Collaboration Chronicles

Ok, so we only had time to discuss 50 today.  These aren’t fully fleshed out, nor are they final.  These are basically the condensed minutes from our meeting tonight.  These are the goals that four of us at Collab21 have in our heads as far as getting our business off the ground.  This is an attempt to be transparent, but also in case this information could possibly be helpful to someone else some day.  The list is not prioritized.  However, task #1 is our original intention in forming Collab21, LLC. and thus is our ultimate near term goal.  Other goals are near and/or long term or ongoing goals.

Taipei 101

1. Obtain work/studio space.
2. Consolidate websites and web presence.
3. Get $10k in the bank before looking for space again.
4. Be self sustaining in all regards – mainly financially.
5. Make more creative stuff.
6. Offer free hosting to paying members.
7. Set up personal websites for board members that do not currently have one.
8. Host Workshop Wednesdays once a month.
9. Bring http://sharksinthepark.com/ back!
10. Set up social media tools for all members (twitter, facebook, delicious, basecamp, google apps) so we’re all on the same page.
11. Set up google Adsense and Amazon affiliates for http://collaborationchronicles.com
12. Active seek and obtain sponsors.
13. Finish bylaws and get approved by lawyer
14. Finish business plan for pitching
15. Make consistant brand across all sites and documents.
16. Fogcitygardens.org – add to C21 portfolio and work out agreement.
17. Get paid team project(s).
18. Atract more pre-space members
19. Have all board members do a person “Mission 101″ which contains goals related to their passions.
20. Formalize a marketing plan.
21. Make connections by hustling on and offline.
22. Make and post 20 DIY videos.
23. Get a lawyer.
24. Get an accountant.
25. Automate taxes and bookkeeping better.
26. Make a list of workshops to do for a year in advance and keep the list queue up to a year’s worth
27. Give a Pecha Kucha talk as a group.
28. Attend 5 basecamp-like events as a group.
29. Make Collab21 T-shirts and sell on website.
30. Make stickers and flyers and handout.
31. Come up with incentive for people to donate.
32. Get work out and get donations.
33. Organize a Collab21 “vacation” to work and do something else active.  (e.g. “Complete a Collab21 project/task in TAHOE!!!”
34. Do a chaulk drawing event with Collab21 (or something similar).
35. Come up with Collab21 product line to help collabortors.
36. Make list of Collab21 products and services that we can offer right now.
37. Feel good about what we’re selling.
38. Help people out – provide something for people at a low cost.
39. Free or cheap rent for board members.
40. Network better.
41. Have monthly meetings (at least).
42. Find places to host workshops (kitchens, toolshops, art, lecture halls).
43. Blog more on http://collaborationchroncles.com
44. Blog more on http://fogcitygardens.org
45. Post resumes of members on Collab21.com
46. Update NEWS tab on collab21.com
47. Redesign webiste with Django or HTML.
48. Zach and Beth to convert wordpress CSS file to Zach’s designed theme.
49. Make business cards.
50. Take pictures of everyone.

So that’s it so far.  We’ll have more a lot later.

Following my Nov. 8 Adventures at the abandoned storage auction:

Last night I was doing my regular home business stuff, and came across an ad for a sale that looked too good to be true. It was a private owner trying to auction 1 locker by 7PM, because he was leaving town in the morning. Could be a fishy setup but the ad promised treasure. I have no storage, but if I could unload it fast per piece, the work would pay off. There was lots of computer stuff- not up to date, true, but possible to make the money back on only a portion of it- it seemed.

I dropped everything because it was only a 15-min. bike ride away. When I got there I saw that the promised treasure was iffy-to-awful. I might have considered it based on 2 of the items, except the guy behaved like he was literally on crack. I wouldn’t have bought a locker full of gold bricks that way.

This happened to me once before, except the guy was sane (at first) and his stuff was good. I bought and made bank on re-selling, until 6 weeks later he emailed me from Prague begging for his stuff back. There was no business reason I should have replied, but there were humanitarian reasons. He got half back in return for my original investment. Each of us got half a loss, and half lucky. It was a pain to deal with.

Opportunities like this help learn about risks, hidden costs, and the importance of scoping out what you’re buying and who you’re negotiating with. I lost an hour out of my busy night last night, but you never know if you don’t try, right?

