The Idea Dude

Curation is the new blogging

2012-10-29T22:07:00.001-04:00

From connecting dots to connecting pixels.

A long time ago (at least by Internet standards), blogging was The Thing. People delighted in crafting their stories, memories and experiences. And many still do. Back then, there was no Twitter. Facebook was a baby face and Tumblr was a twinkle in someone's eye. I was inspired by what people said, the way they said it and the way they made me feel.

I spent a period connecting dots, linking thoughts across blog posts. I was a soldier of serendipity. The facilitator of the blog community. I delighted in showcasing others and as my blog says at the top, connecting dots in the blogosphere (do they still call it that anymore?). I was convinced there were gems in many blogs but they were unheralded like diamonds waiting to be discovered.

But every week got tougher, because people seldom have gems every week and often what was beautiful and original became rhetoric. I had to cast my net wider and wider until, the time it took to connect several dots felt like a chore, a laborious task I had to undertake every Sunday morning.

I often wonder if real, original content has kept pace with the Internet or has technology just enabled us to create more junk more quickly. And if someone is good, we simply retweet, reblog, repin or re-whatever to death.

I'm convinced curation is the new blogging. Because it is easier to repurpose than to recreate. And I for one am also guilty of that. Picture Flow runs 24/7 on my desktop. I glance at it dozens of times a day waiting for a new photo from 500px or Flickr to inspire. Interestingly though, what inspires me is seldom a single picture but the combination of images that randomly appears. Often it feels like there is some hidden curator, orchestrating the collage of photos just for my viewing pleasure. But I know better, since I wrote the code. It is entirely random.

Often, I would stop the display and hastily send the collage of common colors or objects to friends with the message, 'look what I found'...or more correctly look what Picture Flow produced. Of course, what it has really done is provided a platform of discovery. "Don't like this photo, wait a few seconds and I'll show you another", the app will say. And like television, there lies the addiction, the fact that everytime you look, there is something new and wait long enough, there will be something to delight.

I realized over the weekend, that rather than share my discovery with just my friends, I should indeed share it with the world. Just as I did with blogs but instead of sharing and promoting words, I now passionately and excitedly share photos. I resolved that every day, I would post my favorite collages on our Picture Flow website.

In spirit of sharing, I have kept the collages small, so each photo inside the collage is thumbnail size. The aim is not to disseminate the photos but to provide a treat, a tasty morsel, enticing you to explore more from the photographer at the source. I hope they see it the way it is intended, a celebration of great photographers with passionate eyes and consummate skills.

And so I have moved on from connecting dots to connecting pixels. Themes, colors, hues, moods and anything that simply makes me stop and gasp at the beauty people have shared with us through their photos.

Picture Flow has become my serendipity.

The most important app in my life

2012-09-17T11:26:00.002-04:00

I've written a ton of apps in my lifetime, some for myself and some for customers. I guess the most important one is usually the one you're working on or the last one you finished. Picture Flow maybe just be that, the most important app because it is the last one Tealeaf and I worked on. But I think it's more, so today I decided to tell you why.

Firstly, there is a myth that says if you have a great idea, you can make it an app and be successful like Angry Birds. We know it is a common myth because we get suggestions from people all the time. The myth goes, "I have a great idea, I'll share it with you and you write the code and we will both make a ton of money". Reality changes that to "Yes you have a great idea, I'll spend a ton of time and money to write the code and the chances are it will be a great app but we won't make any money". The problem is exposure, attention span and low selling price. Oh and don't forget, you need lots of luck.

But I digress, we used to write apps and websites for functionality and feature-sake. You need to do or show something and we're very good at making it happen. At Play Dynamics, we try to use a different metric. Sure, we have the checkboxes for important features and core functionality but the ultimate test must be, 'How did it make me feel'. Not so weird when you think about people who are obssessed, in love or infatuated with something. Usually the object is never worth 1000x what the people thinks it is or so logic would tell you. But the 'how it or he/she makes you feel' increase the worth 1000 fold.

Picture Flow has done just that for me. We probably work 12 hours solid, 5 days a week sometimes 7. Much as I love my iPad, it probably gets an hour or less a day of my time. And so the idea of Picture Flow was born. It's just a digital picture frame you say. But I wrote it exactly the way I wanted my picture frame to be.

a) Simple - you had to get the idea the first time
b) Easy - no setup required, switch on, add photo album and done
c) Always interesting - note how you stop looking at the same poster every morning on the way to work. You probably stopped looking on Day 3.

Simple - you get a limited number of layouts, the ones that make your photos look good. Rotate was important, so you get a frame either landscape or portrait. Most important, it should be a companion not a distraction so no crazy colors, backgrounds and no transitions (the biggest culprit).

Easy - tap on a photo album, Facebook album, or Instagram and it just works. You can generate a photo stream in seconds not hours. The best part, you can choose to ignore it or glance at it throughout the day for photos you forgotten or interesting photos suggested by 500px or Flickr.

