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.

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.

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.

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.”

This is how I feel right now.

I’m taking a leap of faith, and I don’t have much runway. I’m in that pivotal moment where everything needs to be executed just right to avoid falling on my face.

I’m shedding a pair of golden handcuffs. I have a good job with fun work and good people, plus some paid travel. There are few things I could complain about during these last few years of employment. I love direct deposit. You have no idea. I love not having to worry about money. It just shows up. Magically and predictably.

Golden handcuffs are handcuffs nonetheless. It’s human nature to want to grow. Stagnation is the enemy of ambition. A plateau, no matter how high, is terrifying. It’s a ceiling. I could continue being content, or I could strive for more.

Generally, you can only go so far working for someone else. I’ve resisted entrepreneurship and justified my decision to remain a full-time employee, much to the dismay of my entrepreneur friends. I know my strengths and my weaknesses. I’m a builder. I make prototypes. I’m not a manager or an accountant or a salesman (well, I used to be, but I didn’t enjoy it). The force of inevitability, however, can eventually catch up with you. It can push you forward.

Seven months ago, I realized the path I needed to go down. Everything was pushing in the same direction. I needed to specialize the work I do, instead of just being a guy who makes stuff move with code. I needed to branch out, and work with more clients and more visible clients. I needed to establish myself within my industry. I wanted to travel more and farther. What I needed and wanted was looking less and less like a full-time job.

I am extremely fortunate to have a rare and valuable skill set. By blending visual and technical thinking, I can create compelling interactive visual experiences. Not only is there money in what I am good at, but I enjoy doing it. However, I need to be very tactful about where I apply my abilities. I could easily tie up all my waking hours building interactive web sites for people, but that won’t make the type of impact I want.

My goal right now is to ride a wave.

Five years ago, I became interested in data visualization as a hobby. Since then, I’ve followed the industry and have noticed a wave coming. More developers are getting involved, more tools are being built, and more people and businesses are learning what data visualization is. I don’t have to be the first, and I don’t have to be the best. But if I’m one of the first and one of the best, I’ll get on top early and ride the wave. After a year of conceptualizing and building various data visualizations professionally, I know what I should be focusing on exclusively.

To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. Data visualization has become my horseradish.

I’m starting my own business. I’m specializing in data visualization. And for lack of a better term, I’m going to “Crush It”.

More information and announcements soon!

It’s about time for the storm. The shake-up. Things are about to change dramatically. It’s frightening, yet exciting. It’s dangerous, yet promising.

Stay tuned.

Tomorrow, Friday, April 23rd, the mustache will either stay or go, and it all depends on the donations. Using my “MOspace” page on Movember.com, people can donate and leave a message. At the party, if the people who say “Shave Carl!” have raised more money than those who say “Save Carl!” then Carl will go — AT the party.

Where does the money go? Donations and votes are cast directly to the Movember Foundation. From there, the Movember Foundation splits the money between its two beneficiaries: Livestrong & the Prostate Cancer Foundation. More details on where the money is going.

So how about that party? I’ll be providing some pizza and drinks, and there will be a live taping of Evil Genius Radio. It’ll be great fun, whether or not Carl meets his end! If you want to make sure I get enough food and drinks, RSVP on Facebook so I know how many mouths I need to feed!

Friday, April 23, 2010 7:00pm
Gangplank
325 E Elliot Rd
Chandler, AZ

I dropped by Leo Laporte’s cottage to show him Carl and he ended up donating to help Save Carl. Here’s the video:

But what about the exciting news of a sold-out event getting a larger venue and re-opening ticket sales? Well, as I’ve observed in various situations, it can be hard to get the word out that space is once again available after the word to the contrary has spread.

This leaves event planners in a precarious situation. You don’t want people to miss out. You want everyone who wants to attend to be able to attend. But changing to a bigger venue and re-opening ticket sales can be risky. If the word doesn’t get out fast enough, you could end up with empty seats. When it comes to making an event pack a punch, you want the event to feel like it’s bursting at the seems. You don’t want empty seats. Filling 500 out of 1,000 seats will feel like a failure, while getting in trouble with the fire marshal for exceeding a 240-person limit will feel like a raging success.

Back to the news spreading. If you want to go to an event, but tickets are sold out, there’s an emotional reaction. It’s a tragedy. What you want is there and you cannot have it. Tragedy is news. People talk about their personal tragedies. If you then find out you can attend, the feeling is relief. Relief isn’t news. People don’t talk about things that feel “nice.”

