Gameful: a @kickstarter project
By Steve Hopkins | August 30, 2010
I backed a project last week on Kickstarter - Gameful: A secret HQ for Worldchanging Game Developers by Jane McGonigal. I think it’s quite an exciting project that is going to take place, as McGonigal builds a network around people who want to create games with outcomes for social change.
In her recent TED talk, McGonigal reveals some pretty amazing stats. At the moment, we (the citizens of planet earth) play about 3B hours a week of online games each week. McGonigal theorises that if we had people around the planet, playing a combined 21B hours of online games each week that were rigged around creating social change, then we could achieve some amazing outcomes. I agree. Talk about a cognitive surplus! Gameful will create a place for game designers to come together and create more of those types of games. In McGonigal’s words - “To make is as easy to save the world in real life, as it is to save the world in games.”
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Lean Start-up: A hypothesis approach
By Steve Hopkins | August 19, 2010
The importance of using a hypothesis to drive your project development progress is something that is becoming more and more widely used today. Thanks to the work of Eric Ries and Steve Blank, we now have the lean start-up methodology of managing projects to use. Whilst the theory is wide and covers a lot, I’d like to focus on one key area of the methodology, using a hypothesis based approach, because I’ve found it useful in gaining traction in projects I am working on.
What is a hypothesis?
A hypothesis, in the lean start-up sense, is simply a question you have about your project that you would like to answer. It’s a key part of the Customer Discovery process. It might be something like”More people would catch the train if they got an SMS message 15 minutes before they needed to leave.”
A hypothesis is a statement that you can prove, or disprove, to signify that there is a market present that values your idea. It is a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon. This is the key. In the above example, you can see that it becomes easy to find ways to prove that this might be the case.
How do I set one?
Setting a hypothesis is both easy and hard. First of all, it’s important that the majority (if not all) of your team have a stake in the creation of the hypothesis. It’s no good running out and proving there is a market for an early train catching SMS service, if half the team believe starting a bar that serves people who have missed their train is a better idea.After that, just start throwing questions out there that speak to your base assumptions. Why did you think this was a good idea in the first place? What makes you think people will value it? How do you know this?Once you have found what you think is your hypothesis, you can begin thinking about how to answer it.
How can I answer it?
This is where the rubber hits the road. Make sure you keep your approach simple - don’t over think it. Couch your thinking in the following ways.
“What is the simplest thing we could do here to prove our hypothesis?”…
Once you have this, then go and do it. For the above example, it might just be a Wufoo form that you spread around to your friends where they can sign up (for $10) to receive an SMS from you (personally!) 15 minutes before their train. Make this simple to do, and just get started doing it. Also, importantly, make sure you charge something of value. There is no point testing that people want a FREE train-SMS service. Who WOULDN’T want that? You need to test that people will actually value what you do enough to part with their hard-earned cash.
What then?
You’ve now successfully run the first version of your project. Some call this a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Now what? Can you positively answer your question? DO people want a train SMS service? Why? Why not? What lessons did you learn? What features do your potential customers really want? Which ones didn’t they use? How hard was it to sell?
Now, after taking a hypothesis and customer development driven approach, you’ll have some real insights into your idea and how people value it. And the beauty is, the hypothesis method doesn’t just have to be relevant for start-ups. I think there is a huge opportunity for people everywhere to use a hypothesis driven approach in their own slow projects, or even in their large companies. It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that this is a management methodology and as such, can be used to manage anything.
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Moneyball Investing
By Steve Hopkins | August 17, 2010
Dave McClure wrote this post on Moneyball investment and it sparked some thoughts for me.
Moneyball was all about looking for new metrics in an old game. Instead of looking for strong traditional results in potential recruits - like pace, arm or home runs hit - the Oakland A’s General Manager, Billy Beane, looked for subtle stats that indicated greater chances of team success, such as: ave balls faced/at plate, on base % and the number of walks a batter averaged. They would then model those stats and find the statistical probability that their team would score more runs than their opponents over a season. They did this, because instead of ‘investing’ in talented youths with potential they recruited proven players from the minor leagues, with history and data that pointed to strong performance accross their metrics. Previous performance pointed to strong continued performance, even in the Majors.