Always interesting - this was purely empirical. Early on, we took our prototype and, being engineers, we made it deterministic, photos would fill the frames sequentially. We found after a day, we stopped looking at the app. Our ability to filter and block extraneous information meant the app became unimportant because we learnt to subconsciously predict what the images will be. So photos appear at random, creating interesting and unexpected collages.

So the functional objective of Picture Flow is to be a digital photo frame. However the emotional objective is to be a source of delight, discovery and inspiration. I'm hoping those who choose to try it will go from Aha! it's a picture frame, to Wow, that's a beautiful collage of photos I love. And of course, to share that discovery with others.

Picture Flow is live

2012-09-09T09:22:00.001-04:00

Wow, we finally did it. A while back, I was staring at my largely unused iPad. Like most people it gets used 2 hours or less day. But it is hands down my favorite device just not the one to do all my development work on.

Fast forward to today, Picture Flow is launched and free in the Apple Appstore. For us it was definitely a labor of love.

What is Picture Flow? It's simply a picture frame on steroids where you can add your photos from your iPad, Facebook and Instagram. It doesn't have all the bubbles, stickers and other glitzy stuff you see in the store. Just a simple, clean and classic picture frame. It's on my desk every single day. Love it to distraction!

Bored with your own pictures, it will show other photo streams like 500px and Flickr, giving other great photographers the love they deserve too! Find an interesting combination of photos, freeze the frame and email it or post it to Facebook.

You can find more details about Picture Flow at http://www.picture-flow.com

Warning: highly addictive, if you let it play for several minutes, you will never look back...just at your new gorgeous iPad with all the pictures you love.

Aha, Wow, Of course

2012-05-01T11:42:00.003-04:00

I was inspired today by an article on What the 3 stages of Love Teach You about Crafting Great Services. Fjord's Olof Schybergson, succinctly summarizes this as: Matchmaking, Dating and True Love.

He says the matching is the discovery or the "aha" moment when someone is introduced to your service. At that point, the dating process kicks in and if you succeed leads to the "wow" moment. Finally if all goes well, they progress to the ardent fan level of true love when commitment is just a natural progression, the "of course" moment.

Seems like we can simplify a lot of what we do with our customers to these 3 basic metrics,

a) did we achieve the "aha" moment? and then
b) "wow" our customers to a point they would commit without thinking...
c) "of course!".

The song must go on

2012-04-27T14:32:00.000-04:00

One of our fans brought to our attention that by shutting down TheGoodBlogs service we had also disabled the ocarina converter. A long time ago, I had bought the ocarina app for my iPhone. We were so inspired that we wrote a small utility to convert midi files to ocarina format. In the weeks that followed, we got quite a few emails from folks that found us through the Smule forum. We also had a number of queries from other fans of the physical ocarina instrument.

Today, we extricated the code from TheGoodBlogs codebase and we're pleased to announce the ocarina converter is now available at http://www.ideasunplugged.com/thegoodblogs.

Hopefully, it will bring a new song to new ears.

Law of Complexity

2012-04-18T12:02:00.001-04:00

Complexity is never destroyed, it is just moved from one programmer to another.

A close fried of complexity is entropy. Software without substantial intervention will only from bad to worse.

Invest in Yourself

2012-04-16T09:50:00.002-04:00

Found an interesting image today and made a card. Coincidently, I read a title about personal wealth management that this morning that said, 'pay yourself first'. This sort of reinforces that.

Invest in Yourself

Choosing the right metaphor

2012-03-26T20:50:00.002-04:00

I just upgraded to OSX Lion on the weekend. The first thing I noticed was that the trackpad gestures were doing the opposite of what I was used to. To scroll down a document, you would use the up gesture on the trackpad. I realized it was because they were trying to mirror how you would use gestures on an iPhone or iPad, i.e. if you wanted to see the bottom of the document you would place your fingers on the document and drag upwards.

I found out that Apple calls this the natural scroll direction. The irony is that isn't natural. I have an iPad too and found no problem moving around documents even though it was opposite to what I was doing on the iPad. Finally I realized the issue.

a) On the iPad and the iPhone, you are actually putting your fingers on top of the document so it is natural to pull the document upwards to see the bottom. There is a disconnect between moving your fingers on the trackpad and watching something moving on the screen (your fingers are not visually on the document). This is why new computer users struggle with the mouse. It's like scratching your right knee because your left ear itches.

b) We spent many years training our selves to use the trackpad like our mouse. Now we have to adjust to doing things in the opposite direction because it is deemed natural.

It's a case of mixed metaphors. Before Lion, the trackpad metaphor was the mouse metaphor. After Lion, the trackpad metaphor is the document metaphor. But it's really hard to switch. After a frustrating day, I relented and switched the trackpad to way I used to use it.

Changing a metaphor is a dangerous thing. Like learning to drive on the wrong side of the road. If you drove cars with manual stick shifts, you'll know how hard it is to change gears with your right hand instead of your left after doing so for the last 20 years.

