We asked Darryl Gray, BNZ design consigliere, and founder of Hive, a nifty tool for scheduling projects and people, to interview Webstock speaker and all round awesome dude, Jason Cohen.
Darryl:Your Webstock talk (‘A Geek Sifts Through The Bullshit’) encourages a commonsense approach for startups, rather than following a set doctrine. How and when should entrepreneurs follow the advice of internet darlings such as 37Signals?
Jason: The thing to remember is these doctrines aren’t rules, they’re better named as “styles.” There’s no rules in business any more than there’s rules in art. It’s useful and healthy to explore various styles, figuring out which resonate with you, as you develop your own.
Rather than asking “When should I follow 37signals,” the question should be: “How do I know which of the various bits and bobs (as you say in NZ) from the 37signals blog applies to me?” If you can answer that, you can filter any advice anywhere, and that’s an invaluable life skill. That’s what the talk is about.
Darryl: You coined the notion of the Startup Death Clock (readers: calculate your own death at http://startupdeathclock.com). Tell us about the idea behind it and people’s reaction to it.
Jason: Sweet! I always wanted to coin something, but it’s something you can’t claim to have done yourself, just like you can’t give yourself a cool nickname. (Now I just need a cool nickname.)
The idea came from fear and worry of course. It’s something every founder faces; sometimes great “ideas” are merely articulating what everyone already knows tacitly but isn’t mindful of. It’s the simplest spreadsheet you’ll ever make (unless you use Excel for groceries like my wife does, but then she’s a chef and efficient at such things), and yet it’s a punch in the face. Or a kick in the ass — that sets the momentum better.
I think people loved it because it’s a combination of simplicity (easy to understand, implement) and truth. That’s always popular. The best bloggers already know this… It’s just easier said than done, for all of us.
Darryl: You’ve had all manner of roles in your startups (“salesman, designer, marketer, accountant, and changer of the pellets in the urinals”). Do you think that kind of experience is important for all entrepreneurs?
Jason: Yes, if you’re not the janitor you’ll never understand whether HTML5 is revolutionary or just another goddam thing.
Seriously, it depends on what you make by “experience.” If you mean “You need this experience first in order to be successful,” then absolutely not. I didn’t; most successful entrepreneurs I know didn’t either.
If you mean “You need to be eager for new experiences and willing to jump in on topics you’re uncomfortable and unknowledgable about, rather than saying ‘it’s HIS job’ or blathering on about how you’re ‘wearing so many hats’,” then yes. Get in there. The days of “I’m just a coder” or “I’m just a designer” are over. Not if you’re an entrepreneur.
Darryl: A theme of your blog is encouraging small businesses to ask hard questions of themselves, and give honest answers. Are most startups you meet in denial? (Bonus question: If so, how can they change?)
Jason: Of course, because most people are. Your idea is your baby. It’s tied up in your ego as well as your finances. It’s fine to do lip-service to the idea of being introspective and listing to potential customers, but in my experience few people actually ask the tough questions or change their mind. Human nature.
I’m not sure if you can fundamentally change who you are, but you can consider this: If you’re backing off rooting out the truth, you’re just making it less likely that you’ll succeed aren’t you? And final success — at whatever your venture morphs into — is the thing that will fulfill you, impress others, pump your ego, and whatever else you’re doing this for.
Seek truth and ultimate success, not validation of immediate ideas and notions. Don’t think of it as being wrong, it’s finding something even smarter.
Darryl: Tell us why you encourage small companies to “stop acting like a faceless, humorless, generic, robotic company!”
Jason: Because that’s who we enjoy doing business with, and because it’s one of the few things a small company can do that a large company cannot, and therefore an automatic competitive advantage that’s silly to discard.
Darryl: As you’re about to discover, New Zealand is a long, long way from … well, anywhere. What advantages do Kiwi entrepreneurs (or anyone outside Silicon Valley, for that matter) have when launching a web startup?
