Today, your friends and family say goodbye to the vessel that carried your life, but your spirit emanates through each of us. You leave a great void in our lives, but equally, a challenge to fill that void with what you represent. I feel our friendship was just beginning and had so many possibilities—that I had just opened the door to a brilliantly bright and star-filled room of opportunity, only to have the door close too soon.

In the past few months alone, you’ve impacted Coley’s and my life, both personally and professionally. We will continue to carry your words and advice with us, in our relationship, as well as in our work.

But most importantly, we’ll carry your brightness in our lives. Thank you, Adam.

I’m pleased to announce the release of my book, See What I Mean. Whether you’re a fan of comics as a communication tool, or just looking for new ways to communicate your product, process, or ideas, I think you’ll enjoy this book. The book is on sale now at Rosenfeld Media with digital, DRM-free versions also available on the site. We prefer if you bought direct, but if you are so inclined, leave a review over on Amazon, as that will help with visibility of the book!

It’s been a long road leading up to this book, from the first Dragon Ball Z manga comics I drew as a kid, to drawing a comic for my undergrad engineering newspaper, to announcing the book back in 2008, finishing the first draft in the woods, and finally, completion.

Thanks to everyone’s support, in particular my wife Coley’s, and for those who’ve been asking for this book, thanks for your patience. I hope you like it.

For the 4th year in a row, I’m setting a theme word for the year rather than new year resolutions. The problem with the theme word selection process is that I spend much time thinking about it and coming up with the word, but then lack the time to write about my reasonings, which then leads me to not blog until I’ve posted the theme word. Last year, this had me on a hiatus until June. This year, it’s been going on so long it seems almost silly to write about it but I’ve been following it, even if I never did announce it. I’ve also found that I prefer my “new year” to start around my birthday so this seems like a good time to write about it. Previous years: Realize (2009), Listen (2010), and…

Last Year’s Theme Word: Nurture

You can read in depth about why I opted for nurture last year. In terms of how well I accomplished it, I have to say it was a mixed bag. My intent was not only to maintain all the great things that were in my life but also to grow them into more. Instead of putting energy into new projects, I wanted to double down.

For work, this took a drastic turn as I left Twitter in the middle of the year. However, while I wasn’t able to continue to nurture Twitter’s culture and product internally, I did continue to strengthen my relationships with those I had the pleasure to work with. Many of them are great friends today.

Personally speaking, it was my first year of marriage and first anniversary. In that respect, I think we’ve done a great job at continuing to have very open communication that’s served to make us stronger individually and as a couple.

This Year: Persist.

This year opens with a new company and new product in the works, a long running book that has just hit the printers, and probably many challenges ahead that I have yet to foresee. I elected for a word that represented what I think will be the greatest challenge for the year: to keep at it. The word applies to personal health and personal life as well—though perhaps less directly than “nurture” did.

Completing these projects requires persistence. There will be times where we need to meet somebody, or ask for money from someone, or get the attention of some publication. There will be moments when that home stretch on the book, or the grueling hours or lack of external validation may really challenge my morale and motivation. In those times, I remember the theme word and it pushes me forward.

Persistence vs. Passion

Recently, there’s been a few articles and blog posts written about the fallacy of “follow your passion”. I think these posts make some good points. In essence, they refer to the fact that simply following your passion may be too short-sighted. You may not discover something is a passion because you don’t stick through enough to get good at it. This reminds me of a quote from Adventure Time’s Jake the Dog:

Having said that, I do believe that people tend to fall into two categories:

1. Those who jump too quickly to something else and give up too soon, before truly realizing their potential and assessing their passion based on this potential.
2. Those who stick through something that sucks and they don’t enjoy out of sheer stubbornness to “see it through”, be it relationships, work, or projects.

My selection of “persist” this year is deliberate, with an understanding that I’ve started down the path of a few challenging projects and they require persistence to see through to completion. I don’t think persistence for the sake of persistence is the right thing to do. I’ve been working for years, perhaps even decades, on projects that lead up to both the book and the startup and know them to be passions of mine.

