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Distance

Over the last year or so, I’ve gone from being hyper-local—I attended and helped organize countless events in Phoenix—and hyper-connected—I was constantly reading and interacting with my local contacts online—to being global and disconnected. With technology, it’s very easy to stay in touch while being physically out of reach, but technology changes as quickly as people change the way they use it.

We have all this technology to stay connected, but nowadays, with everything we do sharable with a single click, the echo chamber has gotten too noisy. The technology we use is saying “share more!” (because more activity equates to more value for service providers) but we’re not given good ways of cutting through the noise and seeing what matters. This is something that bothers me, as a data-minded person. Some pieces of content matter more, and there are various ways of computing how much something matters.

Facebook does this to a degree. The news feed is listed by how much activity (comments/likes) is on a given item, with a “secret sauce” element of deciding which friends show up more often than others based on your previous interactions. But then again, Facebook sucks. And what about your friends who are not on Facebook? You can only connect with friends who want to hang out in the Walled Garden.

Ideally, we would have technology that aggregates content from where ever your friends are posting it and applying this type of computation on it.

All this is to say, I could use the excuse that I’ve been too busy to stay connected online while being away, but I’m blaming some of it on the current state of technology!

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Ignite Phoenix 8

Ignite Phoenix 8 was last week, October 15, 2010 at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. The volunteer-organized event has grown from a 2-person team putting on an event in a 100-person capacity office/classroom to being a committee of passionate volunteers orchestrating an 800-person theatrical experience with a professional stage crew.

The content hasn’t changed, though. It’s still 5-minute lightning talks by regular people who want to share what they’re passionate about. There are still talks by people I know, shedding light on aspects of their lives I was unaware of (to people who don’t know them, they’re just fascinating talks). There are still talks that give you chills. There are still talks that cause an uproar of laughter. There are even still talks that break the rules (in a boo-hiss way).

At this Ignite, there were several stellar talks. I have two favorites.

“Surprise! Your child has autism. Now what?” I’d met Jim St. Leger and his son, the subject of Jim’s Ignite talk. They came to Gangplank and participated in hardware/circuitry meet-ups, where Jim’s son amazed everyone with his knowledge of electrical components. Jim gave an amazing talk about discovering his son had autism and the impact it had on his family. The word “impact” coming after “autism” sounds scary and negative. Autism isn’t necessarily a handicap. Sure, it comes with challenges, but it also comes with strengths. Don’t fear being different. Embrace it. Autism and Aspergers can be assets for certain lines of work.

“The Year of Music.” Brandon Franklin is a friend of mine, and he talked about changes in his life that I was lucky enough to witness. Brandon was inspired by an Ignite presentation about Taiko (Japanese drum). Brandon had abandoned one of his passions, music, in order to pursue work in technology. Not long after that Ignite, and hearing Brandon say, “That’s it, I’m going to take a Taiko class,” I saw him change his Facebook profile picture to one of him in class, striking a Taiko drum. He wasn’t just saying it. He also went on to co-found Desert Bloom Phoenix, a music & art event that has already been put on 3 times. Brandon also formed a band with Nicholas DiBiase, called Rocketship. Music is back in Brandon’s life in a big way, and the Ignite audience got to hear a 5 minute version of his year of change.

Not all the talks were so deep. There were some excellent, fun, and entertaining talks about stuff like beer, donuts, and building a desert compound impenetrable by the federal government. You know, the usual.

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Act 3: The Landing

ShalerJump

To catch you up on what the last couple months have been like for me, I cut loose and quit my job in June (Act 1). During July, I was in a state of free fall (Act 2), as I lined up meetings across the country and went to 6 cities in 4 weeks. Now (Act 3), I would like to talk about the landing.

What I did was radical. Perhaps even crazy. I couldn’t help but wonder while I was putting myself through this, “Am I crazy? Or brilliant? … Or both?”

What I did was crazy. I quit an excellent job, working for an awesome company in the bay area (they’re hiring!). I got to work from home. I reported to people who were results-oriented, not micro-managing. Flexible, fun, paid monthly travel, reasonable pay. I quit an excellent job.

The day after putting in my notice, I was driving to the office, listening to NPR. They were doing a segment on long-term unemployment—people who got laid off and have been looking for a job for over a year.

Gob: \

I had reached the point of no return and was confident I was moving in the right direction. Still, I felt a tremendous amount of doubt.

Crazy. I’ve never been good at saving money. I have always lived paycheck-to-paycheck. (I love direct deposit!)

I quit my job with minimal savings—a little bit of cash—and no customers lined up. I could have waiting until I had some money saved up (probably wouldn’t happen) or until I had a customer lined up (I turned down 2 offers before I was ready to take the plunge). What was the first thing I decided to do? Travel.

Crazy. I burned most of my runway capital on a three and a half week trip, hitting 6 cities coast-to-coast. I bought a netbook and my full-time job for my first month of un-/self-employment (I called it unemployment until I landed a paying gig) was emailing, scheduling, calling, and meeting. No code. I’m a programmer, and I didn’t write a single line of code for a month.

Or was I brilliant?

During my travels, I met up with a ton of people. Literally. Actually, “literally” would mean at least 20 tons. I was talking about data visualization all day every day for weeks. I met over coffee, food, drinks, and boardroom tables. I traveled in cars, taxis, buses, trains, planes, elevators, and escalators to see people.

