It’s kind of like the interview question, “What are your weaknesses?”

“Some people say I work too hard.”

Absolutely true.

The mantra, “Tell Your Story,” has been coming up often in both our client work and in my own personal relationships. These are two totally different scenarios, but the effect of keeping quiet about triumphs and failures is the same none-the-less.

Within organizations, an initiative is only as successful as the stories that are told about it. If the initiative is blindly rolled out without any kind of recap of past successes or acknowledgement of failures, someone, probably a hairball, will fill in the blanks.

Think about that. Someone who doesn’t want your initiative to succeed in the first place, filling in the blanks. Not where you want to be at all.

With personal relationships, the longer an amount of time goes by without talking (in real-time), the more awkward it is. This is why status updates and picture sharing on social networks are a good thing, we are each telling our own story one share at a time. Now when we do have those real-time encounters, we have context.

Without the social network we’re back to filling in the blanks about the people in our lives.

The only thing worse than not telling your story, is to stop telling your story once you’ve started. Since most things fail (citation?), most people expect failure. When a story stops, it means the thing must have failed. Which means people are already assuming the worse about you or your initiative. In fact it’s probably better to acknowledge failure, and be open about it, than to act like nothing has happened. At least your story will continue.

This is one of those easy-to-say, hard-to-do, things. At We the Media, it’s definitely not part of our culture to publicly share our story – we’re a bunch of introverted creative types. But in heeding this advice, it’s possible some of the people following us might assume we’re right on the brink of failure.

I’m here to tell you we are not.

We’re just not good at talking about ourselves.

Working on it.

I bring this up because of a necessity for the entrepreneur to hold both of these potential scenarios up and look at them honestly. What does failure look like? If it looks like giving up, then the term, “failure is not an option,” deductively means that giving up is not an option. I can live with that. What does success look like? I have no clue, one building block goes on the next and I don’t have any idea how many building blocks there are. So if I never quit, does that mean success is not an option either?

One might say we’ve had a fair bit of success with We the Media (WTM). It’s made of several building blocks, collectively making a house. But looking around, all I see are large buildings. If we ever become a large building, then all I will probably see are skyscrapers. Thinking this is like looking into the unending mirror vortex.

As I see it today, failure means quitting and success means never quitting, or maybe success is something I will recognize if it happens. Until then, it’s all building blocks over here at WTM.

Ask any good designer, an obsession with perfection and getting something right visually allows for the best results. Ask any good great developer, an obsession with efficient, clean code leads to applications that run faster using less processing power with less bugs.

Make the last 10% of something the best 10%. If something isn’t right, rip it out and redo it. And then redo it again. Obsess with the details, the completion, the experience; all of it. If you don’t think you have something to obsess about, create something; or just stop reading my blog. I hope to only preach to the converted, it makes things much easier on me.

Personally, I’m completely obsessed with building a fence. What does that have to do with the internet or design? Nothing. I really just wanted to post that picture of me working on a fence in the dark – if that’s not obsession, I don’t know what is. And guess what, I re-dug several post holes, re-screwed several 2X4s, and re-cut several boards. All in the name of obsessing over the details. Getting them right gives your work longevity, for every detail you leave behind, it’s a detail you will regret.

Every year, I try to work smarter – in 2010 I hope to be able to just work. It seemed like 2009 was the year of distracting and unwelcome personal stuff. Super stoked for a clean slate, a new decade, and the potential of doing it big in my thirtieth year. I’ve got a great team and great relationships with the folks I work with, excited for what the future holds.

Also noticing a trend in my life towards being more family-oriented. My family has been through a lot this year and it’s done nothing but bring us closer. While the obstacles have been difficult, I am grateful for the bonds we’ve strengthened. And always, I am grateful for the support of D. She battles the world every day and does her part to make it better for every life she touches, so proud of her. I think 2010 will be big for her.

My 2010 Predictions

It wouldn’t be a New Year’s post without some predictions, and in the spirit of keeping it geeky, here are five:

1. Apple will release a big touchscreen device of some sort, my colleagues and I will flock to it. The rest of the world will follow in 2011.
2. Twitter will not sell out to a bigger company (I hope)
3. IE6 will finally join IE5.5 on the lists of browsers we don’t care about.
4. SXSWi will showcase a new digital service that will blow up, just like Twitter in 2006, we’re due.
5. Google will officially become the new Microsoft – tons of services with loosely defined connections and no real direction, will remain insanely profitable.

