This Skin We're In by Dale Beermann

Leadership, sans Followers

"You don't have to lead a team to be a leader."  This was a quote I heard during an event that I was helping organize for the local young professional organization.  It made me realize that I have been taking advantage of opportunities that I didn't even realize were opportunities.

I'm not sure that I'd be a great, or even a good manager.  I interact really well with people but that doesn't mean that I can lead a large team effectively.  Maybe I would, but I've never been given the chance.  However, the opportunities that I have been given have been of a slightly different nature.

I'm a technical person; my background is in computer science.  I went to grad school because I wasn't satisfied with a mediocre job at a random company.  I wanted something better so I went to study computer graphics.  My first job out of grad school was in medical imaging.  But that didn't limit me to focusing on that particular area during my employment.

What I think really differentiated me from a lot of people I've worked with is the desire to take on the hardest possible projects you can find.  I'll never forget one particular release when we were going through crunch time.  Sales had promised a few hospitals that we would be able to reduce our launch times for reviewing studies.  Had the project not been successful, the company wouldn't have been able to realize its quarterly revenue, shortly its IPO.

When you add up experiences like this you build a reputation for yourself for being reliable and hard working.  The effect won't be immediately apparent, but will definitely be lasting.  In all honesty, there is so much mediocrity out there that people who rise above it rise well above it, casting a shadow over their peers.

I can say this because I haven't searched for a job since grad school.  A job fell into my lap after eighteen months doing medical imaging.  Six months after that I was approached to start Sharendipity.  Now, having left Sharendipity I'm presented with another eye-opening situation.  I applied for one job, at a company a friend works for.  I've also had four other opportunities pop up as people hear that I'm moving on.  My goal is to start another company, but it's a pretty good feeling knowing that something else is out there.

This is the result of five years of busting my ass, trying to make a name for myself.  The people who float by in their jobs will never have these types of opportunities because they'll never get recognized.  There have been so many discussions about Gen-Y and their lack of work ethic or feelings of entitlement.  I don't buy it.  I'm surrounding by twentysomethings who are some of the hardest working people I've ever met.  And you know what, if it is the case that there is a generational lack of motivation, then good luck to those of you who are out there busting your ass because it's just that much better an opportunity.

Building your own Gaming Company: an Interview with Muse Games

This is a guest post by Bukola Ekundayo, a.k.a. Ms. Pixel.  Bukola is an independent marketing consultant specializing in social media and digital and brand management consulting and a contributing writer to SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate (Voices That Matter).  She's also an avid gamer, and Ms. Pixel and I share a close interest in gaming startups.

Muse Games is a small startup in New York creating web-based 3D games.  They were kind enough to do an interview with Ms. Pixel to be posted here. 

Ms. Pixel: Tell me the story of Muse games

Muse Games: We started two years ago with a focus on making great 3D games. We've spent the last couple of years trying to build a good open platform to do whatever we want with the games themselves.

Now we're getting into developing great games. Our next game, Elementia (which will be released in a month and a half) will be our first game release since our launch last month.

Ms. Pixel: What were the most challenging aspect of getting the company off the ground?

Muse Games: Time and Manpower. The sheer amount of time it takes to develop a gaming platform with a small team. Its just been a massive time crunch.

Ms. Pixel: What would you say is the biggest part of your success?

Muse Games: We've been very fotunate to have an incredibly talented team. All of us have things that things that we are really good at. And we're proud of the design and functionality of the games so far.

Ms. Pixel: You host one of the most popular gaming events in the city. And you've just launched your new gaming site. What's next for your team? What kind of new projects are on the horizon?

Muse Games: We have a lot of big ideas including web features which will be coming out at a fast rate. We'll also begin rolling out of our monetization ideas. But our core focus has always been about making high quality games.

Ms. Pixel: Why did you decide to build your games for Unity rather than Flash?

Muse Games: Flash, by its very nature, is limiting in what you can achieve. For instance, running a 3d game in a flash environment will only yield a camera view that is stationary. If you try to move the angle around the room. It won't happen. Unity allows us to design games that overcome this limitation.

Our game, Extreme Sledding,would never work in Flash. It doesn't matter how much money or manpower you have.

10 years ago everyone knew that video in the browser was inevitable. We believe that in another few years Unity will be the standard in browsers as well because it is by far the best player. In time we
believe it will become an accepted standard. In fact, we're betting the company on it. But we're aware that its definitely something that they will have to overcome.

