There are at least two pillars of making things happen that I've discovered.
1) Do something
2) Meet people
Chances are, if you are reading this blog you probably have number 1 figured out, or have at least started.
The mystery of meeting people
Meeting people is kind of an enigma. If you don't agree with me, consider the importance and effort put into dating in our modern society. Volumes have been written and wars have probably been fought over meeting the right significant other.
Social or business relationships are also discussed, but to a lesser extent. I would venture to say most of what is said about meeting people is either bad, or easily interpreted in a way that will not be helpful.
One paradox to meeting people is that if you attempt it, you will probably meet many people who are not very good at meeting people.
Smalltalk
If you've read up anything on meeting people one of the first tips is "talk about the other person." In this day and age, I think that advice sucks. In the right context, that advice will work. In other situations it actually causes terrible conversation as both parties try really hard not to talk about themselves, and the conversation stalls.
Start the discussion with something relatable, and try to uncover what the persons interests are, and see if you can find something you've both recently read up on.
Planning Serendipity
There have been times in my life where I wanted things to unfold naturally and spontaneously. Trying too hard was something I wanted to avoid.
However, my friends who have the most serendipitous lives are actually planners. They throw parties, organize dinners, or have pub crawls. These planned events give rise to chance encounters. I can say very confidently that if you're looking for a serendipitous life, you have to plan for it. Much like finding Mr./Mrs right, it is unlikely you'll meet them running into each other in the parking lot, and much more likely if you make an effort to be social.
Putting it Into Practice
To get started on meeting people, I suggest you do the following things.
1) Craft a meetup - Pick a topic that has wide appeal, and become an organizer.
2) Cold email people - This is terrifying to many people, but once you get started it really isn't that bad.
3) Say yes. When you get an invitation to something, do your best to attend it unless you absolutely can't.
I'll be putting much of these tactics into place and showing you how so stay tuned.
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login to commentThose of us Gen Y folk are starting to see our elders pass. Elders in our family, and elders in our industry. Many of these people hail from a turbulent time spanning the 50s 60s and 70s and early 80s. As a result, I find myself pondering the ethics they lived by, and how have we have assimilated or diverged from them.
A good portion of the works we all owe so much to today starting at MIT. Engineers fiddled with the PDP-1 scratching at the surface of what would foreshadow the video game and personal computer industries, along with many others.
Far from the hipsters we have today, we see from pictures what appear to be very well adjusted prim and proper engineers. However, they had the hacker ethic, and they had social ideals.
Steve Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution," outlined the hacker ideal at MIT as consisting of the following principles:
Wow. in 1984 Levy distilled down those principles from the hacker ethic, and it clearly obvious to any of us in the industry that the ideas have spread.
I hope our generation can derive a real sense of purpose in our own ideals, and carry on the good ones of generations past. We are beginning to inherit the responsibility, like it or not.
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login to commentFunny Picture Contest - Win $100
by z in humorhangger is holding a funny picture contest for the next 48 hours 9/4/2011 to 9/5/2011. Post a funny picture in http://humor.hangger.com and the poster of the funniest picture wins $100. Get started!
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You have five senses. You can count time as a sixth one, and emotions as a seventh.
Anything you make can be reduced to bits (physical or digital) that manipulate this attributes.
I hope you're being optimistic by now.
If you want to change the world, all you have to do is arrange some bits, and make copies of those bits, and show those bits to as many people as you can.
A simple arrangement of bits that affects a thousand people could be more interesting than a an arrangement that affects only one, but that is up to you.
If your bits move, then more power to you, people love those kind of bits.
Now get on with it.
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login to commenthot link: I made this site
ShelfLuv is an online bookshelf that lets you show your friends what books you are reading
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login to commentThe power of online communities.
by z in humorI recently found an xkcd comic that has been a source of inspiration.