Joe Kraus, partner at Google Ventures and co-founder of Excite, wrote a piece a few years ago about the value of persistence. It applies as much to startups as it does anything. Once you find the things you believe in, then you keep at it until all options are exhausted and all you feel you couldn’t have done anything more. There are times when it’s time to step away and give up and the real wisdom that comes from experience is knowing the difference.

For this year, my path is to persist and try everything I can, put everything on the table, and see how it goes.

Which job would you learn more from?

And it became immediately clear which choice was the right one. While Brickhouse was enjoyable and fulfilling, I knew that I was not learning much with each subsequent project. The growth was incremental.

In the past few years, I’ve been approached more for career advice. The problem with career advice is that everyone’s goals, personalities, risk profiles, and priorities are very different. But assuming you’re looking to build a career which involves professional growth (as opposed to having it only as a means to an end), then my one piece of advice is always the same:

Do what scares you

Some might call it “getting out of the comfort zone” but I feel the term is almost a euphemism. It doesn’t convey the base emotion you should feel. You’re scared because you care a lot about the consequences. And if you care, it’s probably the right thing to be doing. When you think about the next thing you’re going to work on, you should feel that nervous, excited energy you get when you know you’re about to do something crazy, and you might royally fuck it up, but if you put everything into it, you might just come out with something amazing and even if you don’t, you know you’ll have learned more everyday than you did in the last year.

Take that leap.

Why I Switched

I was always unimpressed with Go Daddy’s marketing strategy. As a leader in the space, it was clear that “sex sells” was a mantra working well for them. Super Bowl ads and spokeswomen featuring fast cars and scantily clad women were the main selling points of the “service”. I felt that supporting Go Daddy was equivalent to supporting this tactic and confirming that the quality of the product mattered less than how much boob you could fit in a Super Bowl ad. This belief is further reinforced by the fact that it’s actually a terrible product. At every turn, Go Daddy’s site feels like a Las Vegas casino while every interaction feels like you’re buying from a used car salesman who wants to up-sell you two cigarette lighters with your vehicle.

The last straw was the video Bob Parsons, CEO of Go Daddy, proudly posted on his site earlier this year. In it, he proudly depicts a trip he took to Zimbabwe where he shot and killed a “problem” elephant, stood gloating next to the corpse, then carves up the elephant and hands it out to villagers wearing Go Daddy baseball caps. Even if there were “problem elephants” (which is untrue), it’s very clear from the footage that Parsons was rationalizing an expensive hunting trip as a “rewarding” thing to do in life. Indicatively, the original video has been edited. Though the poor grammar remains, the AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” overlay, the close-ups of villagers with Go Daddy hats, and the focus on Parsons making the kill have been removed. Thankfully, the internet, like elephants, always remembers:

Update 23 Dec 11: GoDaddy supported the misguided SOPA, and then dismissed boycotts, and finally, when business was clearly going to get hurt, rescinded on their support after 24hrs. Seriously, who wants to give money to these guys?

Registrar Criteria

Enough about No Daddy. With the decision to change domain registrars, I had to pick an alternative—and there were many highly recommended options. To help with the selection, I boiled down my needs to 3 main areas:

• User Experience: If the site makes it even remotely difficult for me to transfer, register, or find information, I’ll stay away from it. If the design makes my eyes bleed, I’ll assume their focus is much more on making money than on creating a pleasant service to use.
• Coverage: With the ever-increasing number of domain extensions, I wanted to make sure the registrar was one I could keep as many of my domains in as possible. I looked for companies that could register .com, .co, .io, .it, .me, .tv, and .us as a rough sample.
• Cost: As much as I am willing to pay a premium for a better service, this is a commodity service and a recurring cost.

What I did not look at were additional services such as hosting, SSl certificates, etc. Although Namecheap did have one of the lowest transfer costs (made even cheaper with coupon code SWITCH2NC), I didn’t seriously factor in that cost in my decision because it was a one-time cost. While a lot of registrars were recommended, there was a sharp drop-off after the first handful so I’ll only cover those.

Namecheap

By far the most recommended was Namecheap and for good reason. Their pricing is like their namesake—cheapest across many extensions (though tied with Name.com in many cases). They offer an average number of extensions (23). Their design isn’t spectacular but it’s friendly and easy to get around without the feeling you’re getting sold to every step of the way. I ended up using Namecheap due to the many recommendations. They also were voted best domain registrar on Lifehacker.