If the games are good enough people will download it. For example, Quake Live - developed their own player plug-in.

Ms. Pixel: Advice for entrepreneurs who want to pursue gaming?

Muse Games: We're all pretty young here. It is not a given that you have to join someone else's company. You can look to join a small entrepreneurial company. For some reason a lot of people don't consider that option.

Be sure to follow @musegames and @BukolaE on Twitter.

Understanding an Entrepreneur's Passion

I've written before about what I believe it means to be an entrepreneur. To me, it's a desire to innovate and grow. It's also a desire to avoid failure.

This isn't to be confused with having a fear of failure.   Most people will never get out on their own and start a company if they're hampered by a fear of failure. Rather, those that do start their own companies do everything in their power to keep them running.

Recently, the story of StumbleUpon made me think about this again. StumbleUpon was bought back by its original founders, with some help from a few new investors. There is a follow-up post that expands a bit on the potential reasons the founders bought it back as well. I think that their job wasn't quite done and they couldn't see a product with huge potential fail without another push.

Something similar happened here in Madison a few years ago, with the buy-back of Guild.com. The more you poke around, the more you find other stories that follow the same trend. Some might say that the founders saw an opportunity for easy money when they bought the company back.  I don't believe that entrepreneurs think this way.

You might guess that the resources of a company such as eBay might increase StumbleUpon's chances for success.  The second TechCrunch story talks about efficient allocation of resources. I find it hard to believe that StumbleUpon was hampered so much by the bureaucracy of eBay. Yet, eBay has a history of similar moves, such as the monumental overpayment for Skype.

Personally, I see is a sale to a company that didn't understand how they could best use the product and the acknowledgment on the part of the founders that their baby was dying. They knew how it could be improved and its growth could continue and wanted to make sure the effort was made to realize their original vision.  What do you think?

On MsPixel.com: Coming of Age in the Gaming Industry

I wrote a little guest post over at MsPixel.com.  I don't write much about the gaming industry so this was a great outlet for me to talk about something that's been running around in my head lately.  Please head on over and check it out.  Here's a little tidbit:

"At the pop culture family gathering the gaming industry sits at the kids’ table.  In order for gaming to grow up and prepare its own plate of food, the industry needs to be criticized in the same way as music, movies, and television. "

Read the rest...

Your Blog's True Identity

If you haven't played around with Wordle, go now.  And then come back.

The image above is a word cloud of text from my RSS feed.  There are a lot of things that you can learn from a visualization like this, so let's break mine down:

Category Analysis

It's easy to see that I write about entrepreneurship. I've done a decent job of staying on topic but I can also see the other themes that I talk about: blogging, careers; education; and writing.  If you have categories on your blog this can help you better determine what they should be.  In my case, the categories don't match the content too often and I'll probably update them as a result.

What I didn't realize about my content was that I write about blogging more than I thought.  I'm fine with that but I don't market my blog that way.  Maybe I'll cut down some of these types of posts, I don't know.

SEO Optimization

From an SEO perspective the word cloud helps me understand how my posts are affecting my blog's search engine ranking.  I can see that "entrepreneur" doesn't show up as much as a lot of other words, yet it's in the description of my blog.  I was surprised by this.  It isn't awful but I will probably work on using it more in my titles or headers.  If the terms are coming up in places that I didn't expect I might want to work on this as well.  It's good to concentrate your core keywords in titles, headers, and links as search engines mark those types of fields as more important than normal body text.

Becoming a Better Writer

In many ways the word cloud above is also embarrassing.  I'm not a trained writer but I don't think that I'm a bad one.  The fact that the the word "really" shows up prominently is disheartening.  I think that my biggest issue as a writer is using adverbs throughout my material.  It makes the content fluffy (!) and there are betters ways of getting your point across.  There are other words that I'm not fond of seeing either: "though," "lot," "like," and "just."  I can do better than that.  Unfortunately I now have to make up for the content that I've added as a result of this post.

The Blogger Beware

The word cloud is based solely on frequency and lacks context whatsoever (and it's case-sensitive).  While "blogging" shows up more than I thought I would would have to look over my posts to see how exactly I'm using it and whether or not I should fix it.  These tips are sweeping generalizations so think about it before you rip your blog apart.

A Challenge to the Reader

My original title for this post was "What your blog is really about."  I would love to hear other suggestions for good titles for this post.  Please leave yours in the comments.

