View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.
In the audio file above, Jason Cohen gives a type of “pep-talk” to Startup Weekenders:
“Startup Weekend is a friendly competitive event in which teams of 3-5 build a startup from scratch over the course of a single intense weekend. It culminates with informal presentations to a panel of judges who declare a winner, but of course the competition is only an excuse to facilitate the true benefits: honing startup skills through experience, the thrill of pressure, and working side-by-side with other ambitious people instead of superficial “networking.” Indeed, although most startups produced by Startup Weekend don’t persist, frequently participants recombine weeks later to form real startups.”
Protect your time from unworthy people.
I find this to be thought provoking and I’m surprisingly stirred by it (in a good way).
Who are “unworthy people”? Is there a negative cost to being protective? Is there a certain value attached to time that can be applied to a value attached to certain people?
It’s an interesting statement to think about.
Fail fast” refers to your projects and product iterations.. not your company. Nobody recommends you should fail as a company.
What Basic Friendship Rules Can Teach You about Community Management →
Summary from Becca Frasier’s post
- Be Real
- Listen
- Share
- Watch out for your friends
- Pitch in during times of crisis
- Give your friends space
Steve Case talking to Bloomberg about the state of entrepreneurship.
Exploring the environments that support innovation, from @stevenbjohnson
A. King in Society: “The Daily Rind”, a Better Way to Plan the Day →
Reblogged sabbatical:
Photo: A sample “daily rind” from my notebook
For years my task and schedule management lived across various apps — OmniFocus, Basecamp, Google Calendar, and others (and more recently, as I pared down my “productivity” tools, a simple combination of The Hit List + iCal.) But mapping out…
Build features for the ROI your community expects
Yesterday I began to probe the motivation and incentives community members have for contributing content to the online social communities they are a part of. Creating content takes time and energy and I postulated that there is an expected payout - in some conscious or subconscious form - for this investment. The most common expected returns were money and social capital (including personal influence) but some were as simple as giggles from friends. The question is, how does your product and community help them achieve their expected return?
Richard Millington suggests that many organizations fail at determining this because they work backwards.
They decide what features they want in the community and then try to figure out how to persuade members to use those features.
This is backwards thinking.
You should begin with identifying the motivational drivers of your audience and then add features based upon that motivation.
What are the key drivers of participation in your community? Is it the need for achievement? Self-efficacy? Power? Money? Recognition? Fear?
Now, what features would help members achieve these goals?
Your product’s ROI hinges on the ROI your community gains from using it. I don’t believe that it’s essential to determine what every member expects. But you will likely have members that carry more influence than others (even if their interaction is infrequent and their audience is quiet) and discovering the motivational factors they have will likely help focus feature priority and community output.