Workflow for Genius

2012-03-22T18:01:00.003-04:00

I really enjoyed the latest John Maxwell article on think. I've always believed that we are defined by our ideas and our ideals. The article talks about thinking your way to the top. I particularly liked the steps to make your ideas fly.

1) Find a place to think your thoughts
2) Find a place to shape your thoughts
3) Find a place to stretch your thoughts
4) Find a place to land your thoughts
5) Find a place to fly your thoughts.

Think, shape, stretch, land and fly. An amazing workflow to genius

He also shares several gems from the smart and famous.

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking." ~ Voltaire

"Too often we...enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." ~ John F. Kennedy

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." ~ George S. Patton

"Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it." ~ Viriginia Woolf

My Goodbye to TheGoodBlogs

2012-03-10T19:23:00.005-05:00

We finally shut TheGoodBlogs website down today. It's been a really interesting 6 years. We started coding in July 2006. Back then, Twitter had just launched with a horrendous interface with Google Adsense ads. Facebook was still focused on college and school kids. Reddit was relatively unknown and MySpace was king of the hill as was Wordpress and Typepad. The words Groupon, Pinterest, Tumblr didn't exist. There were no iPhones and Android had just been acquired by Google.

Back in 2006, blogging was the de facto method for self-expression. Companies began using it as a medium to reach their users. It was then the stream of web consciousness. We were part of that, like MyBlogLog and other widgets, fought for a piece of real-estate on your blog. We were all about promoting blogs and bloggers and connecting each other in the blogosphere. I think we did that incredibly well, our widget was seen millions of times and the phrase, 'I found you through TheGoodBlogs' was often found in blog comments. I laughed with the Moms and their amazing blogs and learned much from the marketing and business blogs. The art blogs showed me all about human creativity. Alas, altruism is not a business model but we kept the site alive, probably longer than we should have.

Today, blogging continues to be a resource for sharing but it has to compete with social networks like Facebook, Reddit and Twitter. Even for geeks, while there are many blogs describing coding techniques for iPhones etc, much of that information is now unstructured, dynamic and found on sites like StackOverflow.

The web has changed. Blogging is still important but perhaps a little less so than it used to be. Today, the sheer volume of information that flows through the web means that we can only swallow smaller pieces, packaged as Facebook comments, 140 character Tweets. Today, we live in a world of soundbites.

TheGoodBlogs website is no longer as relevant in the digital world today and hence we have taken the painful and personal decision to shut it down. TheGoodBlogs, the company and the founders (Tealeaf and TheIdeaDude) are very much alive. As the digital world around us changes, we must reinvent ourselves before we too become irrelevant.

As they say in the classics, TheGoodBlogs is dead, long live TheGoodBlogs.

Desire Determines Destiny

2012-01-12T09:15:00.002-05:00

2011 turned out to a frenetic year of hope, opportunity and energy. We had 18 students work with us to create Carddit. For many it was their first jobs as co-op students. Beyond teaching them design and coding, I hoped they learned about passion, desire and perseverance.

John Maxwell has an article of passion being the fuel of persistence. He said, 'desire determines destiny' and the winning side is usually the team that 'wanted it more'. Passionate people use their passion to inspire them to clear roadblocks, to do the seemingly impossible. Dispassionate people find reasons to doubt, looking for reasons to stop instead of ones to push on.

2012 is for me the year of persistence. Enthusiasm doesn't pay the bills, neither does vision unfortunately. But what keeps us coming back day after day is the desire to achieve something special together. I'd like to look back and know I've made a mark no matter how small, I've made a difference to the life of at least one person, hopefully many.

In the darkest hours, the fuel of persistence is our passion, our desire, our beliefs. Without that, we, as a group and as a company would be without a soul. The internet does not scare us, but it inspires us and motivates us to participate. I truly hope that our desire is enough to determine our destiny.

I'd like to think last year, we made a difference to many lives of students that passed through Play Dynamics. This year, I'd like to think we'll make a difference to the people who are with me in creating this great company.

What do politicians and programmers have in common?

2011-12-12T18:33:00.002-05:00

Not all politicians are evil, I do believe some really mean well. They look at the current government and all its limitations and shortcomings and are inspired to do better. They stand on their soap box and tell people they will reduce taxes, create jobs, offer free healthcare. All good stuff. Some even have a plan of how to do it, finding excess and surplus and build efficiencies.

The reality is once they are in office, all the aspirations are met with a wall of complexity built by many governments that have gone before. They are faced with rules, lack of infrastructure, fear, regulations and practicalities. Often they leave office several years later having met very little of their campaign promises. As tax payers we'd like to think they were incompetent, but how can that be when many of our leaders were respected and successful lawyers, businessmen, accountants before they were politicians. They were killed by the unpredictability that comes with complexity.

