"Hard work is common. Long hours are a given. But it doesn’t matter to your customer. He just wants excellence. Stop talking about how hard you work. It diminishes what people think of you. Display excellence. Make it look easy."
Piedmont Park Technology
I love Piedmont Park. It truly is the gem of Atlanta. Pre kids spent lots of time there. Not so much in the last eight years. But that is changing.
Not too long ago I met with Jim Moore and Norman McKay of the Piedmont Park Conservancy. The Conservancy is the nonprofit organization, working with the City of Atlanta to maintain and enhance Piedmont Park as a vital urban green space in the city. They asked me to join the park’s Technology Committee. I accepted.
You may be wondering why a park needs technology. Well let me tell you what’s going on.
Piedmont Park is undergoing a huge expansion. The park currently contains about 187 acres. They are opening up 53 new acres in the northwest portion of the park, a 40% increase in parkland. The first phase one of the northern expansion will lay the infrastructure and foundation for future amenities. I am particularly excited about this as it will create a new entrance to the park about 300 yards from my home versus the three quarter mile trek that I now have.
Future amenities planned currently include such things as an interactive water fountain similar to Centennial Park, lots of wooded trials, athletic fields, basketball courts, bocce courts, a children’s carousal (think Central Park, NYC), and a skatepark that Jack is going to love. In addition to the expansion area features planned for phase two and beyond, the Conservancy has broken ground on a LEED-certified renovation to the historic bathhouse and pools. It is currently scheduled to reopen in the summer of 2009. I have seen the plans for all this. It is going to be way cool.
So all these new places and things in the park need to be connected. What’s the best way to connect them? The Internet of course. Or more specifically through fiber and wireless technologies that utilize Internet protocol to communicate. So I am helping the Piedmont Park Convservancy evaluate and select the appropriate technologies needed as the park expands. This not only includes the basic infrastructure but appropriate services that ride on the network once it is in place. This is going to be lots of fun.
And I am going to spending a lot more time enjoying Piedmont Park.
“Happiness As Your Business Model”
I woke up to a little tweet from Tony, the CEO of Zappos, yesterday. The @missrogue he refers to is Tara Hunt, who specializes in community marketing. Running 197 slides and introducing terms such as homo-feelgoodomicus, this presentation is amazing and a must view for anyone looking to build a successful business, be it online or off.
According to Tara the key to a successful business is helping homo-feedgoodomicus feel good. She goes on to outline seven reasons that happens is the key to success:
1. happy customers talk to more people about their positive experience;
2. unhappy customers talk to the MOST people about their negative experience;
3. happy customers are repeat customers;
4. happy customers will pay more for an awesome experience;
5. happy customers are loyal;
6. happy customers will drive your marketing for you;
7. happy employees are more productive, creative, and loyal.
Tara then lays out the pillars of happiness (autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem) and gives specific ways that you can increase each of these incorporating great case studies along the way (including Zappos of course).
The basic takeaway is that if you are aware of the principles of happiness when designing your product or service you can become an agent of happiness. And who wouldn’t want that?
My summary does not do the presentation justice. While 197 slides may seem daunting, you can blow through them in 10 minutes. Putting them in action could last a lifetime.
Quote of the Week
"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea!"
via Dr. Donald F. Kuratko aka "Dr. K"
Let’s Play Two
This fall Atlanta is going to host its second version of BarCamp and Startup Weekend.
BarCamp Atlanta2 is being planned for October 17 and 18. Michael Mealling is picking up leading the effort from Jeff Haynie. If you want to reach out to Michael try twitter.
Atlanta Startup Weekend 2 is being planned for the weekend of November 7th. I am currently leading the effort again but looking for some folks to help with the effort this year. You can learn a bit more about the first effort at the Startup Weekend Atlanta blog. You can show support for bringing Startup Weekend to Atlanta again by voting here (it’s gonna happen).
We are seeking sponsors for both events.
Save the dates. Spread the word. More to come as summer winds down.
Skribit Update
Over in the Skribit app in my sidebar someone suggested that I provide an update on the company’s recent progress. Since it has been about three months since I last did so, that seemed like a good idea. For those of you not familiar with the company it is a product of Atlanta Startup Weekend and you can find the complete back story at that blog.
As I reported in March, the company entered open beta and that pretty much went off without a hitch.