Entrepreneurship Should Be a Requirement in Education, Not a Reason to Drop Out

Image by Image Zen

I'm growing more and more disturbed about some of the articles that I've seen denouncing a post-secondary education in light of starting your own company. The one that started it was an article about the great college hoax.

It's true that a university education isn't worth it for a lot of people. I wouldn't want to start in on a career in social work with $80K or more in debt. This doesn't mean that going to college doesn't provide value to most people. State schools and community or technical colleges are are going to be a perfect fit for some. They're cheaper alternatives that provide many of the same benefits I'll mention later in this post.

Read the rest at PropelWI.com.

A New Look, and a Little History

I still haven't found a look for the blog that I'm truly happy with.  I've updated the header with the most recent iteration, it fits a bit better than the abstract design I had up before.  The biggest problem has been the lack of a descriptive image and tagline so hopefully this helps. 

I've also been playing around with a two-column format.  I don't really care for the cramped columns on the right but haven't been able to determine the right content to put there.  TypePad doesn't give you all the options I'd like either, such as a Popular Posts widget.  Anyway, let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

I've also had a few questions about the name of the blog, "This Skin We're In."  It's from a Blind Melon song about Ed Gein called "skinned."  As creepy as it is, there are a few lines that have always struck me:

"When will I realize that this skin I'm in
Hey, it isn't mine"

Just about every other line is disturbing as hell.  In any case, taken out of context I love the lyrics.  Entrepreneurship is really similar.  A lot of people people have very different thoughts about what it means to be an entrepreneur, and that's what I've started to focus on with the blog.

And yes, I just compared entrepreneurship to a psychotic murderer.

My Favorite Posts From the Last 6 Months

I realized a little while ago that I've been blogging, in some form or another, for about three years now.  This blog is just a small part of that, but I think that most of my best content has ended up here.

The blog has turned into a mix of writing about entrepreneurship and social media, for the most part.  I've had some interesting experiences, both as an entrepreneur myself and as the co-chair of an entrepreneurial committee for young professionals (still the only one of its kind that I know of), and most recently, in founding a non-profit for entrepreneurs.

This page post will be a rolling account of some of my favorite posts in those topics, so check back every so often to see what's here.

Entrepreneurship

1. Why the Term "Serial Entrepreneur" Makes Me Want to Vomit 2. Entrepreneur or Small Business Owner? Does it matter? 3. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: 9 Ways to Create New Opportunities

Social Media

1. What [Insert Primary Keyword Here] Taught Me About [Insert Secondary Keyword Here] 2. Social Media: Leveraging the Conversation

What's interesting about blogging is that your favorite posts are very rarely your readers' favorite posts. In addition, your readers favorite posts are very rarely your most commented on. If you have others that you like, please let me know.

What [Insert Primary Keyword Here] Taught Me About [Insert Secondary Keyword Here]

I really like blogging.  Mostly because I really like writing.  Two of my favorite classes in college were English and Modern Literature, yet somehow I ended up being a Computer Science major.  I still remember writing a paper about the literacy of the Simpsons.  I couldn't tell you a whole lot about most of the programs I wrote.

What I really love about blogging though are the things that I learn along the way.  The title of this post reflects that feeling.  It was actually a title I wrote because I got so sick of all of the "What Obama's Innauguration Speech Taught Me about Puppies" posts.  In fact, this was the second title I chose for the post.  At first it was "Why I Didn't Write Your Stupid Obama Post."  Then I realized that you can't really write an Obama post about how you don't like the way people use Obama posts to drive traffic.  I also think I'm a pretty nice person and I don't want to turn into someone who hides behind the thin veil of the internet.

In addition to the titles, I wrote up two complete posts to go with them before I wrote this one.  The first one was just a rant.  After the Obama post, I wrote one about how to write headlines.  I can't stand headlines that fit into the template defined by the title above and I wanted to try to give some advice.  I even did a bunch of research and had links to Copyblogger and ProBlogger.  But then I realized that I don't really want to write about blogging.  There are a lot of people that do that much better than I will ever be able to.

This is post number three, under the exact same title.  The title could have been "What Blogging Taught Me About Me," or something along those lines.  But that title sucks and I like to try to be witty (I usually fail). 

More importantly, this post is really about the whole process of blogging.  Everything I write about teaches me something along the way, whether it's through my own reflection or the conversations I help create.