Programming is pretty much the same. Having been on both sides of the fence, programming and managing, there is very little I haven't seen. Yes, there is posturing, pet projects, politics even in software. The hardest thing to accept that in software, everything takes about 6x longer than anyone anticipates (that's 2 x pi for the geek-minded). Anyone, whether a manager or a programmer looking at a problem from the outside will say the infamous 5 word phrase, "How hard can it be?". We don't understand why putting a button on a screen may take a day. Alas it's the iceberg effect.

In software, 90% of the complexity is never seen by anyone except those toil into the night. That one little button could in fact pack a whole of functionality, making the implementer change the order of the workflow, create new database tables, dependencies and even unanticipated side-effects (we sometimes call bugs). Like a new car, software degrades from the day it is shipped. New specifications, customer demands, changes in scope, changes in the market make us do unspeakable things to an otherwise perfect and beautiful system until weeks, months and years later we look back and say, "What on earth was he thinking?"

The answer is of course, the programmer was only thinking as far as he could see and chances are if he saw any further, he would have built a behemoth that would never have shipped on time. Even as a seasoned software developer, I have on occasion looked over the shoulder of my peers and muttered underneath my breath, "How hard can this be?" only to realize a week later that while the feature is simple, the system complexity made the implementation speed totally unpredictable.

Priceless

2011-10-20T14:06:00.008-04:00

Need I say more?

Little girl kisses kitten

Wil Power

2011-10-18T22:30:00.002-04:00

Yes, that's not typo. Wil Wheaton gave us some love today and brought our Carddit site down. That's what we call Wil Power.

Just before noon, my co-founder Sharleen sent Wil a Carddit deck that she made. It's an awesome deck. (She has many, you should check out her other decks. Sharleen's Decks).

Within minutes, our site went down, horribly. Attempts to bring it back was futile, the servers were dragged down like bloodied boxers in the final round of a losing match. Realizing we were running out of database connections, we took the servers completely offline except for a page just showing Wil's jazz hands. It was just the type of humor we needed in the office and for all the disappointed visitors to our site.

The problem wasn't that we weren't designed to be scalable. We had load balancers, multiple servers and redundant database service all hosted in a cloud. We already off-loaded all our assets to Amazon S3 a long time ago.

It was a question of finances. As a small company we could ill-afford to have a massively redundant architecture on standby. Frankly the popularity of Wil and the love his followers showed took us by surprise. But we were back up within the hour, with a much more powerful database server and 4 front-end web servers. Zero coding and a bit of reconfiguration. I'm particular proud of our team, Sharleen, Tony and John.

We pride ourselves as being an agile team. Today we showed it. Hopefully, more people will see our labour of love, Carddit. It really is the best way to collect the best of the web, and take it with you (today on your iPhone, iPod Touch), soon on your Android.

So tonight, for the first time many moneys, I've downed my dev. tools to reflect on this moment. It's a small but important validation of our work.

There is so much more to come.

The gods smile upon us

2011-08-02T00:41:00.002-04:00

About an hour ago, I was doing payroll, a very depressing activity given that we're bootstrapped (aka survival) mode. I'm very proud of our team, the sacrifices they've made in time and money. But worrying about our financial future is a perpetual state of mind. I deeply feel my responsibility as CEO to provide for our team and our families. Even the bravest and strongest have doubts in moments of battle.

15 minutes ago, I took a casual look at the iTunes Appstore. Our app Carddit made it to the New and Noteworthy section in social networking. We're featured in #2 spot. For many this may seem unimportant but for every app developer out (the many tens of thousands) to be listed in New and Noteworthy or Featured App area of iTunes is a holy grail.

I often wondered whether we took too long to develop Carddit. There's the quick and dirty approach of throwing a dozen apps and see what sticks. As a consultant, that's what I would have probably recommended. Instead, Carddit took the team 6 months to build. We fussed over every interaction, every screen. Debated every feature. We often joked, that this wasn't version 1.0 it was more like 4.0. And maybe, just maybe, someone saw the love and attention that went into the app and gave us back some of that love. We are truly, truly humbled and grateful to be recognized.

I think I know why. On Saturday I spent the day with the family at the botanical gardens. My daughter had her digital SLR and I had an iPhone. As we walked around, I decided to drink my own kool-aid and started to take a couple of pictures and make 1 or 2 cards. I ended up making over 20, totally voluntary. I shared my cards on Facebook, more activity in my account in one afternoon than in the last 6 months! I got lost in the moment. Today we heard that same comment from someone else. "I lost track of time playing with your app". I think we definitely did one or two things right.

Carddit isn't perfect, yet. Version 1.1 is already in testing with some added features and minor bug fixes. We've already have plans for 2.0. I hope the world sees why Carddit embodies everything we believe in about play.

Carddit is simply about favorites, our photos, our memes, our memories kept in a familiar paradigm, decks of cards. Allowing us to curate, collect and share. Tony, my wise friend once said, the true success of an app not whether we get a million downloads (that is for the world to decide), but whether we want to use it ourselves everyday. I do.