Jason: Silly-con Valley is where almost all companies go to die. You just hear about the raging successes because those make good press, but that’s not the usual story. So anyone striving to create a company that actually makes money for making a product people actually want is already, in my book, ahead of northern California.
Advantages in NZ in particular? It won’t be in connectedness, fast turn-around for tech support (for America/Europe), or access to vast capital or lots of employees. So it’s any company that thrives on the opposite: A product that doesn’t need tech support or big investment. A company which isn’t trying to be Facebook, but rather just trying to make a nice living for 1-3 people.
Example: The best on-line training class in CSS3 and SASS, sold for $99. It’s training in itself so you don’t need “tech support,” it’s needed by a million people, it’s useful world-wide, no one cares where the author is located. There’s a hundred other examples.
Darryl:What’s the single most important piece of advice for a fledgling web entrepreneur?
Jason: Success = Tenacity + Luck. Most startups die because the founder loses interest.
Darryl: Your latest company, WP Engine (wpengine.com), provides a fast, secure, and scalable platform for WordPress content. How did the company come about, and what interests you most about this area?
Jason: I needed it myself, then I interviewed 50 people and found that, with a pitch developed as I went along, 30 of them were willing to pay $50/mo if I built it. 20 of those actually did buy after we launched, by the way.
It was easy to recruit people to work for WPEngine, which is another good sign. If you can’t convince people to join in for little to no salary, how do you expect to convince customers or investors?
What interests me personally is the art of optimization. See, after all the writing and marketing and business philosophy crap, I’m still just a geek, and I’ve always liked optimization — making things faster, more scalable, more robust. WordPress needs it, and millions of people want WordPress to be optimized, so in this case personal passion matches (well enough) with market need.
Mike Brown from Webstock interviewed Merlin Mann. Well, not so much an interview as a conversation. Ok, so, not so much a conversation as Merlin talking and Mike valiantly saying ‘yes’ and ‘good’ and ‘cool’ on occasion 🙂
Still, lots of good stuff about Merlin’s workshops and keynote at Webstock; the three desert island albums each would choose; and what it is that Merlin actually does!
Enjoy. And it goes without saying, but we will anyway — we’re really, totally and utterly looking forward to having Merlin at Webstock!
Glenda Sims is a web standards and accessibility evangelist and has long been passionate about these areas. We asked Webstock ’10 speaker, Lisa Herrod, to interview Glenda.
Lisa:Often we only have time and budget to conduct WCAG 2 compliance reviews on a website without user testing. What tools do you typically use for this type of work?
Glenda: My favorite free tools for accessibility testing are the WAVE Firefox Toolbar by WebAim, Vision Australia’s Web Accessibility Toolbar and Deque’s FireEyes. If I only had 2-4 hours to review a site and no budget for accessibility testing software, I would pick a handful or representative pages to test. I would start with the Wave Toolbar for a quick smoke test on the representative pages. Then my habit has been to move to the Vision Australia’s Web Accessibility Toolbar to do quick manual testing on things like CSS, color and structure. My new favorite tool is FireEyes because it is able to pinpoint accessibility errors in reading order, color and javascript, in addition to handling the usual WCAG 2.0 tests that can be done automatically.
Lisa:Sometimes accessibility testing is conducted independently of the web design and development process. Do you have any tips for integrating it throughout the whole process?
Glenda: Bringing accessibility in at the end of a project, after design and development, is a bit like ordering food in a restaurant and not telling the server that you have a severe allergy to onions until they bring your food to the table. There is likely to be rework and a delay in successful delivery. If you simply include the requirement for a site to be WCAG 2.0 compliant in the original project definition, you give the team a chance to design and develop with accessibility in mind. Identify who will conduct the accessibility tests and introduce them to the design/development team before a line of code is written. Encourage the designers/developers to ask the accessibility expert for advice and/or mini-reviews. This will give the team a chance to make minor adjustments throughout the project, rather than flying blindly into a brick wall at the end.