You can see this scenario already playing out in very simple ways in the investment arena. The rise of methodologies such as #leanstartup and the success of the Rework book by the guys at 37signals (and their blog, Signal vs. Noise) demonstrates a growing appreciation for the ‘minor leagues’ where businesses are built for revenue and the priviledge of their founders. If you look through the upcoming AngelList, you’ll see many of the people involved there are investing in many projects NOT for the returns alone but because they are happy to win at different metrics. Matt Mullenweg would like to invest in seed/early stage companies that Automattic may be able to buy later. What better way to prove a good buy, than see it play in the minor leagues first?
Dave’s artcle is great, and his contention that investment companies should invest earlier and in smaller tranches is good. People are keener to invest in smaller lots because they’re happy not to be playing in tbe Major leagues. The game is changing towards one of survival (in an existential sense) and sustainable cash flow. Investment will change towards not backing companies until they have proven business models, or in need of funds to continue customer development finding it. Perhaps investors will possibly even move to recieving something more like ‘dividends’ from companies they strategically admire than being in the game of exits
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Resonance and Ideas
By Steve Hopkins | August 9, 2010
In one of my last posts, I briefly discussed the idea of cognitive surplus, which has been coined by Clay Shirky. Cognitive Surplus is the idea that we are unleashing more and more of our collective abilities as we choose to do different things with our time. The classic example is Wikipedia, which has been created from upwards of 100M hours of human effort.
Time is currently still a finite resource. What people chose to do with their time is always an interesting decision. Increasingly, we’re seeing that people want to do something that matters, for themselves and their community. From this desire, we are seeing more and more slow projects emerge – people choosing to do amazing and interesting things, because they really want to do them.
But how do you chose a project to work on? How do you decide what you’re going to plough your most precious resource, time, into? There are lots of great ideas out there – how do you judge which one you will be able to make happen?
To me, choosing something to work on is largely based on the resonance I feel for the idea.
“In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate with larger amplitude at some frequencies than at others.” - Wikipedia.
I think this definition is beautiful, because it describes the extra energy created when you align yourself with an existing energy pulse. You know this feeling. It’s like there is this intuitive tuning fork inside you that knows whether you will actually make something happen rather than just let an idea fizzle out. You can see how you would make the idea happen. You know who to speak to first. You can feel the first conversation or the first sale. It’s easy. And these projects are often the ones that happen with the best results and the greatest satisfaction. This is a really interesting topic to me, which I’m looking forward to discussing more this weekend.
This weekend, I’ll be at the Social Innovation Bar Camp Sydney (@sibsyd) and am going to run a session discussing this idea of slow projects. @sibsyd is something I’m really looking forward to as it promises to provide a place for a number of ideas, thoughts and people to come together and amplify each others intentions. If you want to come along, you can register for free here: https://s.eventarc.com/event/view/1045/entry/social-innovation-barcamp
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It’s 2010
By Steve Hopkins | August 5, 2010
I’m lucky enough to be working with the very talented Bruno Mattarollo, from Pollenizer, at the moment. He often says the following sentence…”…of course we can do that…it’s 2010″
Technology is progressing at a phenomenal pace - we all know this. There is Moores Law, which states that processing power on computers doubles every 18 months or so. Karim Temsamani, at ALR last year, mentioned that the internet had grown 270 times since 2005. Email is something you can access anywhere and if you want to put up a website today, you can using any one of a number of tools like Wordpress, Blogger or Posterous.
More importantly though, is our attitude towered this pace of development and how we will make political, societal and organizational decisions based on this.
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, is a great person to listen to for some ideas about this - this short video from a recent presentation is indicative of his thoughts on where technology is going, and how we might make these kinds of decisions.
Realise that no matter what happens tomorrow, it is 2010 today and that for WHATEVER you’re doing, there is a way to make that happen right now. It’s 2010, after all.
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Positive Signals
By Steve Hopkins | August 2, 2010
Things are getting more and more complex here on planet earth. Through this complexity we have to get much better at learning to spot the hints and tips that lead us towards the things we want to find. The search for positive signals has become one of the best tools in our belt for detecting where to make positive change. Julian Assange, the editor and founder of Wikileaks, presented at the Centre for Investigative Journalism recently to discuss the different facets of revealing secrets. One of my strongest take aways from this was what he had to say about spotting positive signals.
“Where you see aggressive attempts to censor things, it’s a positive signal because the power structures that control those attempts are revealing their fear of journalists or other people revealing that information.”
