I was listening to a podcast about a new concept for having news reported. The concept is that people put money into a pot, and when the pot reaches a given amount someone will write a story. The stories, from what I remember, aren't about typical local news, but more about local investigative journalism.
One of the arguments the creator mentioned was that local TV, newspapers, etc. spend a lot of time covering national and global stories, and have left meaningful local coverage mediocre. I don't read newspapers (or their sites for that matter), and seldom turn on TV news - but the times that I have seen them, he's spot on. One of the reasons I stopped reading/watching is that local news is about sensationalism... murder and mayhem, and celebrity.
Enter the blog.
When I stumble upon local blogs, they're usually covering topics of larger scope (maybe national) but with a local twist. How does the story affect them and what is the author's perspective on it. Sometimes though, it may be a story on a local sporting event, or a meetup of some kind. In my circles, these things also cover lots of business subjects... investing, entrepreneurship, etc. No matter the subject, there is a local flavor to the stories.
The idea:
Create an aggregation site that blog authors subscribe to (free of course) with the express goal of providing a local "newspaper" powered by the citizens of a given market. You would be able to drill down in a Craigslist style navigation to a city or town, then see stories in given subject areas from people that actually live and work in that area. All of the typical newspaper categories would exist: business, sports, arts, movies, activities, etc.
When an author writes a story, they would have to apply it to given categories. The readers could gauge whether or not the story is actually on topic, and stories and authors could be rated for quality. These ratings would determine what floats to the front page, digg style. If you want to have fun, you could offer a payment for the author based on the revenues they generate for the site... but that is a bonus for participating, not an expectation.
If you decide to build this, let me know... I'd subscribe to the RSS feed at the very least.
I'm in an unbelievably cool place. Not only can we (my friends the collective) come up with fantastic ideas, but we can actually build them, market them, and sell them. The network is the idea.
So begins the curse.
The curse is having these ideas and knowing that there is always something fun to do. To make it worse, clearly there is not enough time to do them all.
Take zerologic.com for example. At one point, in addition to HyperSites, I was building PCs for friends, training people in Second Life, and doing a video experiment... and those were the things I put on the site. Add to those my responsibilities as a father, husband, friend, etc. it was way too complicated.
Focus. This is an area that I will admit I'm lacking in. Don't get me wrong, I focus on the task at hand - these days I think to a fault. Just ask Chris. What I'm talking about is taming my entrepreneurial wild thing.
I've whittled my pro life down to two things: HyperSites and Social Ingenuity. Anything else that comes along is weighed against those in areas of passion and desire. This hasn't been a problem... until now.
A friend of mine approached me with an idea that crosses a threshold I've been thinking a lot about: the geek threshold. Most of the things I see in my circle are targeted specifically at geeks. People that are already familiar with technology and geek out on all things social. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. One local company has even made it easier to see what all of your friends are doing on all of those networks in one consistent feed. You can post to several at once using their software.
But to what end? Is keeping up with your friends the point? Or is it telling a story? Publishing, or subscribing? Creating, or consuming?
We have an idea that makes everyone in your life (literally everyone with a computer) a participant in your life's story. More soon.
I've been participating in conversations around finding one's passion, then monetizing it as a means to improve your quality of life. If you're doing what you love, then the rest will come.
This is Jon Sullivan. I've known Jon for years... I met him (and his now wife) while working in one of our "offices" (read, Starbucks) in Plano, Texas. Coincidentally, this is the same Starbucks that we plucked Chris out of, but I digress.
Jon works at a major mobile phone company by day, but by night and weekends? He makes guitars... by hand. He was a part of the metal revolution in the late 80s, and knew several of the guys that ended up making it big. Jon also played in a KISS cover band... KISS was my favorite group for years. He's a fantastic guitarist, and hasn't been out in the world in a while with his music.
I'm including this clip to give you an idea of what can happen when you practice your passion. The video is fun, and the song of course great, but neither are the point of my post. My post is about a guy playing with video, in a room, recording himself practicing his passion.
I've been AFK for quite a while, focusing my work time on HyperSites exclusively. It is better than ever as a result... but now it is time to spend my off hours building my passion.
My passion is called Social Ingenuity. It is a huge project that centers directly in the social networking space. It has a few fundamental differences compared to most of what we're seeing in this space. First and foremost, it will allow people to leverage their social networks to build companies.
Social Ingenuity is so big in fact, that I've come up with a great way to get started slowly. Rather than try to build a monster application to support the company, I'm going to start it locally. This will allow us to find great talent to start the global version properly.
I'll have more news soon, but if your curiosity has been piqued, have a look at Social Ingenuity. Ping me with questions.
If you can dedicate the time, I highly recommend participating in a Startup Weekend. The concept is simple... people gather from all disciplines of business to create a company and product within 56 hours. No one knows at 0 hour Friday what the idea is, yet everyone that participates gets equal ownership in the result. There is a palpable energy in the room when deadlines are tight and there is no room for posturing or lobbying, and the social aspect of the event can't be beat. I expect Andrew and team to kick lots of butt - there are tons of people that have the startup bug and this is a great way to play in the space. Sixty-eight people generating a company over the course of a weekend.
So why should "user generated" be limited to content? What else are users willing to generate? Prosper.com allows people to generate loans (or buy debt) for people that think they need more debt to clear up other debt (yes, this is a crappy concept in my eyes, but that isn't the subject of this post). Users generate answers for people with burning questions at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Comments on blogs across the globe contribute to the quality of the original blog entry. There is a great company helping to aggregate that process too, have a look at Intense Debate
Imagine a blog post where the author seeks opinions on ideas for photos in a brochure. Users might generate some very useful ideas for the author to use, as well as post links directly to photos at iStockPhoto. I'm sure this happens all of the time... the readers help define the product.