Lisa:How do you respond to web developers and managers who think they don’t have time for accessibility?
Glenda: Actually, I love to work with developers and managers who think accessibility is a waste of time. First I ask them if accessibility testing is less important than quality assurance testing or security testing. I probe until I uncover their internal priorities and concerns about WCAG 2.0 compliance. I imagine I’m in their shoes and I assure them that I want to find the sweet spot where WCAG 2.0 compliance actually makes good business sense to them.
My greatest joy is converting a person from an accessibility resistor to an accessibility advocate.
Lisa:What is your stance on automated versus manual accessibility testing?
Glenda: As important as manual accessibility testing is, I would be lost without automated testing. For the last 10 years I’ve been working at a university with over one million web pages. There was no way on earth we could ever manual test all of our pages. One of my most powerful tools was a regular monthly accessibility scans of our sites. The problem with a manual test, is the results are only good for the moment in time in which the test was conducted. But with automated scans, you have the ability to run massive scans on a regular basis and see when sites begin to degrade.
I’ve always thought of automated testing as my first line of defense that would help me turn my head in the right direction. Once I’m looking in the right direction, then I can make excellent use of the limited time I have to conduct manual testing, or better yet conduct user testing.
Lisa:How have you seen accessibility testing evolve?
Glenda: When I started in the field of accessibility, over a decade ago, the standards were new and testing methods were not always objective. With the release of WCAG 2.0 we’ve benefited from all the knowledge learned over the past ten years, resulting in very clear testing methods. Items that I never thought could be tested automatically are now being tested with no manual intervention (like color contrast). Even more exciting is the progress made in WAI-ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications).
When I see the W3C, Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Opera, Vision Australia and more working together to make dynamic web content accessible, I have no doubts that we are on the road to helping the web and the world reach our full potential.
Thank you both, Glenda and Lisa! And we’re looking forward to seeing you at Webstock.
Peter Sunde is co-founder of The Pirate Bay and Flattr. He is also currently charged with assisting copyright infringement in Sweden. So, who better to interview him than a lawyer! We asked Rick Shera to interview Peter for us. This is the result.
Rick:You are one of the four founders of The Pirate Bay (TPB), bitTorrent site. How did that come about?
Peter: Actually three, not four — the fourth is the owner of the ISP that TPB used for a while, and since he’s considered a rich asshole (both rich and an asshole) the prosecutor wanted him in on the terms of him helping with helping.
It’s a long story 🙂
Anyhow, for me it was many years ago that I noticed a Swedish organisation called Piratbyrån — “the bureau for piracy” — that was saying that we shouldn’t just swallow the things that came from Antipiratbyrån — “the bureau against piracy” — which was published in the news all the time. Piratbyrån was started to shift the focus from moral “right or wrong” to what actually happens when the internet kills off the old models. I was very intrigued and joined them. There was a discussion right then about the new technology — bittorrent — and that there was no Scandinavian place for people. So TPB was started, and the rest is history!
Rick:For those not up to speed with how bitTorrent and the p2p protocol in general operates, can you give a brief overview of how TPB works
Peter: TPB is a seach engine! Not much more, really. TPB helps people find works that other people have told TPB about. When you want to download, you get a small file containing metadata (a .torrent file) which says where to find people that have the actual data, and what to look for. People then share the data between each other. Bittorrent is very effective in the way that you download small segments of the data from everyone that has parts of it. Instead of downloading from 1 place, you can download from thousands of places at the same time. And also, even though you don’t have all of the data yourself, the bits you have can be shared. It’s very effective in terms of speed and distribution.
Rick:TPB has become the poster child for digital anti-copyright activism — what is your copyright philosophy?