Our fate is in the Cards

2011-07-28T11:11:00.003-04:00

Finally I can announce the first (hopefully many) Play Project from Play Dynamics. It's called Carddit. You can find it here in the Apple AppStore

Why Carddit? Play Dynamics has always been about Play. We wanted to pick something that would embody our vision, culture and ideas. We chose cards because everyone understands how cards, decks, deals, and trades work. We weren't teaching a new concept. We also thought that photos today should be more than just a post with a filter. It should be about wrapping the photo in a frame (in our case it's a card). Add the stuff the matters, the date, a title, a description. And then to treasure that card in your deck. Finally to share that treasure with others and of course, collect it from others too.

Too often our applications are developed to make us more efficient, make stuff faster but we lose the moment, we lose the play. Imagine that last loving kiss on your date was just a peck on your cheek. Imagine eating lobster and steak at your fast food joint. Imagine ice-cream came in a pill. It's all efficient but what happened to the experience?

With Carddit, we took so long (maybe too long) obsessing about the experience. It had to make you feel good before you even shared the photo. It had to make you feel good receiving one. I hope we succeeded. The best test is whether we would want to use it. My co-founder Sharleen made 1,500 cards during our testing. They weren't just the same picture of a coffee cup but while it was for testing, each had some personal relevance. Some were there because it made her laugh (like the memes), some made her cry (because they brought back poignant moments in her life) and some made her sigh (like albums, um decks, of her children as they grew up.

So if Carddit doesn't make you smile, sigh or cry (not because of the bugs), please drop us a line and let us know because then we failed in our intent. They laughed at me at the beginning when I said my measure of success would be that every user touched Carddit at least once a day. If you could see our feature list for the next 3 versions, you'll realize despite how audacious it may sound, it is plausible.

My parents are in the 80's. This is the very first software product, I feel I can explain and load on their iPad and get them to use. I can't wait to show them. Perhaps that sentiment is all I validation I need, "did I do the right thing?"

It's a long post, but I need to make a quick shoutout to all the people who participated in the dream. Many have taken huge drops in salary to make it happen. Along the journey, I've picked up some of the smartest people I know. We've given 15 students an incredible insight of what it means to be in a startup and learn to write for web and iphones.

So many thanks to all my friends/colleagues/advisers at Play Dynamics. Sharleen (my co-founder), Tony, John, Bert, Emily, Ke, Emily, Robert, Tim, Javier, Roy, Aaron, Lily, Abbas, Sinthu, Zac, Mubushir, Sanghoon, Rajan. And yes to my family (Karen, Nick, Courtney and Mozart-the Carddit Cat), I will finally be home for dinner.

Now that the cards have been dealt, it finally feels Play Dynamics is on its way.

This is my favorite card of the day

Pi after midnight

2011-07-20T18:36:00.002-04:00

It isn't quite four score and twenty years but it has been a long time since I updated this blog. Elvis hadn't left the building. On the contrary, his lack of appearance was because he was building a skyscraper.

Frankly, I could have done with a 48 hour day but we make do with what we have. Since we launched our Play Dynamics website in March, we've been frantically building our first product. With a lot of help from my friends...

We grew from 2 to 13 during that time, put 13 co-op students through our company, did much consulting to pay the bills and still managed to finish our product. Finish may be the wrong word because it is just the end of the beginning.

Last night we did the obligatory all-nighter, finding last minute bugs and issues the defied our intelligence. There is some software law that says all software is shipped after 1am. We did it. Well after midnight, we submitted our first app under the Play Dynamics banner to Apple. I'm eager to share what we did but I guess I'll have to wait a little longer.

From the get-go, we built this company in the most unorthodox manner. We run it the same way that we write our code. Serious play. We play hard. For many it will feel like work. Funnily enough, despite the 16 days, 7 days a week, we rarely call it that.

It has something to do with the way we interact and support each other. The way we brainstorm ideas. Involve and mentor students. We're in constant play, challenging each other, living in the flow. It can be done, we did it.

If you go out to build your skyscraper or follow your dream, surround yourself with the right people. The wise men who have done it many times before. The partners who aren't afraid to challenge or be challenged. People who love ideas, who dream, who are curious. People with energy and tenacity. People who don't know what "can't" or "won't" means. People filled with possibility. I'm blessed to be surrounded by such people.

This is a milestone not only for Play Dynamics but for my life. I've shipped many products for many companies. This one is both special and personal. I did it my way. We did it our way.

More to come but for now, it's time to do all the stuff that piled up, ignored because shipping was the most important thing.

And why Pi after midnight?

It seems appropriate at least for the geek in me, that we shipped at 3.14am, ergo, pi after midnight.

Win-win is always the best way

2011-04-30T11:06:00.004-04:00

Friday saw the last day of our current group of co-op students. On Monday, we have a new group starting their first co-op term with us. I'm particular proud about what we were able to do for these fine young men. Sure, they were raw, inexperienced but they were enthusiastic, smart and willing. In keeping with our culture at Play Dynamics, I think we succeeded in creating an environment that allowed them to learn, grow and play and in return we have over half-a-dozen prototypes waiting for integration into our new product.