Gandi.net

Gandi.net was mentioned a great deal. I love their tagline “no bullshit” and based on their copy, I think their approach is great. Finding information was also fairly easy but I’ve read that they’re “techie” in past reviews and I feel the design matches that vibe. The services they offer seem to also support that their audience are those with much more technical and complex demands. They are a French company so their pricing is in Euros. Sadly, even if the € was a $, the price would still be the priciest of all the options by a large margin. One exception is in the international domains, where they are much cheaper. Given Namecheap doesn’t have nearly the same level of coverage, I may still use Gandi.net as the secondary registrar.

Hover.com

Hover has the best design among the registrars but their pricing is nearly the worst as is their selection (15 TLDs). Having their phone number right on the top of their homepage is a very encouraging sign that you get what you pay for in terms of service. If you don’t have too many domains and don’t tend to use international domains, Hover may still be worth a look.

Name.com

There were far fewer mentions of Name.com. I guess having the best domain name doesn’t make you the best domain registrar. Their homepage is cute, with the trendy sketch motif, but everything underneath the cover is pretty barebones. Finding the pricing information and TLDs was only possible through digging around in their footer. In terms of pricing, they are the best in many, though they’re three times the price for .it, one of the international samples I used. They also have a really large selection of TLDs and have additional services such as Name Grabber and auctions.

iWantMyName

Editor’s choice winner for Webhost Magazine, they’ve taken a Google-like approach in their design. It’s barebones, easy to navigate, and does the job. The have a huge selection of domain extensions but their price is the worst across many. It’s worth noting that of these registrars, only iWantMyName and the previously mentioned Name.com offer .io registration for now.

1&1

I still remember when these guys were offering free hosting back in the early 2000s for spamming your friends. I think I still have an old account with them somewhere.They also have a phone number posted which is definitely positive.  But overall, 1&1 is unremarkable. The offer the least number of extensions and are roughly comparable on the ones they do offer.

Pricing Summary

Again, I looked at a few different types of domain extensions to try to get a good cross-section and understanding of the cost distribution for common, international, and popular vanity  domains.

I actually did my domain switch before I was able to complete this in-depth comparison. Namecheap is where all my domains are now but looking at this chart, I might recommend Name.com instead to those asking. I have no regrets on my selection—the transfer experience was painless and the pricing very attractive. But now I need to have a secondary provider for some domain extensions. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before Namecheap offers more extensions, too.

Some additional views:

• Marco Arment on Why Is It So Hard To Be A Good Registrar?
• Chris Shiflett’s overview of domain registrars.

What registrar do you use? What factors are important to you when you chose yours?

Thanks to WordPress.tv, there’s an HD video of the talk available. It’s a short presentation—just 30 mins excluding Q&A—and is a great overview of the topic. In that respect, it’s quite different from my workshops, where I spend a full day teaching participants of all skill levels how to use comics to communicate ideas. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful and entertaining.

Photo by Troy Holden

About a month ago, I was let go from Twitter. Everyone has their own view of what happened and why and I’d rather not add to the speculation. What I’ll talk about is my experience there, what I’ve been doing, and what I am working on.

@Twitter

When you’re working for a global brand, it can be pretty amusing (and frustrating) to hear what people think goes on inside the walls of Twitter. I remember how some people I talk to couldn’t understand how Twitter could have >100 employees (now I believe over 600) to run a service that was essentially 140 characters. Then the next person I talked to would be shocked at how Twitter could run a real-time search engine, a top web destination, multiple mobile clients, and a rich developer platform with so few people.

For me, during my first week at Twitter, what was most striking was just how much was going on and how much thinking had been done—and not just in terms of product. Every element, from the brand, to the artful videos, to how to decide if an account is spam, to the legal policy on subpoenas, to how the culture should evolve, was considered deeply. This sort of careful attention isn’t always obvious. When everything seems to be going smoothly, that’s when the most work and thought has been done.