In April Paul Stamatiou and Calvin Yu formally became members of the core team. They recruited Erik Peterson and he joined them in May. Paul is mostly handling front end design and product management type duties. Calvin is doing the heavy lifting of development with Erik throwing in significant help. They are in the process of bringing a fourth dev onto the team. Depending on what effort they have agreed to, these guys are all working at least five hours a week on the project and some many more than that. I see code commits virtually every night. We are meeting face to face at an increasing pace to address some of the things that follow.
The primary focus of this team is to improve the product so more people will use it. That seems to be working as the latest Compete graph shows (and BTW I can personally attest that Compete is not all that accurate, only directional and very low compared to the web analytics numbers that we are keeping semi-private at the moment):
That lift in May actually created some service delivery issues that brought the app down for a day. Though unrelated this happened around the time of Startup Riot, where Paul’s brief presentation was well received. Angel investors showed some interest in the concept.
The service outage led to the conclusion that we might need some cash to continue to make this go, and the expressed angel interest indicated that Skribit might be in a position to raise some if we cared to do so. So since Startup Riot the Skribit team has been meeting with a number of angels/advisors to determine a potential funding strategy and what key milestones we need to hit over the next six months. Generally speaking all the meetings have been very encouraging and energizing for the core team. Folks seem to be "fascinated" with Skribit.
The team intends to finalize the strategy and milestones in the next few weeks and then start the march to make them happen. Essentially we are focusing on how to turn this project into a business. Toward this end we have also engaged a financial analyst to build out a model so that we can better project our cost structure and revenues over the next 12 months or so. The revenue model is combo advertising/freemium based.
With all that said I want to go back and repeat what I wrote above. The primary focus of this team is to improve the product so more people will use it. They know that this is critical for building a large and vibriant user base. And in a sentence that is the goal.
PS> The pace has also picked up over on the Skribit blog. Many more details, including a host of product enhancements, can be found there.
Atlanta FireFox Launch Party
As brought to my attention by Mr. Jeff Hayine there is an Atlanta Firefox Launch Party at The Park Tavern located at the 500 Tenth Street (corner of Monroe and 10th) from 7:00 – 10:00 this evening. I intend to make the scene after a meeting with Twelve Foot Guru.
Firefox is also is trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a 24 hour period. So download today and let’s make some history.
Wild Father’s Day
Sometimes pictures do indeed speak louder than words.
The Weatherby clan spent the day driving up to Nantahala for a little Class II/III whitewater action (the most an eight year can do in these parts). In addition to having an URL that certain technology companies would die for, the folks at Nantahala Outdoor Center did a world class job. Kate and Jack were a bit scared putting in, but as you can see by the smiles on their faces warmed up to the sport right quick. And that man in the pink hat is Jesse, our guide, whom earned a nice little tip was his tales (some tall, some not, all seeming to be the former).
After the two hour trip we adjourned to Pirate Pizza on the river for dinner. BYOB, a fire, and hatchet throwing made for a great dinner spot. Jack was the family champion thrower, building up to being able to toss it into a cut stump and making it stick over 50% of the time.
What a great day!
Quote of the Week
"To dream big or dream small takes the same amount of energy. So why not stretch a little bit?"
It Bothers Me
One of the things my mama taught me was that "if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything." As I have grown up and entered the business world this saying morphed a little. More along the lines "don’t just bring problems to the table, bring potential solutions."
Before I got back to my office after the GRA/TAG business launch competition my mobile phone was ringing in response to the initial announcement and it was not too long before the tweets were flying. The conversation was taken to the next level when Scott posted an article on the matter. I am glad that Scott posted what quite a few people were thinking. Having the conversation out in the open is healthy.
I understand that ATM Direct winning the competition bothers a lot of people. I understand why it bothers a lot of people. But what really bothers me is no one has any suggestions for positive change. From my point of view you can whine, suggest ways to make it better, or get out your pen and stroke a $100k check. I am going for the positive inexpensive option. I encourage you to add to or take away from this list as you see fit in the comments.
So, if I were in charge (and I am not), I would change the terms and conditions of the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition to include:
1. In operation for less then two years.
2. Any form of funding must be less then $500k.
3. Revenue since formation must be less than $100k.
Moreover, if I were in charge (and I am not), I would move away from the focus on clusters and let any startup that meets the core criteria enter the contest. In my mind the more entrepreneurs that are involved the better.
What would you like to see GRA/TAG do to improve the competition?