So often, it's easy to look at the bottom-line and to wonder whether it was worth the thousands of dollars we invested in these individuals only to release them back to their studies several months later. But in life you have to look beyond the bottom-line. It's about giving back and investing in the system. To recognize that the past months may have been the most important in their careers, because beyond giving them great technical skills, we taught them by example the passion within startups, the hunger to write the best code possible and the agility we need to survive in the Internet world. Unlike school where often the problem is simply a restatement of a known and previously taught solution, startups are adventures in the unknown both in market and technology. Giving back has been our biggest payback. The fact we have significant more code ready to deploy is the icing on the top.

Most importantly we taught you can have fun at work. Play without work is pointless and work without play is meaningless. They played at work and worked at play.

Best of luck to Sinthu, Abbas, Rajan, Zac, Sanghoon and Mubushir. May you continue riding the momentum you found at Play Dynamics to be far more than even you could imagine.

Wear your PD t-shirts with pride because we are very proud of you.

Moving around a mess only makes a tidier mess

2011-04-16T11:29:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about social curation these days. Remember how blogs flooded the Internet and we then had blog aggregators to try and solve the problem. It succeeded to a certain extent but didn't do two things, remove the noise (albeit was less noisy) or the volume. For someone to read 100 blog posts each day instead of 1000 posts doesn't solve the problem and I'm not sure it even makes it better. In fact the illusion that it solved the problem actually causes you to waste time filtering the 80 out of the 100 you didn't want to read. So what did we end up doing, most of us pick the 10 bloggers we love the most and just stayed with them. Because fundamentally that's all we can handle. It's not wonder the long tail for blogs is a characteristic that has not gone away. We tried to solve the problem at TheGoodBlogs by random showing you blogs that never made it to your radar and we did manage to connect readers to interesting blogs that you would have never found.

Back to social curation. There are simply too many startups that claim to solve the social noise issue by following a similar strategy. Social noise is even worse than blogs because the dynamic here is very small soundbites but a lot more of them. Tweets will probably one day exceed the number of blog posts created on a daily basis, if it hasn't already. So if we attack social curation by simply grouping stuff and republishing it, we are not really solving the problem. At best it is a large bandaid just like it was for the blogs. So instead of having to follow a 10,000 tweets a day, you follow 500 and yes there are all the other pieces of social noise like Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates etc, etc. Essentially, after social curation (as it is done by many today), you have smaller piles of organized social noise.

So when you're faced with an ever increasing social entropy, you either end up spinning your wheels trying to keep up, stop being active in your least favorite accounts and probably resort to finding out what's happening from trusted sources at lunch or pub.

There's an interesting TV series on extreme hoarding, how people uncontrollably collect and hoard physical stuff. I would propose that digital hoarding is even worse because it is less obvious and far easier to fall into. Is it because we are fundamentally voyeurs who thirst to know what everyone else is doing. Not knowing simply drives us up the wall. Add to that, telling someone something they didn't know enhances our status and influence in our peer group. We didn't invent gossip, it is as old as time when Eve told Adam what the serpent told her, eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Like they say, money is not the root of all evil, it is the love of money. Well, knowledge is not the root of all digital evil either, perhaps it is the love of knowledge. Didn't someone says knowledge is power.

Creating your A-team

2011-03-27T14:56:00.003-04:00

There's a lot of talk in the blogosphere about startups and hiring the smartest people you know and creating the A-team. Unfortunately 'A' seems to be always associated with smart and knowledge. I beg to differ. The A-player is package deal. Here's what I look for.

A = ability. That's a given, there must be some level of skills that you bring to the table. However, it is important to remember that in all likelihood, the skills that you have today are insufficient for tomorrow.

A = aptitude. My definition, the readiness and quickness to learn. Speed is everything, long gestation of talent eats up resources and opportunities.

A = attitude. In a start-up there is no job description, it's about getting the job done. I look for people who sees gaps and fills them on a regular basis.

A = agility. Being able to change course on a dime. What you are asked to do tomorrow may not be the same as what you are doing today. Markets, trends, products change on the Internet so rapidly, we require people who can react, retool and reinvent continuously.

Startups are in generally in a continuous state of reinvention

Balance is luxury not the norm. As I'm writing this, I realize what I'm asking for. People who are fearless, passionate and proud about what they do. People who love what they do. And the 'DO' part is not software development, or marketing or any of the extrinsic job descriptions. 'DO' means people who are continually motivated to create, challenge, refactor, discover, explore and in the course of their journey, they may just create milestones that are simply awesome.

Changing trajectories

2011-03-24T22:57:00.002-04:00

Just got back from Waterloo to recruit the next team of students for the summer. The current team is working out beyond my expectations. I only wish we started earlier. To say we are helping change the lives of some really smart young engineers may be a stretch but we're certainly have a hand in changing their trajectories.