One rarely has the opportunity to work on a world-changing service that gives every individual a voice. Everyday, I found myself thinking, “this job is amazing! I can’t believe I get to work on this!”  Coordinating the redesign of twitter.com was possibly the most challenging project I’d ever worked on. But what was most rewarding, and what I will miss most, was the environment and the people. Smart people are hard to find. Smart people who are humble, supportive, positive, funny, and genuinely interesting are nearly impossible to find but Twitter was full of them. Over the past few weeks, a few more of these key smart people are taking their leave. The company and the culture is evolving quickly and it will be interesting to observe, now from the outside, where they go from here.

What I’ve Been Doing

“A market like this only happens once a decade; Everybody owes it to themselves to see what’s out there and do what they want.”—@efeng

— Kevin Cheng (@k) July 28, 2011

The response since my departure has been overwhelming, touching, and flattering. I feel incredibly lucky to have so much support and so much interest.

As it turns out, being unemployed in the current market can mean being even busier than when you’re employed. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking. I’ve kept an open mind to who I meet: reconnecting with old friends, getting advice from peers, meeting new companies, visiting larger companies, meeting investors, brainstorming with friends, helping out startups. You might say I’ve exceeded my quota for 50 coffee meetings this month alone.

In addition to exploring what’s out there, I’ve been spending time finishing a book I’ve been writing for years and prepping for Burning Man.

What I’m Doing Next

“The best time to start a company is always two years ago, and the next best time is now. So now it is.” — Caterina Fake, co-founder Flickr, Hunch

When I interviewed at Twitter, I distinctly remember the interview I had with Ev. We were talking about corporate culture and I mentioned that I’d been thinking a lot about it. I kept a personal wiki of notes for when I started my own company.

“I’d like to see that,” Ev said. I was a bit nervous, given that it’s a very rough internal notebook, but I pulled it up on the phone and we had a great discussion around it. (Side note: take the time to list what kind of company you want to work at and show it to your next interviewer. It’s a great calibration tool.)

Ev then asked, “so you want to eventually start a company?”

I responded hesitantly at first, “well, yeah, I think…that is if…um…” then thought about it and knew the answer was clear, “yes.”

On the same day that Twitter and I parted ways, I knew what I wanted to do next. I don’t yet know what it is, what problems it will solve, what platform it runs on, whether it will get funded, whether it will last more than a week, or what it will be called. But I’ve run out of excuses; It’s time to start something. Get in touch if you want to help or have ideas. Stay tuned.

Many discussions have ensued about how people are organizing their Circles. Many have also praised Google’s elegant and unique implementation as a clear answer to Paul Adam’s research entitled “The Real Life Social Network“.

I’ve been thinking about grouping and organization of friends for a long time. As an information architect, it’s in my nature to want to organize and tag everyone I know. I even wrote a post in 2004 about the organization of my instant messaging list. In thinking about this for a little while, I’ve decided to try to document my thinking so far on Google Circles, as well as the larger context of digitally grouping people.

Why We Need Groups

I’ve noticed from reading a number of articles about Groups, Circles, Lists, etc. is the variety of use cases and needs. We see so many implementations because there are many needs. There are different use cases for publishers and consumers, public and private, symmetrical and asymmetrical. Before I talk about the challenges I think Google Circles, and any similar feature faces, let’s look at some problems grouping attempts to solve.

Privacy

One reason for needing groups is because you’re only comfortable with certain people seeing what you’re talking about. For example, you may only want to share baby photos with family. Flickr’s Friends and Family settings are very much targeted for this use case.

Interest Context

Subtly different from privacy, you feel only these people need to know about what you’re talking about. An example might be asking for advice on what tires to buy from your car enthusiast friends. You don’t necessarily care that it’s public, you just want to make sure the right people read it. Currently, communities around interests is largely solved by services such as Yahoo!, Facebook, and Google Groups.

Local Context

Posts that are specific to your location such as “what’s going on tonight?” or “Anyone have tickets to the concert tonight?” should be targeted to friends within that geographic area.

Event Context

Similar to local context, when you’re at an event (e.g., Coachella music festival), you may want to communicate and publish only to your friends who are also at the event. Group messaging tools such as GroupMe and Beluga—and now Google’s Huddle—attempt to solve for this use case. Not surprisingly, all of these solutions are mobile-centric.