The comic demonstrates the huge diversity of online communities on the internet. In the last couple years the rush to create 'the next facebook' has died down as the hivemind has moved onto daily deals, and other ideas. That being said, I believe internet communities are here to stay, and still have a long way to go.
Most products and services that are purchased online, are not purchased or facilitated by a real community. The main reason for this is: creating a community is a hard.
Despite the difficulty, an online community really embodies much of what some great companies strive for. These attributes include a dedicated following, a sense of authenticity, a connection with your customers, and a recognizeable brand.
Even though establishing a community is a challenge, one only has to look at the millions of sites on the internet that provide a bare bones and boring experience to realize that the bar to making something people love is relatively low.
Here at hangger we're still poking around and finding our voice, but we hope that one day it will be a flourshing community with its own culture.
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login to commenthot link: http://www.rdio.com/#/artist/Stan_Getz/album/Big_Band_Bossa_Nova/
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login to commenthot link: Make Things
Caterina is spot on. Don't worry about what's going on around you, start bringing your ideas to life.
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login to commenthot link: The Sugary Secret of Willpower
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login to commenthot link: How the internet began to rule the world.
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login to commenthot link: Made a Mistake? Just Treat Us to Ice Cream
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login to commenthot link: beard slap
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Product development is an art and a science. For all the arguing and debate on how to make a successful product the formula is simple, make it irresistible.
Irresistibility is quantifiable. Features, benefits, pain points, design, all of these things are attempting to find attributes that a person simply cannot resist desiring. What you are trying to do when creating a product is game a person's senses; physical or business senses.
Physical attraction works like this. There are millions of products out there that men and women can buy that enhance their physical attractiveness. These products take attributes of humans, such as colorful eyes, or clear skin, and exploit these cues far beyond their natural levels. The result is we cannot resist noticing these enhancements, its fundamentally built into our biology.
We see this with food also. Hyper-palatable foods aren't something that happen by chance. If the combination of toasted peanuts, chewy caramel, delightful nougat, and caffeine fueled chocolate didn't make a Snickers bar damn near impossible to resist, it simply would not be on the market.
Can you put amazing elements like these into your products, and end up with something even greater than the sum of their parts? If so, congratulations, you will have people lining up outside your door ready to purchase them, because they can't help themselves to do otherwise.
Many books on startup and success string together many insightful but unfortunately vague statements on how to create great products. If you find yourself scratching your head while evaluating if you should follow lean startup principles, 37signals "Rework," "The Innovators Dilemma," or any other number of success religions, just remember, it boils down to researching massively specific things people want, and building those things into your product.
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Michael Arrington has started a new blog http://uncrunched.com
What is amazing about it is it has all the vibes of the early Techcrunch. Earnest posts about topical events. There are no posts about how someone added twitter integration to their app today.
Even more amazing is that the blog has an audience on day one. Each post has at least 25 comments or so, sometimes over 60. Unlike a web application which if sold, goes to the owner, an audience seems to be more like a bad habit, something that sticks with you.
How did Arrington do it? He didn't seem to start as the insider he is today. You see, information is a commodity or a currency. When two people trade information, both get richer.
Many people set out to offer up custom wares when they trade information. They create content that is self referential. Arrington does that quite a bit these days, but I would venture to say that is not what got him his audience.
Techcrunch traded snippits of info of obscure startups when it first launched. Reading its pages were like opening up old album covers learning about obscure bands before the internet existed. Each nugget was a fascinating look at the inner workings of the smallest startup. You could probably find out what flavor of ramen some of these guys were eating.
Many startups today blog themselves, but rarely in the way that Techcrunch peered into the soul of the companies. Most of the time the blogging is about something tactical. It is hard to wear your heart on your sleeve.
Arrington's new blog is starting off the same way. He hasn't covered any tiny startups, yet. However, each post has had an emotional, human angle that is a tad controversial, but just enough to be interesting.
I'm looking forward to what he does with uncrunched, and in some ways, it seems like it ushers in a new era of startups.
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