“Early on, we were predominately focused on where we thought the most in-transparent government was and were press was most concealed; under this philosophy once again, that organisations that are attempting to conceal things are actually giving off a very positive signal. They’re scared of information flow. They’re scared of the press. And to us, of course, that was China and some African countries…as well as the US.“
Wikileaks doesn’t focuses on looking for leaked stories, but instead searches for organisations and governments that are giving off positive economic signals; organisations and governments that are, in an economic sense, producing ‘work’ to keep certain information hidden.
Wikipedia is another beautiful positive signal and an excellent example of work being done. Clay Shirky theorizes that about 100 Million hours of human thought was required to create Wikipedia. If you want to get more specific, track back through the Wikipedia articles and look at their history to see how much work goes in to keeping them accurate and you’ll learn quickly what people care about. Peak hour traffic during school holidays is another one - traffic often subsides during school holidays, presumably because parents take time off from work to spend time with their children.
There are examples everywhere of different positive signals that we can watch. The question is, how do you decide which ones you are going to watch and for what reason? Which metrics and signals will be useful for you or your organisation in pursing your purpose and goals? For Assange and Wikileaks, this is to achieve ‘just reform’ by revealing what history needs to know. What will it be for you?
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Mysteries and Puzzles
By Steve Hopkins | July 27, 2010
Often during the process of making something (be it your new start-up or slow project) there comes a point where you bump into problems. Often, this problem is actually a gap in your knowledge; you don’t know enough about something to NOT make it a problem. And it needs to be solved. But why do we define these things as problems, when what we’re actually experiencing is either a puzzel or a mystery?
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a fantastic article titled Open Secrets about the collapse of Enron, and the veracity of our belief that Jeffrey Skilling (the CEO at the time) was guilty. He goes on to discuss that actually, whereas puzzels often stem from a deliberate disequilibirum of information, a mystery actually involves ‘open secrets’ - where all the evidence is in plain sight to see. Gladwell intones that whilst you can find someone guilty for withholding information to the detriment of others, we should not have been able to convict Skilling, because Enron actually met their legal obligations to disclose all of their company information. The Enron collapse was a mystery, not a puzzle.
Recently in the Huffington Post, David Fiderer wrote an article about Goldman Sachs avoiding punishment from the S.E.C…but again, this is a similar example as Enron. As Fiderer explains…
“If you actually reviewed the performance of mortgage backed securities held by the CDO and understood how cash flow waterfalls and delinquency triggers worked, then you could see that subordinate tranches being insured for the benefit of Goldman were already worthless”
Financial collapse and boom-bust cycles will continue to occur, because we continue to believe that financial management is a ‘due’ process and that due diligence is infallible. Even Fiderer, the author of this artcile, whilst picking out that the due dilligence was a sham…still espouses checking just another metric (the mortgage backed securities held by the CDO) and making that a part of the system. Metrics are important, but it takes experience and a human who is exceptionally experienced in finance and deals to intuitively asses these sorts of deals.
Keep this in mind the next time you hear a report of ‘Corporate greed or incompetence. It’s not the corporations that are guilty, save for their instinct to consistantly push an opportunity to it’s breaking point. It’s our own fault for thinking the system is infallible. It’s time we realized the efficiency of intuition and various information sources being collaborativly pooled, so that these complex mysteries may be solved.
Our personal projects are no different. Don’t confuse the problem you’re facing as a puzzle - sometimes it’s a mystery that you won’t just be able to just crash your way through. Trust your gut and search for the intuitive answers.
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Finding magic.
By Steve Hopkins | July 25, 2010
We all like meeting people who are doing amazing things. The excitement that comes from finding a kindred spirit, who is working hard on their own slow project in their spare time, is one of lifes joys. But how do you find people that are doing these things? How do you go about locating them? If you had to find someone, doing something awesome tomorrow - how would you start? Here are a few of my thoughts.
1) Behind great people, is a great community.
We’ve all heard the saying, “Behind every great man, is a great woman.” The same applies to people doing great stuff. Behind every magic person is a magic community. People are not awesome by themselves, they often become so because they are supported by an able cadre of other inspiring people. If you want to find magic people, start looking for the community they spend the most time with.