Hopefully but the end of each work period, they learn about what it takes to be hungry, savvy entrepreneurs. Learning about problems that change even while you work on them. Looking at the world with incomplete lenses, finding solutions in the most unexpected places. Most of all, learning about working in teams and the synergy that arises from it.

Hang around young people and you can drink from the fountain of energy.

Building corporate culture from scratch

2011-03-15T09:40:00.002-04:00

I came across some interesting answers to how do you create corporate culture from scratch

The answer IMHO is that you never really build it from scratch. The company yes, the culture no. Why? Because the culture is something that is brought in by the co-founders. They set the tone of how the company is run, how the products are built and how the people who help build the company are treated.

The culture of the co-founder is read in books or taught in schools. It is deeper than that, it is how he or she thinks about things, how they build stuff and how they treat people. For the one reason, bringing in an enterprise seasoned CEO or VC may not be the best option, neither is keeping a serial entrepreneur at the helm when the company has over a hundred people. It is hard to find a man for all seasons. Only a few come to mind.

Start-ups require people to be agile because stuff happens. Which means check your egos at the door please. Listen to everyone around you but the buck stops here. Everyone is a resource and everyone must be multi-skilled. I happen to be the first one at the office every morning which means it makes sense that I vacuum the floors. You may wonder if that isn't a waste of my time. Actually no, I figured out how to make that a play situation. Instead of whistling while I vacuum, I think, prioritize my day or ponder about that elusive bug. Cray used to dig tunnels while he designed his supercomputers. I vacuum. Two hours later, I teach. In between that I code. Between coffee and and the next compile I pay bills.

I'm not the only one. Sharleen has taken over producing the graphical elements. When she isn't doing that she's worrying about the user experience of our prototype. Between coffee and the next photoshop graphic, you'll find her surveying the web. She is our eyes and ears, watching and listening to the pulse of the web. And she manages to squeeze in organizing our next batch of recruits. She is also HR. Creativity starts with her.

Tony will be fixing servers, working on customer projects that have fallen off my table, and mentoring our co-ops. He is our resident tech guru but is known to throw in some sharp insight that turns our product around. And if I don't watch him, he'll sneak by and wash my coffee cup.

This is a typical day at the Play Dynamics playground. There are no rules just people who love coming in and doing stuff that needs to be done. There are no egos, and no 'not my job' here. Gaps need to be filled and people step up to fill them. That's the culture. We're bootstrapped so everything is lean and mean but it buys us the valuable time to play without agendas, without borders. We have super advisors but none who demand that we make a dollar by some arbitrary date. They understand the need for us to find our path and get the train on the right set of rails.

The longevity is not in our products but our band of heroes. I'm pragmatic enough to know the internet is fickle and often success comes by way of a heavy dose of luck. What we do agree on around here that the game may and will change but the players remain the same. That's what our investors should be investing in.

Today my thought is:

Our possibilities are only limited by our own imagination

How Co-op Programs Can be a Win-Win

2011-03-14T23:29:00.004-04:00

In January we took a huge leap of faith and employed 6 co-op students. Half the motivation was we had too much to do and very little budget to do it. But the overwhelming reason for doing it was I had heard so many horror stories about what co-op students (especially first year students) actually did for their employers.

Co-op work terms are meant for students to get real-world exposure of what they could expect when they graduate. Often their experience ends up being menial jobs like testing, making coffee, filling in forms and other mindless, boring tasks. The reason is twofold, either the employer sees this as an opportunity for really cheap labor but often it is because they are so busy, they have very little time to plan or train what these students should be doing when they arrive.

What it really boils down to is a waste of a pool of highly intelligent individuals in too many circumstances. At Play Dynamics, we have a philosophy that the more we give to the system, the more we will get back. We believed that we could take a group of really smart individuals and despite their lack of experience, they could contribute meaningfully to our cause. In return, they would receive the best work experience possible, something that they would be proud to put on their resumes and help them in their studies and in finding other jobs in the future.

The recipe is so simple.
1) Respect. They are inexpensive because they are co-ops but they are also smart. Treat them like peers, not second class citizens.
2) Train. The fact that they are inexpensive means you can afford to spend time training and mentoring them. You'll be amazed how fast they can be once you take the time to show them how.
3) Culture. Use the opportunity to teach them not just the technical aspects of the business but give back to the system by teaching them about business, marketing, sales and decision making. Most can be done as informal 5 min chats. They are like sponges waiting to absorb everything you have.
4) Motivate. Show them how much you love what you do and they will eagerly follow. Energy is infectious.
5) Challenge. Breed the culture of never giving up, inspiring and helping others, being curious and thinking of what is possible instead of lamenting the impossible.

The results can be amazing.
1) They will give back everything you give them and more.
2) They will tell their colleagues and friends about you making it easier to get the next batch of students.
3) They are an inexpensive way of buying you time, to do the things you don't or never had the time to do.
4) The best of all, you leave every day knowing that you can give back to the system that will one day benefit everyone. And maybe, just maybe one of them may turn out to be the next software billionaire or the Nobel prize winner.