Mmm, can already smell that claim chowder cookin’. Happy New Year suckas.

Sure, it’s diminishing returns and empty relationships, but that’s not what it’s about! It’s about marketing man! Don’t you get it? The more people that see me participating on the social internet will only conclude know I am good at making money off of the internet. Think of how my social marketing expertise can help your company make dollars! Apply just a little bit of my strategy every day and your boss will be like, “wow, you’re really good at social marketing.” Return the favor, to yourself, and RT my tweet. I’m out.

I’m a huge advocator for the occasional movie day. They provide a chance to be inspired by stories you’ve seen before and new stories that may encourage a different perspective. They cause you to slow down. And, they clear your head of all the other things in life.  My Saturday went like this, woke up to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, then Lethal Weapon, then Avatar (at the theater), then Good Will Hunting when I got home. All very different movies. I’m going to talk about two.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a movie that came out while I was in high school and I don’t think I truly appreciated its brilliance until this last go around. In fact, I don’t think I ever made it through the full movie before. The gross irreverence for the American Dream is entertaining as hell for those of us turned off by certain aspects of American Culture. Too many good scenes in this movie to name and two of my favorite actors in Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro. I carry around Del Toro’s autograph in my wallet from a random run in at a Blazers game. He was not full of fear and loathing, he was just nice.

Avatar however, was a whole different kind of brilliance. It’s may be once in a decade that a movie comes out like this one. It’s easy to pull themes of the movie from everything else that’s been done – and James Cameron was definitely playing with fire with the themes in Avatar. Besides a few cliche moments, he did a damn fine job – it could have been a trainwreck. Visually it’s completely stunning – this is where it changes the game. I had the chance to see it in 3D and would recommend it to anyone. The line that stood out to me was, “they killed their mother.” A stinging statement, but really, compared to the Navi of Pandora, we have lost our connection with our planet. Go see it.

Movie days inspire. They cause you to slow down. They clear your head. Do not feel guilty from a movie day, embrace it. Oh, and go see Avatar in 3D, it’s amazing.

Officially, today, I am done with all of that. For so long, new content added to my blog meant me actually thinking about something compelling, writing it, then having the stones to hit publish. I published roughly three articles in 2009 – that’s terrible, my system is broken.

If I am going to keep up a steady stream of content, it has to be more sharing than writing and things have to get easier for me to update. Blogs that rely solely on the written article can dry up in a hurry if the author is more of a sharer. If I was able to share some of the interesting content I took in and make it more presentable, I would be on to something. Then I realized that’s what tumblr trend was all about! Doh! I’m a slow learner.

My system is broken

First step, make the action of sharing flow from my actions of consuming. I consume media in two places – NetNewsWire (NNW) and Safari. I’ve been a big fan of the delicious integration in NNW since day one – I simply use a bookmarklet in Safari for posting to delicious. My usage of delicious sort of dropped off when I realized I never went back and found anything I bookmarked – or at the least, very rarely. This too will change with my new sharing flow.

There are two types of content I will share frequently – links & videos. I will use delicious to bookmark these items and use the taxonomy I created to only pull the content I want to share, not everything I bookmark at delicious.

Links in themselves are kind of boring, I’ve decided to give my two cents (like many others are doing) about the site being linked to. I have a feeling this will finally make me more important than I really am. It’s easy to accomplish link sharing by using a combination of delicious and the feedwordpress plugin. I simply created a tagging schema (link, publish), added a description, and imported the feed into wordpress. Simple.

Upon figuring out how to pull in links with descriptions, I started toying with the idea of having anything I am sharing imported into the blog this way. Using delicious, feedwordpress, and Viper’s Video Quicktags (awesome name), I now have it set that any vimeo or youtube video I bookmark pulls into the blog stream and looks a certain way.

All other content will be posted on the eleven3 site through the traditional means – log into wordpress and post.

I’m excited to start sharing again.

a roof over my head and sneakers on my feet.

When I first entered the working world, I got a piece of advice that stuck with me and I often quote, “You either do what you love regardless of the pay, or you do a job you may not like that affords you the ability to do what you love outside of work.” While I would like to tell everyone to do the former, just like in 8th grade, not everybody can be Michael Jordan. Most people are forced into the latter and it takes either high-tolerance to cope or a lot of drive to get into doing something you do love.

The “have-tos”

don’t make relaxing your every day.