[Note: Walter Yu co-authored this post.]

A couple of good friends of mine, Walter Yu and Sean Neprud share my interest in developing passive income streams. We’re all smart, hard-working and ambitious, but making the transition from active income (work-by-the-hour) to passive income (log in, count your money) isn’t as easy as we think it ought to be. Then again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

In any case, in late December, we were tossing ideas around on Twitter and decided we should hang out for a whole weekend and get some work done instead of just talking about it. We felt we needed to gather in the same physical space for an extended amount of time to hash out features and conceptualize our various projects (hence the name “incubation”). We picked the first weekend in January, from Friday Jan 2 to Sunday Jan 4, and met at Dos Palmas (that’s my place!)

Stirfry Startups is born!

Our first-ever “weekend intensive” work session focused on affiliate work to monetize our websites. Attendees included Dave Doolin, Walter Yu, Sean Neprud, Rowena Ip and Joshua Hurst.

1/2-1/4/09: Websites affiliate “Incubation”

Walter was the first to arrive, on Friday afternoon around 5 pm, laden with huge bags of produce and groceries from 99 Ranch.

I stir fried gai choy Friday evening, a great excuse to break into a jar of fermented bean curd.

Friday night focused on Adsense affiliates, which we tackled from a practical, implementation point of view. We set-up our Google documents to take down info, and the Stir-fry Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/stir-fry-start-ups) went live the following week.

Walter stayed over Friday evening, and we got right to work Saturday morning, after a big breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and humongous mugs of coffee laced with heavy (whipping) cream.

Saturday was devoted to Amazon affiliates, which we again implemented rather quickly after working as a team and grinding out the details. We got our widgets setup with reading lists, and Walter also added a Pandora widget to http://walteryu.com.

By mid-day Saturday there were 5 of us: Sean, Rowena, Josh, Walter and myself. Sean worked on content for several of his many blogging ventures. Rowena learned some WordPress configuration and set up email for a new domain. Joshua outlined a documentary film project.

Then, more gai choy, coffee, and lots of hot spicy tea. I have a several sizes of stovetop espresso makers, a French press and coffee cone. Everyone gets it how they like it!

Sunday consisted of broader topic research, mainly web marketing. Walter and David stormed the El Cerrito Plaza Barnes & Noble with notepads in hand to jot down relevant sources and ideas.

Highlights of Stirfry #1

• Items implemented: Google Adsense banners, Amazon Affiliate widgets
• Items refined: Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, WP plug-ins
• Grub: Peet’s espresso w/heavy whip cream, gai choy stir-fry, chicken-curry noodles, eggs/bacon/oatmeal breakfast
• Tunes: Lots of electronica and related: Ben Watt, Bassnectar, Chilled C’quence, Tripswitch. Good stuff for cranking out work!

Yes, there was stir fry!

What We Learned

The weekend intensive was a great success. Here are the lessons we learned:

1. Clear agendas: setting work session agendas very clearly before it starts, then holding to that structure during the weekend.
2. Documentation: getting all our notes on the collaborative work we’re doing during and post-session
3. Follow-up items: following up the agenda with action items to do in our areas of work after the weekend.

1/9/09: Mind-mapping Friday Night Incubation

Walter and I followed up the next weekend Friday evening 10 Jan to brainstorm some new website projects. We hashed out ideas and implementation using Freemind, which is a mind-mapping software with potential use on our various projects. Walter gained familiarity with the program as I plotted out some website structure. We discussed additional ideas for our upcoming “Stir-fry Seminar”, which is in the works.

I also learned that the Thai dish Larb is ridiculously easy to make, provided you have the fish (or shrimp) sauce and some limes. I also roasted some leeks, something I learned from FOAF Simone Fung at her recent BBQ & oyster roast. (Lightly brush olive oil and herbs on leeks. Cook at 350 for 30 minutes, then broil for 5 minutes.)

Last year I got everything I needed to make a Media Center server.  The goal was to put Linux MCE on it.  After reinstalling Ubuntu and Kubuntu no less than 10 times, I gave up and decided to use the server to store all of the music I had purchased and downloaded from the past.  I had 2TB of harddrive space, and if I set up a RAID5 array, I would have about 1.5TB of available space for media.

So I moved all of the music that was already digital to it.  Now I’m in the process of ripping all of my CDs, and then it will be onto ripping vinyl.