One example is the #samehuman community, who meet once monthly in Melbourne for dinner. If you’re doing something socially progressive and geared towards making a positive difference in the world, you should dine with the #samehuman clan each month. Another is the #leanstartup movement in Sydney, which has a monthly meet-up to discuss their ventures with each other. Or, spend a day co-working at Inspire9.
2) Magic people are doing magic things.
You can find awesome people by looking for awesome projects. People are doing amazings things every day now, and you can often find those amazing people by looking for their amazing projects. Zach Klein, as an example, gets asked for magic every day.
Sites like Kickstarter and Fund Break in Australia, are now a platform for people who are doing really good work, on their own time and money. People like Jeffery Yoo Warren, who successfuly kickstarted his project “Grassroots mapping the Gulf oil spill with balloons and kites. If I were looking for someone to recommend for a geomattic engineer position then I wouldn’t hesitate to send them Jeffery’s way purely based on the fact he’s doing what he is doing in the Gulf.
3) Don’t ask how you’ll find them. Ask how magic people will find you.
Do people like Zach know you? People are now coming to him so often, asking for magic, that he has decided to create jobs.zachklein.com; a site specifically for sharing the different positions which people in his community are looking to fill. Often, you won’t find people doing good stuff - they will find you. Trust that you’re doing good stuff and trust that these people will find you. Magic happens all the time.
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Natural decision points
By Steve Hopkins | July 22, 2010
Last month, we had a planning meeting for Trampoline, which was kindly facilitated for us by Jan Stewart. At this session, we focused on allowing ourselves to come to natural decision points about the different choices and options ahead for the event.
I think everyone, when asked about where they make the best decisions, would probably say something like “the shower” or in some mode where their brain was not immediately focused on the task at hand. These solutions are often the best, and most suitably account for all the ‘little’ things that intuitively you know need to be part of the puzzle to solve the problem. The thing is, we often force ourselves to make decisions in environments that are not the places where those solutions crop up.
Jan’s session was excellent because she didn’t facilitate ‘us’ the participants but the environment that we used to evolve our discussions. We had cordoned off an afternoon just to be together and discuss Trampoline, and we moved from different places to keep our energy and discussions naturally flowing. We started with grabbing some take-away coffee at a cafe, then a chat on a rug in Flagstaff Gardens, then lunch at the serene Captains Of Industry.
Through doing that, over the course of the afternoon, we naturally came to a number of decision points which we suddenly had natural answers for. So natural, they didn’t feel like decisions at all…only validation of shared consensus. It’s my belief that we can come to these natural decision points often, over most complex problems, by just giving ourselves time to come to them. And now that we have made those decisions, the benefit of that shared understanding is evident in all of our planning meetings we have had since.
If you’re facing a complex problem, which appears to be fraught with complex decisions to make, then I suggest just giving yourself the time and environment to make them naturally. Jan is interested in facilitating more sessions like these in the future, so if you’re interested then you should consider sending her an email at janstewart06@gmail.com or follow her on twitter.
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Use @kickstarter to find awesome projects
By Steve Hopkins | July 19, 2010
Whilst I was away in London recently I was really chuffed to check into my email briefly and notice that Trade School, a project I had backed on Kickstarter, had reached it’s funding goal of $9000. I thought that was fantastic, and can’t wait to see another term happen.
I love the idea of Trade School, because it acts as a conduit for awesome people within their communities to come out of the woodwork and teach others how they do their ’stuff.’ You can see a list of people and classes that took place at Trade School last time around by visiting their website; classes like How to throw an arts festival for 1-3 days or Scrabble strategy for beginners. Trade School seems to straddle well the divide between learning things that are either work-based, or fun-based. The photo below comes from a class hosted by Ellie Irons called Drawing for Pleasure. Trade School is the sort of thing I imagine working really well at Donkey Wheel House, in Melbourne. Perhaps Kinfolk Cafe will adopt the idea? (wink wink).
But the real reason I loved seeing that Trade School got funded was because I am really falling in love with the global platform that Kickstarter is becoming. It is becoming a great way to find excellent slow projects that people are working on. Sometimes, finding interesting people doing funky, out-there, awesome projects can be tough. Now, Kickstarter has 10 of them every week! I’ll be backing more projects in the future and intend on posting those projects I back on this blog. In the meantime, if you’re looking for people doing awesome projects, start your search on Kickstarter
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