Imagine if you could pick out what you would be doing with every single second of every day. Now imagine the opposite. These are the have-tos. It doesn’t mean that you dislike what is being asked of you, it’s just not exactly what you would choose given the choice. Today I had to write a proposal, fix some code, finish a presentation deck, and gather tax documents – I don’t dislike any of these things (well maybe the taxes thing, however that’s another story), but given the choice, I’d probably be on the mountain snowboarding. These are requirements in my life that allow me to put a roof over my head and sneakers on my feet.

What is it that you have to do every day? Do you like it?

The “want-tos”

There aren’t a lot of pills more bitter than that one – getting ripped off sucks.

Ask someone what they like to do and the expediency of the answer often says more than the answer itself. Generally speaking, people with passions trend toward “the want-tos,” naturally. Want-tos needs a more definitive explanation. For some, “I want to sit on my ass every day and watch TV” may be a perfectly viable answer. I would argue it’s not. It’s actually sloth, a sin. Being lazy should never be your passion, it will never lead to anything good. I’m not arguing against taking a break in your day to relax and enjoy some form of mindless entertainment – just don’t make relaxing your every day.

The key here is to be doing something that gets you excited and away from the things you have to do. TV is an escape, but it rarely excites, and often depresses. If you feel you do not have any passions – go out and seek new experiences, the world is full of tons of fun stuff. Remember, only the boring really get bored.

The Lucky Ones

Remember the Michael Jordan example from above? Well, there is a higher percentage of people doing what they love for a living than there are Michael Jordans in the world. What you want to do and what you have to do can merge into the same thing. It takes a lot of drive and extra work to make this happen, but in the end, it seems to be more rewarding. However, there are two risks associated with this option.

I wanted to post up on the couch and kill characters in videogames – not good.

Risk #1 – Burning Out – When you like what you are doing, you tend to do a lot of it. I found a passion early on in web development and the internet.  While I think the info addiction will always be there, the web development part I have had points of burnout. Before the ’08 holiday season, I was tired of everything related to what I had to do and what I wanted to do. For the most part I wanted to post up on the couch and kill monsters in videogames – not good. The best thing to do to get away from burning out is to develop another set of passions that become your new “want-tos.” I like to play music, work in my yard, exercise, and snowboard – all of these things help me walk away from my work.

Remember, only the boring really get bored.

Risk #2 – Hating What You Once Loved – Often times there is something extremely contaminating about money – it can turn things dirty. I’ve heard a ton of stories of high school kids doing a little bit of web design and then getting ripped off by the people that hired them. There aren’t a lot of pills more bitter than that one – getting ripped off sucks. Being professional about what you do can stem that tide – don’t agree to doing something that isn’t fair, collect 50% of whatever up front, and always write it down.

Conclusion

While doing what you love or doing what you need to do to enable the ability to do what you love are both good goals – the former, I would argue, is the only true way to find balance for the majority of people. Only the most steady and disciplined can go to work 40 hours a week at a job they dislike and cope with it – the rest of us end up unhappy or resentful.  Take risks, work hard, develop interests away from what you have to do, and always have outlets. It can be done, it just takes perseverance. How do you find balance?

Note Two: Arms out is the ultimate passion power stance.

How to be inspired

Whether someone decides to take a class or start doing their own research, an initial moment of inspiration is necessary to kick start the process. This post was inspired by an email I woke up to from my sister, essentially saying, “I want to become a web designer.” As her brother, nothing could make me happier.

do I really like this?

I would like to know what inspired her moment. From the outside looking in, I can only guess. Part of it was definitely my influence. In thinking about it closer, her and I are a lot alike in our strengths – if I could be happy and enjoy success in this field, then naturally, she could too. Web design is equal parts aesthetics, organization, and desire. Always learning, always creating. These are strengths and values we share as siblings.

What follows is a rundown of how one can get started in the field. Would love to hear people’s own stories in response.

Step #1 – Owning Your Domain

This may seem like a weird first step to some, but nothing is more thrilling than publishing your first html files to your own site. I think I had three iterations of my first domain, geodigi.com, before I ever did any kind of client work. It’s a person’s first digital sandbox to do whatever they want.

nothing could make me happier.

After receiving the email from my sister, I went and purchased her name domain. Upon presenting this news to her, she thanked me – not knowing what it really meant. In time however, she will come to realize, this is the spot where everything started.