The funny thing about CDs is that I can only rip one at a time.  I’m ripping them into FLAC, because my server will convert them to MP3 when streaming, and FLAC is lossless in case I wanted to burn a CD from it again.

Then I got bored and decided to go in on a server with four VPS’s in a datacenter for a few bucks a month.  My VPS is running CentOS, while my home server now has Ubuntu.  Getting the package mangers confused happens often, but it’s nothing big.  The one thing I haven’t yet set up is a DNS server so I can host my own nameservers.  I was thinking about going with a free nameserver host, so that it could answer for me.

Once this server is up, I’ll be able to host sites on it.  It uses ISPConfig’s management panel and allows resellers.  I still have to get mod_ruby, mod_python and Django installed for development and for anyone who wants it.

The funny thing is, one of our competitors at Collab21 is looking for a new host, and has asked us.  I hope luck like this continues as we move forward with Workshop Wednesday.

Let me preface by saying that I promise that the links in this post will lead you to information that will be relevant to collaboration through either Collab21, Collaboration Chronicles or Fog City Gardens in the future.

This morning, I opened my feed reader (I use Google reader) and read a post on Get Rich Slowly about Gary Vaynerchuk.  This is a name I had not heard before.  However, one of his sites (http://winelibrary.com) I had.  Last March, I was searching for software that I could keep a log of what I was spending on wine, which wines I owned, which I had consumed, notes on wines and other information about a blossoming interest I have.

I followed a link to Wine Library TV to see what it was all about.  After watching the current episode, I was hooked.  Not just because I have an insatiable love for wine, but because here was a guy who was totally unpretentious about what he was drinking, sitting next to a master sommelier, telling him things that he could smell and taste that the sommelier could not.  He was full of energy and it was all directed to giving a good show for the 40 odd minutes that the video took up.

I had to research this guy.  What did he have that we are all lacking in our Wednesday meetings (except David when he shows up)?  His blog has a couple of really great video posts, too!  Damn!  I went back to the original blog I was actually reading and realized that Gary had given a keynote at the Affiliate Summit West conference.  I had to watch this, and I shared it with anyone I thought would care, including my girlfriend.

Watching all of these videos really inspired me.  I had plenty of ideas.  I now know I need to concentrate on being creative, because that’s what I’m good at.  I can direct that creative energy to business, but getting into the marketing side is going to be impossible for me.  I need some help.  This is what collaboration is all about.

I signed back up to Twitter after a 2 year hiatus.  The purpose of using Twitter is for holding reminders on good ideas, as well as charting personal growth progress.  Eventually, it will be used for marketing whatever it is I’m slinging.  For now, I have to dig deep to figure that slinging part out.  So, for the time being, I’m exploring what I can claim I am a relative expert in.  The first three were easy…it doesn’t take much to push myself into the range of expert:  just paying attention and more experience, both of which are easy to get.  I’ll figure out what it is I’m going to be doing with an online presence and with these collaboration sites soon enough.

The best part of my day is that Gary Vee added me back on Twitter.  He really does pay attention.

The members of Collab21 who post here meet every Wednesday.  This week’s topic was DIY workshops.  I had the idea for a workshop to show how to design a logo/flyer/shirt for someone else’s band/event/company-  print it, license it for certain uses, and write the contract.

I followed up on this the other day.  A “show promoter” talked to me and she liked flyers I did in the past.  This flyer is my favorite- I did it for friends at a housing co-op.

I mentioned that I avoid working free.  People have to pay rent, and they spend years studying and going $97,653 in debt to get skills.  Also, expectation for free work undermines others.  But I like doing friend/charity favors on occasion (I did the co-op flyer in return for meals and party), and I appreciate the nature of bands’ work to get their stuff out.  So I offered to swap service, or even draw a flyer free if the band would also use the art on a shirt/album and tack on $1 for the artist.  (I hear you can hook up a split through cafe press.)

Response:

“Personally as an artist I wouldn’t pay for tee shirt artwork or flyer artwork or anything of the sort. By putting your artwork on a flyer or tee shirt its free promotion for you as an artist. Trying to capitalize off a DIY punk scene is lame. I book shows but I don’t get paid, no one who works at the club does. its volunteer because we love our scene and want to see it survive. All the money goes to the bands, so they can pay for gas to drive to the next show. If you are only making art to make a profit I don’t think you can call yourself an artist. I simply don’t believe Art should be your job. Art should be what you are passionate about and work a job to be able to afford. If someone asked me to make a flyer for their show I would do it because I love to.”