Organizational Context

Your college friends don’t know your ex-coworkers don’t know your softball team. Maybe you want to share a link about your alma mater or one on how your former company just changed CEOs.

Not Spamming Everyone

A corollary to the contexts is that one may not only want to publish a post to a specific audience, but may also feel self-conscious about spamming others with what’s deemed irrelevant material.

Targeted Consumption: Reading From a Specific Group

For any of the contexts above, you may also want to consume based on a grouping. Perhaps you wish to view only messages from friends also at Coachella. Or you want to read the latest tech news from the technology journalists and authors you follow. Twitter Lists is an example of a way to address such a use case.

What Google Circles Does Right

Anything that’s created this much discussion and buzz is clearly doing something right. While I think there are some challenges for Circles, they’ve done many things that I think are positive, innovative, or at least interesting.

Visible

Unlike Twitter Lists or Facebook’s Friend Lists (did you know you could organize Facebook friends into lists?), everyone in Google+ has to be in a Circle. This is a bold move and puts organization as the focus of the entire product. While forcing grouping may seem like a higher barrier to entry, their interface makes it as easy as adding a friend on other sites.

The Circle Interface

Circles is a delightful experience. It makes you want to add people just for the fun of it. I do feel the drag n’ drop interface is one that’s more suited for touch interfaces and may be too much effort for large collections of people. However, adding people to circles through their Suggestions is a cinch. If you haven’t tried deleting a Circle yet, you should. Delightful.

The Sharing Interface

Although not unique, the sharing interface is simple. I can easily type in the Circles I want to share a post with and it’s clear from looking at any post which Circle I shared it with. One caveat is that the Extended Circles option is a pretty confusing one, even for those of us immersed in this world.

Auto-Suggest Circle Members

In one of the first Circles I created, after adding only three people, Google started suggesting others to add and every single suggestion was correct. This made creating that Circle much easier. Unfortunately, none of the other Circles I created had suggestions. I suspect they are generated from the Google Group the members are a part of.

One Way Circles

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure some people I think are my friends don’t think the same of me. Likewise, that guy who calls me his “buddy” doesn’t need to know that I put him in the “Acquaintance” Circle.

Why Grouping Sucks

When I first started using Google+, I had a sense of déjà vu as I categorized my friends. I’d done this before… on Flickr, on Facebook, on Twitter, on my instant messenger contact list, and in my address book. Shortly thereafter, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the effort to rigorously group everyone. Then I started thinking about whether it was ever worth the effort to do so. Because as much as one tries to emulate the real life social network and address Paul Adam’s research, there are some human subtleties we’re missing in the digital world.

The problem with friend Circles, Groups, Lists, etc., is that our brains don’t have a clear information architecture of our social graph.

— Kevin Cheng (@k) June 30, 2011

The Soft Line

Have you ever had a Facebook or LinkedIn friend request where you weren’t sure whether to accept or not? There’s a soft line that separates a friend and an acquaintance.

It’s true that you can probably label everyone you met through an organization (school, work, etc.) but the boundaries quickly become blurred. Let’s say you met someone through your classmate but she’s not in your school. Does she belong in the school group? What about the person who sometimes hangs out with your group of friends? Or the guy you met dozens of times but only at parties?

We’re incredibly adept at knowing the right situations to include the right people. They’re not black or white rules and depend heavily on context: is it a party, who else is there, do they know any of the other people, have you talked recently, etc. Unfortunately, this skill and these implicit social rules we know are not easily translated.

Maintenance

I have a very close friend, Mike. We used to share an office together back in 2000. We talked about everything, went on trips, and hung out nearly daily. Today, I see him on average once every two months. We still share our thoughts and are there for each other for support, but life got in the way and our relationship is different now.

Sociologist Gerald Molenhorst has shown that we change half of our social network every seven years but there isn’t a Changing of the Guard ceremony here. It’s not entirely clear at what point Mike moved from one group to another.

Thus, maintaining digital groups has two problems. First, you don’t know when to move someone from one group to another because transitions happen gradually. Second, it’s simply a lot of effort to maintain. How often would you update the entire list? And if it’s not updated, how useful are the groupings, really?