At Play Dynamics, our students love coming to work, because they come to play. Play is work and work is play. Play is learning and while they learn, they do the tasks that we need to run the business. In 6 weeks, they have learnt to configure Apache servers, write PHP code, create SQL database, program iPhones, research tough technical issues. Most probably they have already done more in that time than many other co-ops in two terms or more. And during that time, they have helped us achieve stuff we simply have no time to do.

Win-win is possible, if we only took time to invest because that investment buys us time.

The Way of the Bamboo

2011-03-04T08:32:00.003-05:00

Bamboo is the fast growing plant on earth. There is a species called Moso which can grow up to 119cm (47 inches) in 24 hours and 24m (79 feet) high in 40 days. It is actually a grass although most people do not think of bamboo as such.

Ironically, during the first few years (3-5 years), there is no visible growth and then magically, it starts its astronomical growth spurt as described earlier. Unseen by most of us during the time of 'dormancy', it is actually building a vast root system in preparation of the growth phase. A great description of the bamboo lifecycle can be found here.

It describes the path of Play Dynamics. For over 4 years, Tony and I founded and ran TheGoodBlogs. TheGoodBlogs was not a financial success, but we carried on regardless because I believed in 2 things. Firstly, unless you participate you will not find opportunity. Secondly, every part of the journey has some learning and that learning prepares you for greater things to come.

Learning about Moso bamboo has given me hope that the last 4-5 years has been just that, the preparation phase. We learnt first hand about building scalable websites, dabbled in mobile applications, built an incredible network of people who continue to serve as advisors and sounding boards.

I believe most startups never make it past year one simply because they are unprepared. Bamboo would not be able to grow rapidly and to great heights if it not for the giant root network they established. The same is true for startups. It is rare that someone hits it out the park in their first try. We only see the superstars not the other 99.9% that never make it for whatever reason.

Play Dynamics was conceived in November last year with my good friends Sharleen and Tony. Being old and scarred (in Internet years), we were hesitant to pull the trigger, plus the fact we were bogged down with an intensive consulting contract. As the New Year unfolded, we decided this was the time. In hindsight, it was not so much the product ideas that intrigued me, it was the fact that collectively this group had three incredible ingredients: experience, creativity and energy.

Moments like this come often only once a lifetime.

In the space of 3 weeks, we moved offices, built a team of 10 and was up and running without missing a heartbeat. After month 2, we are still rocking, with product ideas and prototypes to boot, at the same time managing our consulting revenue to pay the bills. Four years ago, we would not have been able to move as decisively and quickly as we have this year. Most decisions and knowing what to do came naturally and when we didn't know, I knew who to call.

Bamboo groves are often called colonies because like grass, they never grow alone. As in the previous blog post, I really believe all that preparation paid off and now we have the right to play. So far, we're growing as group in leaps and bounds, hopefully our root network of people and knowledge will be able to sustain us.

At the end of the day, I am realistic, some of our ideas will tank and others will succeed wildly. That is business reality. But I'm convinced that longevity is not in the products but the people who create them and who can't wait each day to come to work to play.

This is the Way of the Bamboo.

The Right to Play

2011-03-03T08:39:00.004-05:00

The Idea Dude didn't leave the building, he was in the basement... yet again. Play Dynamics is officially underway. New offices, new team and a new vision.

What do I say after a 3 month blog hiatus? Where do I start? There's a firehose of thoughts and emotions and some of it is too early to say or tell. So here's an attempt why I'm so excited about NOW.

The Right to Play
The first part of my career was about developing software development skills. It's akin to knowing the basic principles of cooking. What ingredients to use, when and how to use them.

The second part was building teams and business development. I was learning how to create environments that made people exceed their own expectations and, in doing so, help you exceed your goals. I was learning about product design and working with people who didn't code but sold products. In a restaurant, it's called hiring your sous chefs, the front of the house staff, the managers, the waiters and dealing with customers.

The third part was running your company no matter how small it was. Doing the accounts, taxes, paying rent, insurance and all the stuff, like oxygen, isn't the meaning of life but necessary for survival. This was like owning your restaurant.

All of the above wasn't the holy grail. It never was. I didn't even know what it was myself. In hindsight, it was preparation for this moment. The moment I can truly say, I have the right to play.

The State of Play
This is what we do at Play Dynamics, from the running of the company, building the team, creating the products, it's done with a pervasive culture of play. It's an on-going experiment where we run fast and fail fast. Re-invention and pivoting isn't an event, it is an on-going process from day one.

We're proving work and play are not opposite sides of the coin. The energy every day is just overwhelming. The only regret is there are only 24 hours in a day. Even in sleep, we dream of play.

It feels good, it feels right. I love our team, our mission, our culture, our energy. It feels like the planets are aligned. And shortly, the rest of you will be able to see the first fruits of our play.

Everybody deserves the right to play sometime in their lives. We've just arrived at ours.

We're currently in our labs in a constant State of Play.

Stay tuned