Today, I heard Pecha Kucha Night Phoenix had re-opened ticket sales with the announcement of a new venue, after all the tickets for the previous venue were snapped up in a gold rush. It’s risky, but hopefully the word will spread to the people who missed out that they have a second chance!

Last year, I participated in Movember, an annual world-wide charity event where men grow mustaches during the month of November to raise money and awareness for men’s health — prostate cancer and testicular cancer. Women have October for breast cancer awareness, and now men have November for male cancers.

At the end of November, I decided to keep the ’stache and roll with it. I’m ready to give it up, but I’m going to give the charity fund raising one more push.

I figured it would be fun to allow people to choose whether or not I keep the mustache by casting votes with dollars. I might even throw a party in Phoenix (or should it be in SF?) to make the final decision and shave the mustache LIVE if “Shave Carl” gets more donations.

Check out SaveCarl.com or ShaveCarl.com for more details and to participate!

I don’t think I need to describe it because the description below is pretty thorough.

Martini Ranch (map)
7295 East Stetson Drive
Scottsdale, AZ

Phoenix tweeps, come have a blast and help support those in need on 3/25 at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale.

We will have food, drinks (drink tickets), a raffle, silent auction and good company.

Twestival is a 100% volunteer run, globally held event brought together by the twitter community to raise money for charity.

In February 2009, 202 cities around the world participated in Twestival raising over $250,000 for charity: water, enabling the drilling of 55 wells with more than 17,000 people served in Uganda, Ethiopia and India. Phoenix raised $4,700+ and came in 7th out of 202 cities!

In September 2009, Phoenix chose St. Mary’s Food Bank as their charity and raised $9,332 to help feed the hungry in our community. Those funds allowed St. Mary’s Food Bank to distribute enough food into the community to provide over 65,000 meals.

Twestival’s 2010 goal is to help Concern WorldWide (@concern) in their efforts to reduce suffering and end extreme poverty. For 42 years, Concern has been tackling the root causes of extreme poverty through focus on education, health (HIV and AIDS), livelihoods and emergency response. Concern has more than 3,600 employees working in 28 of the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Concern is also actively focused on the emergency in Haiti.

If you have any questions please email us at twestivalphx@gmail.com. Follow @twestivalphx on Twitter or reach out to @chrislee directly.

NOTES: For the raffle, must be present to win. Event is 21 and over because of the venue.

Via Eventification, the Phoenix tech event site

Last night, I had a conversation with Mark Ng and Marc Chung, two people who I have recently found to be highly enthusiastic in analyzing large data sets. The outcome of the conversation may potentially be two organizations, a user group and a work group.

The User Group:
I’m an interface guy who’s been doing data visualization lightly for 4 years and heavily for 1 year. My skill set for dealing with large amounts of data is creeping its way back, back, back from the front-end interface into the deep abyss of things that drive data visualization: statistical analysis, data mining, and distributed computing. In researching these topics, I’ve learned about some fascinating and useful tools that can do mind-boggling things with mind-bogglingly large data sets. This is stuff I would love to share, and even more, I’m interested to see what other people know and have done with these types of tools. My proposition was to start a recurring meet-up that would consist of presentations and/or demos of tools, languages, platforms, and cloud computing technologies.

The Work Group:
One VERY hot topic driving data visualization forward right now is government transparency. More and more local, state, and federal government bodies are releasing gargantuan amounts of data for the public to review. The problem? Gargantuan means BIG! Here, we need to connect a few dots:

First, we need to get the data. That can be through public repositories, or, as an example, a local news outlet that submits public records requests to obtain public data.

Second, we need to get the data in the right hands. Extremely large data sets are unmanageable to people who aren’t statisticians. So let’s get statisticians involved!

Third, we need to make the results public, which could mean looping back with a local news outlet to get coverage. It could also mean building and embedding interactive data visualizations into local news web sites, much like the New York Times.

I think both groups are excellent ideas and they even complement each other well (the user group would be an excellent resource pool for the work group). It is important to get data wranglers, statistics enthusiasts, and visualization gurus to come out of the woodwork and help these ideas come to fruition! Connect with me, Mark Ng, and/or Marc Chung to get in touch and stay in the loop.