By the numbers: I talked about data visualization with about 200 people. Those people were associated with at least 60 companies that would either be customers, partners, or simply providing referrals. Of those 60, I considered 40 to be prospects. From those 40 prospects, I could see 10-15 of them converting into paying customers. Of those 10-15 hot leads, I needed to find 1-3 that would ready to start work within a month. I was going broke. Fast.

Brilliant? I got home almost 6 weeks after I left to go to work (and put in my 2 weeks notice). After 4 full days at home, I was on a plane to Washington DC to start working on-site with my first client.

The numbers make sense. Given enough prospects, a certain percentage should convert into customers. So I guess the question is, “How was I able to meet with so many prospects?” My work is pretty specific. Data visualization. It’s a very tight niche. What does data visualization mean to companies? To some, it’s marketing. To others, it’s business intelligence or analytics. Most companies can benefit from it, but not many are in a position to invest in it.

“So how was I able to get so many prospects in such a tight niche?”

The full answer would require a series of blog posts. In summary, it’s about paying it forward, doing good for no reason, and investing time in meeting and helping people. It’s about ROI, and the return being indirectly linked to the investment. I spent years going to conferences, making friends with people in my industry. I spent years being involved with local tech community events. I spent years couch-surfing and developing strong friendships with people around the country I rarely see.

When I was in my state of free fall, my friends across the country were my parachute. I spent a month traveling across the country pulling the ripcord.

Thanks to my network of friends, I didn’t land on my face. I hit the ground running.

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Progress Report: The Free Fall

free fall

I’ve cut loose and made the jump. Now it’s time to see if I hit the ground running or fall flat on my face.

The moment in between jumping and landing is the fall. It’s the weightlessness you feel as you no longer have control of your trajectory. I’ve carved out a tight niche in a young field. I’m simultaneously turning away work (general Flash development, for which there is always demand) and hunting to find work (data visualization, specifically).

I quit my awesome job at BitGravity on June 28, effective July 9. My last 2 weeks were spent on-site in Burlingame, CA & Santa Cruz, CA. On Monday, July 12, I hit the ground running, meeting with prospective clients in the Bay Area. Before my flight from SFO to LGA (NYC), I made a quick trip down to LA then San Diego, for potential leads and to meet up with friends.

After a week and a half of independence, I was on my way to NYC. I had a mostly open schedule after the first few days. I was planning to stay 2-3 weeks. It ended up being 2 weeks, with a day trip to Philadelphia as well as a day and a half in Washington DC. Three and a half weeks of cross-country business development in 6 cities.

Now that I’m back in Phoenix, recovering from a trip that spanned almost 6 weeks, I’m wondering if what I just did was crazy or brilliant.

You quit an awesome job with pretty cool perks to take a flying leap of faith into a young market without any customers lined up, and you start off by blowing a bunch of money on a coast-to-coast road (well, mostly air) trip? Are you nuts? Maybe.

I’m going to write about this trip, because the concept is intriguing to me. I have a hunch the plan was mostly brilliant and partly crazy. Being a little bit of both can go a long way.

UPDATE: Act 3: The Landing

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PHXdata Update and Fostering Community

I posted previously about the idea of having a user group for data. The group has come together in the form of PHXdata and 6 meet-ups have already taken place.

It’s exciting to see it unfold, as more people come together and get involved. The next meeting is 6:30pm Tuesday, July 6th, where the Civic Hacking work group will continue working on a challenging campaign finance project (“Open” data is not necessarily “Useful” data. 3,000 scanned documents as PDFs? Are you serious?). The group will also discuss the planning of an Open Government event, where government officials, technologists, and journalists will get together and discuss how to improve the accessibility of open data, making more data open, government transparency, and ways open data can change lives. If you’re interested to hear more, check out PHXdata.org and join the mailing list.

At this planning meeting, we are expecting to have special guests, technical representatives from various cities in Phoenix metropolitan area. The group is already getting serious interest from the local government, which is very exciting!

My Hidden Agenda

After my recent announcement about jumping into the world of self-employment and specializing in data visualization, it may become clear why I decided to help Mark Ng and Marc Chung get this group going. My involvement in this group has been part of a broad, long-term strategy. If I want to establish myself in this new industry, it is in my best interests to empower those around me with similar interests.

Collaboration over competition

A rising tide lifts all boats. While you can lift yourself up by pushing others down, you will get higher if you help lift everyone around you.

Community is serendipity

While helping foster community has few direct and measurable benefits, the possibility for all kinds of indirect benefits is immeasurable.

Humans are great filters. If you surround yourself with enthusiasts in your field, you’ll always know what’s new in your field, without having to spend all your time trying to read about everything. If something is new and exciting, someone will want to talk about it. This is why User Groups are extremely valuable.

If you are part of a community, you have people to go to for advice, to answer your questions, recommend alternatives, and miscellaneous human resources like beta testers, proofreaders, and referral networks. You also have a pool for professional help, like potential employees or subcontractors.

You can’t say, “I’ll help start a meet-up group and get [this or that],” but you can say, “I’m going to bring people with similar interests together in a meaningful way, and there will be opportunities for me—and everyone else—to benefit from it.”