Companies could use this system to solicit input from users of their products to perfect advertising materials. Users could be intimately involved in creating the feature set for the next version of that product. But companies still rely on R&D teams and hired guns rather than soliciting such input.
Imagine what would happen if Real hosted a weekend event where any user could come by and offer their opinion on what the next version of the platform should provide? Or maybe if Gap, Inc. took clothing designs from the public and allowed visitors to vote on which designs should be made. They could offer the designer a cash reward (I.E, purchase the design outright).
The possibilities are endless. If you have examples of user generated anything, let me know. I'd love to have a look.
I've been giving a lot of thought to the StartupWeekend phenomena. As I and others have mentioned, it was amazing to see such remarkable talent show up, ready to play. There were no rules, and no expectations other than to see a startup launched by Sunday. People got together to do something cool with the chance of reward... no guarantees, just a chance.
With the success of StartupWeekend, Andrew Hyde will be traveling to different cities around the country helping other like minded individuals get the same thing going in their neighborhood. Unfortunately I can't make those, but I'm every bit as excited to see the turnout and resulting products as I was to see ours. It is exciting to watch it evolve and improve. Andrew will have a blast with it and with the team he's surrounded himself with, I see good things for him.
StartupWeekend in Boulder had 58 participants that dedicated roughly 54 hours in a row to the project. The premise was to show up at 6PM on friday, and leave at midnight Monday morning. Of course it didn't work out that way, but that was the idea. I know several fantastic people that didn't participate because of time constraints. They dropped by to see how it was going, but didn't stay. I am fortunate enough to have a wife that understands me... so much so that she gave me a pass for the entire weekend.
My participation in StartupWeekend was inevitable. I'm a serial entrepreneur and can't stop thinking about ways to improve the world in some way or another. Just look at my Ideas section for a sampling of what I mean. As a matter of fact, while on a recent trip with a good friend of mine through the Tetons and Yellowstone, we came up with no less than 10 solid ideas in the course of normal conversation. We weren't brainstorming ideas, just talking. That is who I am, who we are.
StartupWeekend has been on my mind since it happened. There are people around the world that just want to contribute to something. They want to see an idea through from start to finish because that is their nature. They have spare cycles here and there, but can't or don't want to commit to anything long term or even for more than a few hours per week. Retirees, stay at home parents with successful careers, busy serial entrepreneurs, students... you get the idea.
These people need something to work on, something to contribute to, with the very real possibility of financial reward. I've been talking with friends about a project called "Social Ingenuity," and while it isn't ready for general feedback, it is close enough to bring it to light. It is a combination of two concepts: idealRealm (an idea Bracken, Rich, and I had in 2003), and the reality that the world is indeed flat... there are people all over the world that want to do stuff, just to do it. This project is significant, so significant that I'm going to focus all of my energy on HyperSites and "Social Ingenuity."
Here's a teaser: Good ideas are a dime a dozen. We don't have the time/resources/specialized knowledge to move most of our ideas beyond the napkin phase. We're busy... we have other demands of our time. Jobs, kids, family, hobbies, exercise... we just don't have time. But what if that wasn't the case? What if you could test your idea's viability, have it implemented, and possibly funded?
Well under way, Startup Weekend is absolutely one of the coolest things I've been involved in. The company we've created is a web/sms service for making quick decisions.
If you want to ask a few friends about a decision you want to make, come to the site, enter their email addresses, or mobile phone numbers, and we'll send the questions and options to them. They reply within a given time period and you're notified of the results. There is way more to it than that, especially if you ask the developers, but that is the general idea. Think pro features, white labeling, etc.
Everyone broke in to groups of specialty after the idea was chosen. For example: marketing/pr, front end development, creative, back end development, business development, legal, and user experience. These teams formed magically. How cool.
Normally I'd stick myself into one of the dev teams, but as I grow I want to offer my experience to as many people as will listen. So with this project, I signed up in the "I get things done" role. I floated from group to group, and if I say so myself, that worked well. I spent most of yesterday with the user experience team.
Keep an eye on the site... it will launch today (it may be tonight!) but it will go. Absolutely the best way to get a quick vote is with VoSnap. ;-)
Let me know what you think. Oh, we were TechCrunched (thanks Mike!) We were the featured show last night for quite a while on ustream.tv, and will be streaming the event live today too. Check it out at at ustream.tv
Some of Boulder's best and brightest startup talent is gathering tonight at 6. What exactly we'll be doing is still totally unclear, but the result will be a complete startup/product on Monday morning. If the idea is solid, there is plenty of opportunity for going big. Frankly, with the people involved, I expect just that.
There are 70 people signed up. Think about that for a second. An entire company's worth of high level talent, coming together to build something cool over the course of a weekend.
I have to thank my wife Heather for her support on this. She'll be responsible fully for Z and will have little time to herself while I'm off creating something cool with my friends. She has plans to take our 3 year old son Z to the Colorado Renaissance festival on Sunday. She'll have fun! Thanks Heather! Don't forget about daycare! :)
My friend Ari Newman of tru.vu and Newman Venture Advisors has an interesting observation about Web developers in the Boulder area. It seems as thought all of the funded startups are sucking the market dry.
I know a some of these guys and they're pretty much booked as he says. If you're a good web developer and you have rails experience, give these guys a glance. They're in need of help.
Ari says you don't have to be local, but you do have to kick ass and already have remote relationships worked out. Read the post yourself here Web developer drought in Boulder?
If you want to see the path to a cool company that could provide valuable services to prosumers and executives around the globe, follow this puzzle.
Read this then watch this. If you take this combine it with this and this you too can have your knowledge navigator service provider. Today. Anyone interested?