Step #2 – Getting Educated

The field of web design is changing so rapidly, one must stay on it continuously to ever develop a strong knack for providing solutions to people (clients/bosses/friends). It’s all a daunting amount of information at first, but once one gets on top of the pile, it’s just a matter of maintenance.

Coursework

While I praised those who come into the field self-taught, it’s not the only avenue to becoming a web designer – you can take courses. There are pros & cons to doing coursework.

To illustrate my point, my sister decided to enroll in a collegiate level course on the beginnings of HTML & CSS – which in theory, should give her a well-rounded view of the building blocks of the web. Before we sat down and had a screen-sharing session, she was painfully wading through the first few homework assignments. Doubt began creeping into her mind; do I really like this?

We are a passionate bunch

When I finally sat down and looked at what she was doing (she is working on building website for her soon-to-be wedding, college coursework applied to a real life need, smart) she seemed frustrated and kind of bummed out. When I looked at the code, it quickly became obvious the true culprit of her frustrations was the course itself. She was learning late-nineties web development from a lady who obviously doesn’t know what-is-what in the world of web design – this is a common problem in web design courses.

After two short sessions with me showing her how HTML & CSS played together, it clicked. Today she described the process of building her website, “addicting.” How fucking cool is that?

Self-Taught

Google is your friend.

In breaking out self-teaching into its own section, I do it injustice. It really is the catalyst to becoming a professional. If one isn’t willing to put in the hours teaching themselves, then they truly aren’t inspired. You don’t meet a lot of people in the field that gloomily say, “I’m a web designer.” We are a passionate bunch, and in a competitive world, passion is necessary to get ahead. In other words, you should be self-teaching in addition to coursework.

There are so many top ten lists for, “web designer resources,” that one only needs to simply Google it – and oh yea, Google is your friend. “Look it up dear,” is finally the answer to every question.

We are also big fans of Lynda at We the Media.

Step #3 – Get to know your peers

When was the last time you saw a post about, “How to become a shoe designer,” or, “How to become an investment banker?” Ok, there are some out there, but no profession likes to talk about itself like those involved in web design – we are a truly narcissistic industry (I mean that in an endearing way). There is probably a 10-1 ratio of useful web design blogs over just about anything else – it’s our playground, perhaps it’s because we had a head start.

It’s important to find your heroes

As a first step to getting to know your peers, it’s important to seek out those who inspire. Look through some CSS Galleries and identify the designers that really do it for you.

One of the first for me, and I’ve probably mentioned this before, was Jonathan Hicks.  One of his previous sites resonated heavily with me – I pretty much ripped him off on the first version of this site (before I began sort of blogging). It’s important to find your heroes, and with a little bit of internet stalking you can quickly find what they’re into and what they’re not. Follow them on Twitter, subscribe to their blogs, obsessively check their portfolios – do what it takes. Emulate. Emulate. Emulate.

It’s also important to reach out to your local communities – there are always meetups going on, I think here in Portland we are averaging three events a night or something. I wish I could attend more, but sometimes the work gets in the way – you tend to do a lot of what you love.

Conclusion

True criticism is what you should seek.

Becoming a web designer is a path full of triumphs and frustrations - the most important thing to remember is to keep plugging away, solutions always present themselves. Don’t plan on becoming a web designer overnight, it’s a long process. I didn’t start calling myself a web designer till a good web designer stopped beginning critiques with, “you’re straddling the line between mediocre and really really awful.” True criticism is what you should seek.

Please share your stories – I would love to hear them.

So how does the, “duck & cover,” strategy fit into my bigger broader strategy of doing great work on the web? It doesn’t – it just means that I’m scared. I’ve started countless entries only to have them peter out into random generalizations. None of them have been post worthy, not one. If I’m going to write something, it better be good, or else what’s the point?  The web is already so full of noise.

Truthfully, I’ve been busy.  We the Media is working on some amazing stuff that will be unveiled over the next few months.  We also have new additions to our team which helps us fill out our service offering a little more. I’m learning a ton about process development and motivation. Oh and I am a husband now as well, that took up a lot of time – the following picture by an excellent Portland based photographer, Boone Rodriguez.

This site started as a place to share my thoughts and my work. Increasingly, I’ve been privatizing my thoughts and doing less of the nuts & bolts of web design. That leaves me with tales of management and process – so, I choose to “duck & cover” because I am too chicken to write my thoughts, or too private. Haven’t figured out which.

I’ll try to be better – fielding post topics in the comments.  It has come to this.

Thanks to Mr. Boyd for calling me out.