Peter: That it’s not at all aligned to peoples usage or believes. Everything was turned upside-down with the digitalisation and decentralisation of the internet, and the only organisations that still benefit from the old model are the ones that are also fighting it with 1B USD per year (own figures). All independent research shows that with file sharing, artists makes more money than ever before. I think that research and reality should be used when one creates laws, not who has the biggest wallet. It becomes a classic fight of the classes for me, and hence I’m interested.
Rick:How can business models and copyright be adapted to cope with a global internet — the best copying engine ever invented and one that does not respect jurisdictional boundaries?
Peter: By making new tools to help financing work, and giving up certain models that will not fit in todays world. You can’t close your eyes to facts really. People have no problem with the money side of content, as long as it’s easy. Today you don’t read one newspaper, you read all of them. If you would actually pay for all of them, the set amount that they all wanted, you’d stop reading all of them. Instead, find a method that is fitting for how people consume and participate in it.
Rick:Your activism with TPB has obviously gotten under the skin of the regulators and that has seen you and your TPB co-founders charged with assisting copyright infringement in Sweden. What stage is the case at and why do you think it was brought?
Peter: We’re waiting for the second appeal, which is at the supreme court of Sweden. After that, there might also be the European Union court, since the case is so important to the whole union.
The reason it was brought is very obvious, but a bit long to write — it’s multiple chapters in my book ;).
Three days after the famous raid, we learned that the White House had pressured Sweden to take action or end up in being trade embargoed like Cuba(!). In Sweden it’s actually illegal for politicians to decide which individual cases the police or prosecutors should prioritise, but they did in ours. There’s been lots of wrong doing in the case, it’s all a big mess.
Rick:TPB has also given rise to a wider political movement. What’s that about and what has been your role in that movement?
Peter: It’s been about the fundamental rights of people, in a modern world. It’s the same as people have been fighting before us, but we don’t recognise it being as important now that we have it. Freedom of speech, expression and assembly. About fair rights, privacy and all that comes with the network.
My role has been to make people understand that there ARE issues and that they should talk about them. I try not to decide for people, rather influence them to take a stance on it. I have not been part of the pirate parties, although I know most of them (especially in Sweden obviously) and I sympathise with their issues. I’m a member of another party that also have the same views at The Pirate Party, but also fight for other things that I see as just as important (particularily animal rights, the environment and equality).
TPB has three founders who are very different when it comes to politics, and all of us have different arguments (from left to right) on why these issues are so important — that’s our big strength, and personally it’s the other two guys weaknesses that they don’t understand how right I AM 🙂
Rick:Your micro-payment system, Flattr, was launched in early 2010. What is it and how has it been going?
Peter: It’s an experiment on how to do exactly what we should do on the internet — share money as we share other information. Very simplified you could call it a facebook Like-button, but with money added to it.
Flattr gives you a wallet that you fill with the amount you can afford to share each month, you decide the amount yourself, between 2-100 EUR. We then calculate how many things you click per month, and share the money equally to the people that created them. A flatrate for flattering!
Rick:What else have you been doing?
Peter: Oh, Lots! I’ve been travelling, speaking and working on Flattr, played music and so on 🙂
Thank you to both Peter and Rick. We’re really looking forward to having Peter at Webstock!
Jason:Looking over the list of speakers at Webstock, you and I kind of stand out. With just a couple exceptions, everyone at Webstock is somehow directly involved in creating and recreating the information infrastructure of the web and the world today… and then you’ve got us — a singer and an accordion player. Why do you think the folks at Webstock are interested in hearing from you/us?
