. I realize that is because I do most of my interaction via IM, email and my blog. I’m not the norm, most people do the opposite of what I do.

I realized that the implications of what one does online can be have more impact that expected. And of course, as per usual, the response to this will be: “That will never happen to me, I don’t have to worry about that.”

Until it does…

There Are 100 Million Web Designers

I’m a veteran in the web design industry, which is ridiculous to say at my ripe old age of 25 (just turned 2 weeks ago) except that it’s true.

I started blogging in July 2003, back when only a few companies used CSS and people like Jeffrey Zeldman were on the frontlines of the standards brigade. I remember the days when putting together a navigation element on a page didn’t automatically mean use an unordered list, which people didn’t really use until Fall/Winter of 2002 which was when the previously-linked A List Apart article was penned. I remember when CSS Zen Garden went live in May 2003 and how excited everyone was to put together a theme (I never did, but I sure did start-and-stop a half dozen). I remember the days when Doug Bowman was the design blog king, before he took his hiatus and returned only to go to Google. I was around when Dan Cederholm redesigned FastCompany’s website (their current design looks like ass, Dan’s was far superior and also 5 years older…) which put him on the path to design stardom. I distinctly remember how popular Movable Type was and how it dominated the blog world before WordPress made a run on them.

Do you remember any of these events?

The reason I’m taking a trip down memory lane is because I’ve been thinking recently just how many web designers there are now and how much the industry has grown in the past 3-5 years. When we launched Business Logs in early Summer 2004 the concept of a design firm that focused on blogs was unheard of. There were some other blog consulting sites out there, but none that really provided high-fidelity visual design. We were the first. Now I probably have 2 dozen blog design firms in my bookmarks folder alone, and could easily name another dozen individual designers who have put together some amazing blog-based website designs. In 2004, the playing field was so small that everything was new….

….but now in 2008, you hardly see anything completely brand new in the web design industry. My partner Paul Scrivens started the very first web design gallery at CSS Vault and now there are probably over 100. Every month I probably come across a half-dozen portfolio sites that I’d consider some of the best design sites I’ve ever seen, and this happens every month! The abundance of design talent in the world right now is unbelievable, but I see the following as some consequences of this abundance:

1. It’s unbelievably hard to go from 0-60mph as a new designer just starting out. When I started I put together a blog and some great articles and I was well on my way. Now if you don’t have a blog and you don’t have a couple unbelievable articles (with equally unbelievable pageviews and linkbacks) then you’re already behind everyone else.
2. Your portfolio has to be unreal to even get noticed. I can name a half-dozen designers right now that launched their careers with a homely portfolio but still took-off in the industry. Over time they honed their skills and are now putting out fantastic work, but when they started they were still in the learning stages so to speak. If you’re a new designer about to embark in the web design industry and you launch with a decent-but-not-amazing portfolio or blog, you’re already 5 steps behind.
3. Competition for client work drives pricing down across the industry. When I designed blogs for medium-to-large sized clients in my past life, prices started at a couple thousand dollars and worked their way up. Now that there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of free WordPress themes available — and everybody uses WP now instead of Movable Type, sorry Anil — clients see that as the bargain basement and when looking for a “custom theme” (I fucking hate that term, it should die) designers have to prove their worth beyond a shadow of a doubt because at all stages of the process a client could pick a freebie design and tweak it up. I’ve been part of many threads in Notes where people ask for bids on a nice blog design and people start throwing out 3-digit quotes. Well, shit, good luck with that.

So what do you do?

You separate yourself from the pack.

Put together a nice portfolio and blog, but don’t get caught up with the one-upsmanship that all the CSS galleries perpetuate. Read more than you write (I suggest this entry to start) and absorb more than you spew out. Twitter and all the microblogging platforms give you the means to produce verbal meta-diarrhea at all times of the day but resist the urge. Pick a niche and put together a small web-based “product” that targets that niche… it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It could be as simple as a small utility that does to-do tracking in a new way, or a nice iPhone Summerboard theme, but design the hell out of it and then blog about it. Put it in your portfolio, and then tuck it away and put together the next little product site. The successful designers I see out there now are the ones that experiment with these little types of sites, and building a site like this teaches you a lot more than you think it will.