Recall

I think I could run an open card sort for myself and probably come up with some good categorizations for my friends. However, once I’ve created these fancy Circles, will I actually remember who will see a given post? From my experience organizing my Facebook and address book, I’ve found that I don’t remember the complex taxonomies I dream up. In fact, I don’t know that I can list every person that’s in my “Family” group in Flickr even though it’s less than twenty.

When compounded with the high overhead of maintenance and likely outdated groups over time, it’s even less likely that I’ll know who I’m actually sharing a post with.

One use case where recall isn’t a concern is in consumption. If you’ve created a “Celebrities” group to read their content, it doesn’t matter if you don’t remember every individual in the group.

Can It Be Done?

The maintenance required for grouping our friends is too high and too vague. We simply don’t have the rules as clearly defined as programs require and even if we did, the parameters change. Your personal tastes change. The influential people change. Even your friends change. Keeping the groups accurate and remembering its members is a challenge.

The obvious question to ask is: what about automation? Google Buzz attempted to automatically determine social ties based on who you frequently emailed. That solution lead to disastrous results, linking a woman closely to her ex-husband.

However, Buzz’s nascent attempts and failures do not necessarily mean automation is untenable. If you’ve seen LinkedIn Labs’ InMaps, you’ll know that your network is simultaneously clustered and complex. You can almost make out the groupings but there are many nodes that overlap multiple categories or aren’t easily categorized at all.

A new app that launched last week, Katango, seems to be a technology demo of how we can use these clusters to auto-group your Facebook friends. I was impressed with how accurately they created logical groups that hadn’t occurred to me. Perhaps the smartest part of the app is that it then allows you to edit the group by removing people. This approach is smart because it’s easier to say, “this looks like my college drinking buddies… except that guy; he was only sort of with us” than it is to say, “this looks like my college drinking buddies… who’s missing?” Recognition over recall wins again.

Perhaps as we refine these patterns and technologies, we can start to not only recommend the grouping, but also recommend changes to the groups over time, thus lowering the maintenance cost. However, what I really wonder is whether we should be trying to mirror real life interactions at all. Instead of mapping, wouldn’t it be more interesting to change or create new behaviour?

Thanks to Dave Gray for his input and feedback on my draft (see his Google+ post on sharing) and to Coley Cheng for some masterful editing.

Last year, my theme word was listen. It was easily the best word I’ve selected so far and it served me incredibly well. Listening was about getting all perspectives. To listen—to truly pay attention—to your friends, your family, your loved ones, you coworkers, your team, and your users is a real challenge. But when done with conviction and concentration, it makes every other challenge seem trivial.

It was by no means an easy year; We had a lot going on in our lives. I’d started a new job at Twitter. Working with an amazingly talented and dedicated team, we launched a redesign of Twitter’s web site, #NewTwitter. Coley and I went to Burning Man for the first time which required a great deal of preparation and planning (mostly on Coley’s part). And of course, most importantly, we got married.

Each of these were significant undertakings. In each case, we had to listen to many different people, take their needs into consideration, and then create—not compromise—something magical for everyone. Given hindsight, I’d do some things differently but I know that the decisions made at the time were done with the most listening I could possibly have done. It was a pretty good year.

Keeping It Going

In professional sports, there’s a term called “The Sophomore Slump”. It refers to professional athletes who often have an incredible first (“rookie”) year but their performance drops significantly the second year. Perhaps it’s the familiarity or perhaps it’s a human tendency to rest on laurels. I was acutely aware that, with such a marquee year behind me, I might suffer an equivalent “slump” if I wasn’t diligent.

I wanted to make sure I didn’t become overly confident nor approach anything as though I was entitled. In terms of my marriage, my work, and my friends, I wanted a focus this year on not taking anything or anyone for granted. The theme word needed to be a reminder to continue the drive and remain humble. “Momentum” was a candidate. But momentum is what happens with one push and no opposing force.

Then I realized that looking for words around not taking something for granted was under-achieving. Such a word would essentially dictate keeping the status quo and protecting what I have. To continue the sports analogy, this approach is akin to fearing a loss rather than seeking a win. What I needed was a word that would encourage taking what I had accomplished and growing it to new heights.