Amanda: You know, I had a really interesting experience about a month ago. I wound up as the ONLY artist at a weird conference-planning meeting for the berkman center, at harvard. There were people from ALL across the music, law and entertainment industry, and some real heavyweights….the presidents of EMI, RIAA, ASCAP and those sorts of business heads. And the meeting was a real eye-opener…it was a reminder that I live in a strange bubble of doing without much strategizing, whereas all these people are actually thinking about WHAT I’m doing. It was strangely unsettling to be in a room where people starting discussing “The Artist”, and what “The Artist” wants…and I was like: “wait…who the fuck are you talking about? I don’t know any artists like that.” But then again, I hang out with a bunch of crazed bohemians like you who are much more interested in connecting with people than they are in being rich and famous. But I think it’s important for content and tools to be represented in equal balance when having discussions about art and the internet…otherwise it’s just a bunch of words and theorizing. And the people of Webstock probably don’t know this, but I also think that you and I are perfect examples of how two very similar artists use the tools differently and hold different levels of conversation off and online. We’re like two sides of the same coin — since we’re both fiercly DIY but I’m a much more compulsive twitterer and blogger, with a need to expose and share, and use a team to do it, whereas you come straight from the source without an online team behind you, but don’t put out as much daily product.
Jason:Are you nervous at all? I’ll confess, I have some fear that I’ll start talking and the audience will rise up, armed with whatever the information technology equivalent of pitchforks is, call me out as an impostor and run me into a volcano.
Amanda: I think the beautiful thing about the HOW TO BE AN ARTIST ONLINE discussion is this: since there no fucking rules, you can’t do it wrong.
Anybody saying “but you should be doing x y and z in your social media realm” is missing the point — you CAN, but you don’t have to. I think these people are actually going to be interested in what we have to say about what we do not from a point of judgement, but in a real brain-picking operation theater. They’ve got so much technology to share with us, and we are the very content so many of them live to distribute. I have the feeling it’s going to be a real treat — I’ve done these sorts of conferences before and they can either be really boring and stale or you can leave feeling like we’re a new generation of love-kings who are armed to change the world. Since the Webstock people seem to be awesome, I’m going to assume this conference will fall into the latter category.
Jason:The line-up is really impressive. Are there any talks you are especially interested in seeing?
Amanda: YES. I kind of want to see EVERYTHING. I’ve been (and we’ve talked about this) very interested lately in the art of balancing out life with connection overload — I’m very keen to see where that conversation fits into the conference. I also HAVE TO SEE MERLIN MANN’S MIME. I mean, come on. Mime. At a web conference. Rad.
Jason:Do you think a career like yours or mine would have been possible twenty years ago, before the Internet, before Youtube, before Twitter?
Amanda: Yes. Don’t you remember xerox machines and flyers?
I think we couldn’t do AS much, AS fast, but you and I were both touring in the days before cell phones, smart phones, and constant email. We just used different tools. We xeroxed. We flyered. We connected with less people, less fast, and less frequently. Would we have made it over to New Zealand? Probably not, but who knows.
Jason:Someone was telling me a 2012 end of the world theory that they are predicting huge solar flares that would likely wipe out all satellites on earth crippling communications. Seems extremely unlikely, but I think I’m a fan. If you could vote for an end of the world, what would you pick?
Amanda: Honestly, I think I’d love the few first days of that, but I wouldn’t want to deal with the fall-out that would inevitable produce mass-mayhem and marshall law.
I’d like us to all explode at once, please. Less messy. BUT I think it would be great if we had a few weeks warning, THEN spontaneous earth combustion. That would be a BAD-ASS couple of weeks.
There would be UNPARALLELED mass suicides and dance parties.
Jason:We’re going to be in Wellington for almost a week. Last time I was there I had only about 36 hours. What should we do? Know any good restaurants?
Amanda: We will be spending the majority of our time on Cuba street. Maybe we should both busk and use our busking experiences as a starting point for our talks.
I tried busking outside the Sydney Opera House the other day, the day before my show there (for almost 2,000 people), and NOBODY stopped to listen. It was such a humbling reminder that people don’t have to love you out of context. But maybe we’ll make enough for beer.
Thank you Amanda and Jason! There is absolutely no need to be nervous. And I think I speak for everyone at Webstock in saying that “yes, we are a new generation of love-kings who are armed to change the world!”