My friend wrote a really good e-book about why students should be blogging.  Career wise, I agree with everything he has to say.  In addition, I think that it should be part of every liberal arts education (at UW-Madison, Comp. Sci. is in the College of Letters & Science.  Maybe that's why I made it through).  Obviously, because it "develops the student’s ratiocination and intellectual capabilities."

I've been telling a lot of people that they should start blogging recently, generally citing career prospects.  Your experiences as a blogger are worth just as much though, albeit in a slightly less tangible way.  So go start blogging and see what you find out about yourself.

Ning and Non-Profits: A Match Made in the Cloud

Image via CrunchBase

Yesterday, we announced that we were launching the website for a new non-profit, Propel Wisconsin Innovation.  I developed the site myself, but what really impressed me was the ease with which I was able to do it and the amazing value that Ning brings to the table, especially for a non-profit.

Features

Ning provides out-of-the-box social networks complete with member registration and profiles, blogs, RSS feeds, forums, events, groups, photos, videos, music, chat, and activity feeds.  As far as look and feel, different themes can be selected and customized fairly easily.  There is also an additional layer of customization in defining styles via CSS.  I did have to use this a bit more than I hoped, but with a bit of CSS knowledge it wasn't too bad.

HTML can be used to layout information in text boxes which can be dragged and dropped just like any other item.  Ning is also part of Open Social, letting you integrate third party widgets such as news feeds, sports scores, or just about anything.  If you require functionality that isn't available, it can almost certainly be implemented via an Open Social app or widget.

Cost

We use three premium services, for a total of $55 a month.  The services allow us to use our own domain name and remove the ads and promotional links to Ning.  To someone unfamiliar with Ning, we look very much like a home-grown site.  And had we been, there's a really good chance it would have cost us $5K-$10K to have all of this built and integrated, even with existing products such as phpBB.  With that kind of budget, we can host the site for well over 10 years at Ning's current price.

The only other costs associated with creating the site were the domain registration ($7.50 a year at GoDaddy) and the image for the header (~$15 at iStockPhoto).  I did already have copies of Photoshop and Illustrator so I'm not factoring that in.  Also, we're only using email forwarding for now.  GoDaddy provides email services at less that $2 a month so it's pretty minimal to run an entire website without having to host it yourself.

Benefits

The cost itself is an obvious benefit.  However, the fact that a non-profit can operate autonomously, sans web and email server, is a huge win.  You also get a lot of support with your products.  GoDaddy and Ning both have their own support but you have a large community of developers behind you as well.  In addition, the site itself will be fairly easy to maintain and because it's hosted with Ning your uptime is going to be fantastic.

What's Missing

It's pretty easy to add new pages in Ning but there is a lack of any sort of content management system.  The place where this really makes a difference is on the homepage where you have custom text boxes.  Removing them deletes the content permanently.  This could be achieved with some data export tools, which Ning should have anyway to pull data out of the forums.

Another feature that I'd like to see is the ability to create default user profiles.  The user profile is defined by the theme, but I'd like to be able to add widgets by default and rearrange things.  As far as I'm aware, this isn't possible.

The text boxes could also use some better visual formatting tools.  Having to write out HTML tables is a pain.  Lastly, Ning really needs to implement two-column themes (you can do it via CSS, but it's a hack).  All in all though, Ning did what I wanted it to.

Alternatives

There are a few options out there for doing some of this in different ways.  Change.org provides a lot of the same features listed above and is targetd at non-profits.  It doesn't seem that there's support for hosting it on your own domain though.  Wild Apricot has its own membership software and website creator.  It's prices are comparable to Ning and there seem to be more options for page layouts but I haven't used it

If you went the open source route, you could take a look at Drupal and Wordpress, but now you'll probably have to host it yourself, and you're losing a lot of the benefit that the white-label social networks give you.  More importantly, you need a developer, which might not be in the cards for a non-profit.

The Bottom Line

I've been doing website development off and on for about 10 years now.  I'm sure this means that I'm a bit more able to put a site like this together than most people but I can also tell you that I've been recommending Ning to everyone recently.  It took me two days to design and build a site that would have taken at least a month otherwise, probably wouldn't have looked as nice, and would have had a ton of bugs.  If you're thinking about creating a website for a non-profit, go check out http://www.propelwi.com and you can see the results yourself.