On flow and fingernails

My friend, co-radarite, and parallel entrepreneur Marc Hedlund recently remarked on the speed at which one's fingernails, beard, and hair grows when entrepreneuring—and this coming from a man with a distinct lack of tonsorial endownment.

Marc was, in effect, calling out items 3 and 4 on Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's list of the 8 components of flow:

3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.

4. Distorted sense of time - our subjective experience of time is altered.

I've spent the past couple of days in a flow state of my own, kicked off by quite an epiphany regarding our work on our first product and subsequent brainstorming session with the inimitable Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. (Kathy's "Passionate User" sessions are legendary and she was in top form at last weekend's Foo Camp 06, wherein she spent some time on the flow state: or "kicking ass," as she puts it.

And so it was with a chuckle that I shut my laptop at the end of a two-day coding stint and thought, "Geez, didn't I just clip my fingernails?"

Of Xserves, iSights, iChats, MacBooks, Slivrs, Razrs, and other oddly-spelled bits

Our Xserve arrived... with an (unofficial) genius included.

We racked our shiny new Xserve (replete with new OS X smell) this morning in preparation for our wider-spread alpha. Aside from the usual array of sharp metal edges, more screws than strictly necessary, and well-written manuals (useful when you relent and read them), our morning rackathon included the assistance of my friend and now-co-colo neighbor, James Duncan Davidson. Yet far from settling in together for a fridgid morning install, the fates (read: Apple/Fedex) conspired to have Duncan over yonder in Santa Clara, California, and me here, xServe in hand, in Portland. What to do?

Bring there here, of course.

Thanks to an array of devices, software, and the internets, we transferred Duncan bit by bit to Portland and got to work. The MacBook Pro's built-in iSight brought us his sight. A Motorola Slivr his speech and hearing. And iChat playing an impressive role as touch in the form of a remote command bucket-brigade between he, myself, trusty sidekick Aaron Huslage, and the server (disconnected at that time).

Of course we could have gone it alone. But why?

(Ironically enough, while Duncan and I and others often make use of one-another as remote googler, mapper, or yelper—a cellphone is quite possibly the most RESTful technology on the market—even we didn't think to put local screwdriver, remote assistance, and technology together until we'd exhausted various other potential solutions.)

Platial blogs places

Speaking of sausage-making, I've been privy to the goings-on behind Platial's big push to release a little something they call Place Blogging. Place blogging struck me as akin to those bed-and-breakfast or museum guest-books you dutifully sign (and later gleefully page through for your own name). As Stewart Brand wrote so eloquently about in How Buildings Learn, place is as much about time and occupancy as about space.

When one thinks about places that are as much about the passing of time and passing through of people, just about any American who has chanced to live on or visit the east coast will cite Yankee Stadium (or Fenway, no doubt with little overlap). How fitting, then, that Di-Ann and crew have chosen soon-to-be-torn-down Yankee Stadium as exemplar of place blogging.

(And, yes, there's a little something on Fenway too.)

Actual lessons from Kiko

Kiko, "yet another" Web 2.0 calendar app, has been put up for auction on eBay. Hmm... Interesting exit strategy. But it was the candid blog post by Kiko co-founder Justin Kan on actual lessons learned from his first startup that I spent some time with.

In fact—and this is no shocker given what I've been doing—as I look at the most-read blogs in my subscription list, a large percentage of them of late are "about this app" or "about us" blogs: chronicles of sausage-making from cow concept to grill that's usually one part sausage-making mechanics and two parts how sausage-makers feel about the whole experience. (And there are times that the sausage is having the better time of it.) It seems the next generation of "howdunnits" the likes of The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company and Revolution in the Valley are being written from the inside out, before and during the fact. How interesting to start with the supposition that this, what we're doing right now, will be great enough to have been chronicled. C.f. Justin's first blog entry and his parting shot: "P.S. We're looking for good hackers."

Of course all young startups read (or should read) the likes of Guy Kawasaki and Paul Graham for inspired startup how-tos, Seth Godin for a dose of gumption, and a couple-three of those howdunnits of yesteryear (hit-and-miss).

But I find it at least as useful—and so much more exciting—to jump right in there with them and make the assumption that these startups are indeed destined for greatness: whether great products, personal accomplishment, or at least a chance to fail interestingly. And I presume that at least some small percentage of them will be contributors to the startup anthology c. 2001-2010 that I would read were it one-click away on Amazon.com.

These folks are interesting people, brilliant programmers, and the first passionate users of their own products. There's a lot there to learn from. And the virtual presence of familiar strangers ain't shabby either.

As an aside, the book that tipped me over to the entrepreneurial side initially back in 1994 was Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan. Ironically (or perhaps fatefully) one of the early sausage makers at Go turned out to be of great help as I set out on my current adventure.

Values of n HQ

Values of n HQ
(originally uploaded by elbow donkey)

Values of n currently occupies a cozy corner of the Platial offices in Portland's beautiful, vibrant Pearl District (here's a little background on the Pearl). My roomies at Platial—introduced through a thread of mutual-acquaintances—were kind enough to welcome myself and a cluster of peeps into their midst and that, as they say, was the start of a beautiful friendship.

A shout-out to the Platial peeps: they're an incredible group of talented, dedicated, and fun-loving people whose door is always open to fellow geek (or geek-tolerant) travelers coming through Portland.

The photo you see (taken by Michael Buffington—don't miss his ideas on compression molding and depth sorting) is yours truly in my Les Nessman-like office, banging fast and furious at some snippet of code or other.

[This, incidentally, is probably the last photograph you'll see of me scowling (not so much as squinting, really) at my laptop (here's another—seems it was a trend). Turns out there was a reason things were fuzzy, leading to the appearance I had a severe dislike for my trusty Powerbook. But I digress.]

Entrepreneurially yours

After six of the most enjoyable, educational, and rewarding years at O'Reilly, I took a plunge (admittedly in the shallow end at first) and went half-time as CTO last November to pursue one of those ideas that just wouldn't leave me alone.

That idea has since blossomed into an application, dubbed Stikkit, and fledgling company, Values of n. And so it's time now to give the idea (and application edging toward product-hood) all the attention it deserves.

Currently in an initial closed alpha (pending hardware and a couple-three more tweaks), Stikkit will shortly be in alpha proper. Please do sign up to be notified when things are ready to be opened up.

I'll be writing more about the ideas behind and philosophy of Stikkit, our approach to building the application, some of the experience of raising a company (thus far the most fun I've ever had working my tuchus off), and other bits and bobs here as we go along. Play along at home if you're so inclined (and drop us a line if you're interested in actually playing along at Values of n.

(My original Entrepreneurially yours post is on the O'Reilly Radar.)