I asked how well that worked for her tattoos- did that artist work free?   How about asking for free car repairs so people can see the mechanic’s work driving around?

Big surprise, her day job is accountant.

There’s a response worth using in a workshop, and I’m sure it will be easy to find someone else worth working with.

Recently I have become a part of a local company called Natural Nannies. It started here in SF as a co-op of women looking to create a group to support each other in their childcare positions. It is now an LLC designed to teach and support its unique group of nannies.

I recently went on some field trips with other nannies to local attractions with a group of children. Seeing the Academy of Science from the perspective of a child is a amazing thing to witness. Something as mundane as a school for fishes swimming by suddenly becomes a sight worth stopping for. And an albino alligator becomes a mysteriously pale creature worthy a hundred questions. The penguin show was also a great exhibit; a wall of glass revealing underwater tunnels full of curious birds bobbing up and down. So close to the glass that a small hand could almost stroke the tiny feathers shining under the false sun. Another surprise hidden on the delicately painted walls of an African exhibit was the miniature elephants. A family of ghostly elephants walking across a distant savannah magically appears from the painted bushes only to disappear in a stand of coloured trees. A fantastical illusion to a child becomes merely a technical mechanism to an adult, a projector placed out of sight.

All and all my second tip to the Academy of Science was a wholly different experience given the context of children. It is always refreshing to experience a new perspective on life, through different eyes.

A cash crunch isn’t the biggest worry if you get a regular paycheck, and your income generally meets expenses.  You can wait for the next check to fix it.

If you don’t get a regular check, a cash crunch can be devastating.  A lot of people have a very limited safety net.  If you fall through it, you might have to swim upstream just to get back where you were before.   Some people don’t make it.  Other people call parents for help.   Who wants to do that?  Even if there’s never a cash crunch, living on unreliable income can cause worry even when times are good.

Here are 3 things to do for more security:

1.  Have a portion of income be dependable, even if it’s lower-paid than other work.  If it’s passive income, great.  It could be a part-time job that doesn’t crowd out other things in your schedule.  Hopefully it can bring other benefits and synch up with other work.  Working-at-work can make time spent at a poorly-paid job even more valuable than time spent on better-paid work at home.  Night clerk jobs are decent for this.  Personally, I watch a lab at a college on weekends.  It allows very useful student discounts; free classes; access to resources for my animation freelance; U.I. (hopefully- I’ll find out on summer break); and a place to work that’s often more relaxing than staying home, where there’s always distraction.  Don’t mention this to my bosses (who are great), but I was also able to negotiate the most beneficial schedule possible, by mentioning my home business (that I work on at work).  I can call it a commitment if I want to, and it pays more than the part time job, so if they really want me to work there…

2.  Have some flexible income.  This work doesn’t need priority, and you can drop it if other commitments come up.   When you decide to devote a lot of effort, it can pay off well.  Maybe you don’t want to do it forever, or it’s not worth devoting too much energy to make it grow, but when it pays it helps a lot.  Personally, this describes my home book dealing business.  The main work is locating stock- after that it’s easy.  So, some weekend mornings if my calendar is free, I stock up to cover the next few weeks or months.

3.  Have a higher goal — a plan or a project to work on that might advance your career, expand your business into new areas, or lead to a higher level full time job you’re not ready for yet.  It can be something to work on when working is easy, like a personal project for the love of it.  Or it can be another kind of flexible income that you will want to do forever.  Personally, that’s animation freelancing.  In the past it has been full time employment- maybe it will be in the future.  If I get spare time I can work on personal film projects that help with skills.  It’s feast-or-famine and competitive, so I don’t expect it to come when I want it (unlike the book business), or know how long it will last.  But, it might have more long term career potential than the other work.

Having 3 (or more) occupations going on means that you can lose one and still be OK, or take time off when they get too demanding.  You can lose 2, and have some resources to look for another without too much worry (or wasted time standing in line for food stamps- it’s a lot of work to be poor.)   Or you can focus on one exclusively when a great opportunity comes.