Just a guy in a dog costume eating some lunch. No big deal. Move along.
Out of all the business models that a company can use to make money, I have a love-hate relationship with only one, subscriptions.
As a business I love the idea of a recurring revenue stream from a dedicated customer base. Not only does it make predicting the financial books easier, but it clearly identifies who you should be focusing your efforts on day to day.
As a customer however, I hate it. Time after time I’ll make one-off transactions over a reoccurring charge on my credit card, even if it means spending more. Something about the commitment and forcing myself to justify a long term perceived value makes me hesitant.
But when you play off of my irrational subscription fears you’ve got a business model powerhouse.
This photobooth I found at a Microsoft Bing event last week reminds me that,
1) I still really want (to build) a photobooth, but can’t justify it other than to send goofy photos to my friends.
2) My Palm Pre is not holding up so well. Low light is tough for any camera, but the photos just look sad and dated (but not in the hipster Instagram sort of way).
I’m a big fan of the blog Hack A Day. It chronicles DIY hardware and software projects from people who just love to build cool things. Today while scrolling through some past entries I noticed an advertisement that didn’t suck! Ya, big surprise.
A silent video showed three guys talking. The guy in the middle had some homemade electronic device strapped to his head and an RC remote in his hand. Content like this is not uncommon for Hack A Day.
Investigating further I found it was a Verizon Wireless advertisement demonstrating the speed and low latency of their 4G network. The video showed a guy fling his RC quadcopter through an obstacle course using a phone video chat app.
Ok pretty simple hack, but what a great Ad. Technical DIY audience with an Ad to match. I can’t remember an Ad placement so contextually relevant.
Finally at the end of the video you’re lead to vzw.tumblr.com where you can find all kinds of nerdy Mythbusters-style “tests”. Just like Mythbusters most of their tests leave you pondering in that grey area of plausibility.
I don’t care if they’re real or not, I was satisfied just being engaged on a technical level for once. Verizon (actually their advertising firm), you get my kudos for the week.
Attending a Startup Weekend means never wondering if someone has a laptop for you to check your email.
Startup Weekend is a great kick in the pants that pushes you to your limits regardless of skill set. Want to see what you’re made of, try creating a startup in 54 hours. Here’s my tips for success.
I want to know.
This weekend I’ll be participating in another Startup Weekend event in which a crack team of startup junkies and myself will create a new product or service in one weekend.
There’s a ton of ideas we could do, but I’m looking for ideas that will take the pain out of X or Y.
If you problem is knowing how to eat healthy, I wanna know. If you’re looking for a way to organize your life, I wanna know. [insert your own better examples]
Sure I’m going to personally gravitate toward the sexy high tech solutions, but above all I want to make something this weekend that myself and others will still be using in 6 months. I want to make something of value that real people can benefit from.
So if you’ve got a pain point, let me know and you may just get the product or service of your dreams in one weekend.
I recently attended a meetup of the Seattle Android Developers group. Their guest speaker was Tim Bray, Developer Advocate from Google. Tim was there to talk about the Android OS for mobile phones. Among Tim’s many accomplishments he’s also the co-inventor of the XML Web standard. Whatever, no big deal.
That night Tim made the distinction himself that he was not “developer relations” - a role that usually has that fishy not-a-developer smell. All night he spoke to an audience of active developers, as a developer but with an official tone. He shared wisdom, but wasn’t afraid to poke at the faults of Android at the same time. He was honest and genuine.
Maybe it’s the open source nature of Android, but Tim never made me feel like I was being sold to. He was viewed as a resource and as an expert.
And it worked. I’d already been interested in Android for a while, but the very open and approachable nature of Tim and his message at the end pushed me over the edge and sold me on Android.
That’s right. He sold me but never appeared to be selling me. Oh how stealth his black magic was.
If you want to get developers using your products don’t “sell them” (or at least don’t appear to be), inform them. Be like Tim and present yourself as a expert there to answer any skepticism. That open culture feel is a warm inviting blanket for developers like me. I’ll be much happier to work with you, rather than work for you.
Above all don’t be “that guy” who’s there just to have you sign on the line which is dotted. That guy smells fishy.
Violence in local arcade outrages parents when a tiger is found crushed to death by spiky balls. After many failed attempts to use the torture device’s “claw”, crying children continue to plead for “just one dollar more”. News at 11.
Adam Loving is a friend and co-worker who’s getting a head start on ideas for the next Startup Weekend. He’s already jotted down a few concepts that have been rattling around in his head, but “Early Birds” is the concept he’s running with at the moment.
He’s even gone as far as mocking up some basic workflow and screen shots of what a finished product might look like. Not only is it a great way to flesh out the idea, but it allows someone like myself to respond to a concept, rather than idea - like this…
I initially liked Early Birds as one of the top ideas on Adam’s initial list. For me sleeping and waking are two things that I feel I’ve never gotten right and I’m always looking to improve on. Early Birds one line synopsis of “mobile sms alarm clock game” was exciting enough for me to jump on.
Now after seeing Adam’s iterative thoughts on the idea through his mockups Robert Taylor responded with a simple tweet stating, “…a text won’t wake me ~ unless you resend it until I txt a respns”.