That word is NURTURE.

To nurture something is to care for it, support it, and help it flourish and grow, not just prevent it from dying. I aim to nurture the products I help build, the bonds I form with others, my body, and my skills. I also hope to help others grow, professionally and personally. Most importantly, in our first year of marriage, it’s important to nurture the relationship between us and between our families.

Checkpoint

Since I’m only sharing the theme word now, I’m also at a point where I can check in and see how well I’m adhering to the theme word. Sadly, compared to last year, I feel that I haven’t succeeded in following this theme despite my best intentions. I don’t feel I’ve helped others become better, I haven’t strengthened my relationships significantly, and I’ve noticed myself falling into the trap of feeling entitled at times.

The silver lining is that I’ve taken some great steps toward nurturing my body and my skills. Thanks to the urging of persistent coworkers and friends (Thanks EJ, Karen, Karina, Benji!), this year has seen me take on many new activities. I bought my first bike and am commuting on it daily. And because I grew tired of depending on others for my ideas, I’ve started to return to my engineering roots in my spare time.

Checking in half way is both sobering and motivating. It’s disappointing to feel that I haven’t followed through on my intentions but there’s still many months to see it through. The current trend is upwards and I’m optimistic that it will remain so. One thing that’s abundantly clear is that I did achieve my goal of opting for a more challenging (and therefore worthy) theme word; Nurturing is hard work.

Smaller, Smarter, More Intimate

The conference had only 150 people but all the speakers and attendees were incredibly bright and talented, working on a lot of great projects. By comparison, Twitter seemed like a large company which is amusing as we’re a mere 300 people working on one of the largest services worldwide. I’ve never once felt like I worked in a large company while here and in talking to the others, I understood why. Much of our approach and practices are identical to three-person startups and agencies and, if anything, our execution time is at least as fast if not faster.

Though there wasn’t any explicit theme, the talks all centered around having passion in the work you do. Christ Shiflett even said the conference itself was crafted out of love and you could tell from each presentation how much love was put into each project.

The Talks

Shelley Bernstein (@shell7) is the Chief of Technology at the Brooklyn Museum. She talked about all the ways they use social media to increase exposure and create a better experience. Her talk was a highlight for me and I hope she can come visit Twitter HQ sometime to share her experiences. Shelley talked about how they allow photography, and the Flickr photos gave more exposure to the museum but also gave them more understanding of how people interacted with the exhibits, even in negative ways. She emphasized how personal voices from the authors added much more backstory to exhibits and photographs. But to keep the voices and the attention on Brooklyn Museum, they use ConnectTweet to have multiple people contribute to one account.

Facebook and Twitter are tools they use to continue conversations so that external articles (such as negative articles from the New York Times) aren’t the last word on the museum. Using these channels has also meant a different definition of working hours, as you have to be on when your visitors are.

Her use of Foursquare was particularly creative. They created a landing page on Foursquare so staff can add tips of places to eat near the museum. They also have the rule:

“If you are staff you should not be mayor.”

When the mayor checks in, they meet the mayor and take pictures! And in order to reward other visitors, they also created a “BK Art Star” badge.

Shelley then shared a story of how HBO found a photo of one of their statues, not in the Brooklyn Museum but “somewhere online”. The statue was featured in the series True Blood and Shelley only found out through Twitter and Facebook when visitors mentioned it. The engaged museum audience then asked HBO about the statue, inspiring the writers of the show to connect with the museum. For the season finale, which featured the statue, HBO sent photo to the museum as a preview and encouraged them to share it.

Elliot Jay Stocks (@elliotjaystocks ) talked about his process and struggles with his solo creation, a print magazine called 8 Faces. Like the founders of the conference, he wanted to make a special thing that’s unlike a regular magazine. Some of the key lessons he learned included how many unseen things take a lot of time. Examples include: getting ad placements, chasing people for their advertisement assets, getting payments, and dealing with after-sales support. Although he’d completed his interviews in February in March, the magazine wasn’t printed until August because it was his own solo project that happened over evenings and weekends.

