I Blame Beer

Although in this case, i blame Bourbon.

I know exactly what the devious minds behind Taladega Nights were thinking when they came up with that idea. They were thinking, let’s take all those uppity blue-state intellectuals and make them watch NASCAR and enjoy it! And while we’re at it, let’s make those so called liberals laugh at themselves as well. Well, it worked on this jaded asshole, apart from a few moments when the movie’s dragging on a bit, I was laughing so hard I farted. And I’ll tell you what else: if you hate Taladega Nights, you hate America! Well, maybe not, but you’re probably taking yourself way too seriously.

Official limbo rating: worth a matinee.

It’s a nice sunny day out which is why I’m inside, hiding. Well, doing the best I can at least. The power sockets at Café du Soleil are all right next to the big glass windows facing the street and the horrible sunshine that comes with it. Speaking of sunshine, that’s what I’m drinking too. I bet that when New Belgium decided on a name for their wheat beer they figured it’d be really funny to have people come up to the bar and “a pint of Sunshine, please.” You gotta admit, it’s somewhat amusing.

Wheat beer with extra lemon (and a twist, I gotta have some bitterness) on a sunny day. I could grow to like this combo. It might just make those occasional summer days in San Francisco almost bearable.

Hanging out in Portland with my new friends Tom and Victoria on the front porch of their apartment building. It really seems like the thing to do here in Portland, this Front Porch. Your friends and neighbors walking by, saying hello, drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, blogging (well that’s just me, I guess)… you know. So naturally I started thinking about creating this same concept online. And not in some fancy 3D world, mind you, good old fashioned interweb front porch. We’ll find some way to do it… probly just an open chat window in some community type environment. *shrug*

So it’s still under active development and definitely not ready for public consumption by a long shot but at least i have a name and a domain. See details here and here. Ping me if you want in.

Posted to Dis.Cussion discussion.

Ha! Ryan beat me to it.

Yep, sitting at 21A, sipping on my pint of North Star Red (a bit too sour, coulda been better, coulda been hoppier). There’s wifi, there’s power and (of course) there’s beer. Who needs coffee shops?

Some notes from a talk by Thane Plambeck at USF on April 4th, 2006.

* Don’t look for good ideas. Look for good people and good problems instead.
* Start the company with a partner.
* One person will be the technical wizard, the other is the master salesman.

Create a California S Corporation
Split stock 50/50
Make sure both partners are fully commited.

Plan for 18-24 moths with no income.
An office can make the company and its progress seem real (are people visiting us? do we have more people working? etc.)

How to find a problem?
Based on your area of expertise and contacts. Must be interesting to you.
* Inside knowledge
* High pain levels caused by lack of appropriate tools.
* Paradoxical situations (sell to X what X is selling to others)

Bad problems:
* Vague.
* No one will pay
* Can’t say who will pay
* Technobabble
* Problems that everyone is trying to solve

Bootstrapping
* Be a sociable prospector. Get to know people, ask questions, listen, try to understand.
* Bootstrap via IP (consulting while you own the IP or at least rights to resell, keep right to use customer’s name)
* How to know you’re on the right track?
* You have a customer, a contract and a dealine to deliver a solution.
–> You’re making money
* Focus - You can say exactly what you are doing.
* The tech wizard is busy coding, the sales person is busy selling that.

What’s the market?
* Don’t five stuff away for free - you don’t know who your customers are.
* Sell high-cost software
* A market of one is enough to succeed in the long term (where there is one, there are more)

* Get used to people saying you’re wrong.

The end
* Dont hope to sell your company until you have a profitable, growing company.
* Dont bring up selling the company yourself but be open to discussions.
* Dont sell yourself short.

OMG^3 or OMG3 is a perfect candidate for I Blame Beer. It’s a crazy project that’s only ever been discussed over beers (or other alcoholic beverages). I should write about it sometime but for now, the main idea is a automatic drama tracker. Tracking the levels and the specifics of drama and drama inducing events in the lives of those around you.

tblee has some interesting articles about philosohpy and design posted on the w3c site. Definitely makes for some good reading.

• Principles of design - You’re probably already aware of most of these but the Test of Independent Invention definitely deserves some thought.
• The World Wide Web and the “Web of Life” - About the parallels between the philosophies behind Web design and the Unitarian Universalist church.
• Evolvability - How to design for evolvability and interoperability.