There aren’t really 100 million web designers out there right now, but there are enough so that you’ll get drowned out unless you pick reachable goals and then execute the hell out of ‘em. Don’t try to be the next Smashing Magazine or Freelance Switch, carve out your own area and own it.

If it’s broke, fix it

Today is April Fool’s Day. The internet is going to be basically worthless today trying to determine whether an article is legitimate or a prank. So, I’m going to relay a story that happened yesterday.

Scrivs and I were playing Weewar. Someone from the Weewar team came to one of the SuperStreams, mentioned the game, and gave the three of us invites. We decided to give it a try. What is Weewar?

Weewar.com is a round based strategy game featuring real action on real maps. Up to 6 players command their colorful pixel armies against each other on the many maps available.

Scrivs started a map and we started playing. Scrivs made the first move, I made the second. Then, for me, the game slowly dived into hell. See, from the third move on I knew I was screwed, game was over but I refused to surrender so it took 11 turns for me to be defeated. Eleven turns when Scrivs knew, I knew and if anyone could watch that game knew I was extremely vulnerable early on. The writing was on the wall but I used the additional turns to learn more about the game (ok, I was stubborn but I can’t wimp out playing against Scrivs…even if I want it to be over quickly so I can attempt to whoop his ass the next round).

The ending could not be re-written.

While thinking of something to write on April Fool’s I thought about how often we know the end result and refuse to accept it. How, by not accepting the truth, time is wasted. For example, have you ever been in a relationship you know wasn’t going to work but prolonged ending it to avoid the drama? Does the end result change? No, but time is wasted. Or the project that doesn’t have your full commitment but you don’t want to withdraw because you don’t want to fail, the project “should” be a higher priority, you don’t want to disappoint anyone, [insert other excuses here]? A social networking example, how many of you have a bunch of friends that you “follow”, do not really pay attention to (for example, you only read the first page or two on your Twitter profile or really do not pay attention to your Twitter application) yet feel like you are suffering from information overload? Isn’t the writing on the wall that some people will have to be weeded out, ignored, etc?

Note that in each situation, nothing was done to improve the situation, only to maintain a scenario that one knows isn’t working out.

In my Weewar game I learned something, it was only 20 minutes, I still lost but I hope I will be better next time. Some people waste weeks, months and years prolonging the inevitable without improving the situation at all.

Unfortunately, many of those people will look back and wonder where the time went.

Step Back, Take Your Time

There are times when I feel as though I am getting nothing done or going no where. I get frustrated and upset with myself and I push myself harder just so I can feel as though I have accomplished something. Rarely does it work. I’m not talking about the times where you really are doing nothing, I am talking about the moments where you are, but don’t feel any movement occurring around you.

I was at that phase last week. So much stuff to do and although I was knocking items off the todo list I felt as though I was running the wrong way around the track. Then for an hour I just stepped back and did nothing. I didn’t play any games, read any sites or occupy my time with any other activity besides sitting and thinking.

After my session what I needed to accomplish seemed much more clear and I began to feel as though maybe I was running too fast around the track. In my rush to get things done I got nothing done, while when I took my time I got everything I needed out the way.

By no means do we live in a perfect world where you will never have to rush to finish a deadline, but that doesn’t mean your mind has to be rushed. When I am calm life flows as easily as the Mississippi. In this case calm does not equal complacent. When I am complacent I feel at ease without realizing that nothing is getting done. This is dangerous and I suggest you avoid it much as possible.

Instead when you find that you are going no where take a step back and maybe you will realize what really needs to be done. Admittedly I need to do this more often than I do as I get caught in the web of complacency so writing this is probably my way of telling myself to wake up more than it is advising you.