One aspect he discussed, which was echoed by both Cameron Moll and myself, was the concept of focusing on experience first. He called himself an “accidental businessman” because money wasn’t the focus but he still succeeded. He didn’t focus on marketing but wrote a few blog posts and tweeted about the project as he would any project he was working on. This was enough to garner sufficient attention and, though he didn’t do a press release, the magazine was featured in the Independent and, at its peak, was selling 2.94 copies a second.

Cameron Moll (@cameronmoll), founder of Authentic Jobs, talked in detail of how he took a side hobby and turned it into his full-time project. The job board first started with a few people trying to hire him for full-time positions. When he declined, they’d naturally ask if he knew anyone he could refer. Soon, he was posting these openings in a sidebar on his blog. This process quickly grew into a full job board, as it became clear that companies were willing to offer money for the quality of candidates he could refer.

Like Elliot, Cameron didn’t ask for money first and didn’t focus on money. Instead, he focused on creating something that could connect job posters to job seekers and even guaranteed money back to companies (very few want their money back because they care much more about getting a good candidate than being reimbursed). In its 5th year now, Cameron is expanding the job board and offered a lot of heartfelt advice on balancing such an endeavor with giving back, and giving time to family.

Marco Arment (@marcoarment) is the former CTO of Tumblr and the creator of the popular mobile/web application, Instapaper. Continuing on the theme, Marco shared how he started the project as something he was building for himself and did so on train rides during his commute. He was frank and honest about his initial attempts which, in his words, “sucked”. Continuing on, after his first attempt, he created the current version of Instapaper. His first revision of 2.0 was built in a single weeknight as a challenge to himself to see if he could. Although ugly and missing some basic “paperwork” functions, it served its purpose as a way to read links later.

As a project that was built while still at Tumblr, Marco had much advice to offer for those thinking of working on side projects. He suggested not hiding the project from your employer, getting approval, and also getting very explicit clarifications around ownership. While side projects are incredibly rewarding, he also emphasized that “day jobs are great and you get paid more than you think”. But his best piece of advice is applicable to any job:

“Spend time, don’t waste time.”

Closing out the day was Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) from Union Square Ventures (investor in both Tumblr and Twitter). His talk was concise and informative, detailing the 10 Golden Principles in successful web applications:

• Speed
• Instant Utility
• Software is Media
• Make it Personal (Voice)
• Less is More
• Make it Programmable (through APIs)
• RESTful (everything should have its own URL)
• Discoverability
• Clean
• Playful

He then spent some time in Q&A discussing the traits he looks for in entrepreneurs. Amongst them, he sought people who had tenacity, salesmanship, and a passion/fervor for their product. He finds that founders who are good product people with a team of an engineer and a frontend engineer and design hybrid make an incredible team, though the mix may vary. In keeping with the theme, he also mentioned that he tends to avoid founders who are “business people” or, more specifically, those who are chasing the money.

The Demos

Interwoven between some of the talks were early stage demos from small groups and companies. The demos included Goodsie, a site that makes it easy to sell merchandise online. With it, you can create a store in five minutes. Where’s It Up? is an expansion of the initial idea of Down For Everyone Or Just Me, adding location granularity to the information. Moontoast is a “social commerce platform” that allows you to embed your store elsewhere, and consolidate various communities.

Svpply is a product that’s been in private beta for awhile and is like a delicious for products/shopping. Gimme Bar, a scrapbooking tool to easily collect media and content around the web, had many conference participants saying, “gimme my gimme bar!” and Mapalong offered a more personal, open and visual approach to annotating trips, events or even your life.

My Talk

As a major site redesign, the overwhelmingly positive reception of #NewTwitter far exceeded our expectations. This level of success requires a lot of vision, teamwork, talent, passion, and a fair bit of luck. My talk described the process we went through as well as some of the thinking that went behind our decisions. Rather than recap the entire presentation here, I’ll save that story for another time and place.

What Others Are Saying

Finally, some of the other speakers have also written great summaries or linked to their talks:

• Simon Collison: Brilliant Brooklyn Beta
• Fred Wilson: Brooklyn Beta
• David Kaneda: Sencha Touch Workshop

Congratulations once again to Cameron and Chris and other organizers on a great conference!