DeMo Des Moines — February Edition

DeMo Des Moines returns to Startup City Des Moines on Tuesday, February 21 at 4pm.

Not clear on what DeMo is? Check out the recap from January’s event.

You don’t have to register to attend or present, but a heads-up is always appreciated. Hope to see you there.

My BarCamp Cedar Valley Recap

My wife and I road-tripped to the UNI Campus in Cedar Falls this past weekend for BarCamp Cedar Valley. I really enjoyed myself. The audience was my favorite part — there were a lot of energetic, open-minded, and educated people asking good questions and enhancing every presentation with their participation.

Structurally, the event was nearly identical to the Des Moines BarCamp I attended in December. Three tracks (techies, creatives, entrepreneurs), seven speaking slots per track, and only a few spots were left untaken by the end of the day.

Emboldened by my DSM BarCamp experience I marched straight in and was the first sign-up of the day, snagging a 10am slot in the creatives track. I labeled my talk “Getting Started with Markdown”. It was essentially a live demonstration of my writing set-up on OSX using the Markdown text-to-HTML conversion tool in TextMate, with Marked for previewing. It seemed to go over well, and based on discussion throughout the day and on Twitter, I know I convinced at least a few writers in the audience to give Markdown a try.

I put my name down again later in the day for the final speaking spot in the entrepreneurs track. I called it “Don’t Be Sheepish About Your Job Search”. I talked about how I used social tools like Twitter and Storify to share my own job search story and generate leads. Reflecting on what I shared, a better title might have been “Job Hunting for Introverts”.

I felt better about my Markdown presentation than the job search presentation. It was a better fit for the track, and the crowd was larger and more energetic in the AM. I’m still glad I did both, and love how the BarCamp unconference model allows an opportunity to try out new stuff without much pressure.

Cat snagged a mid-day spot in the creatives track as well. She presented “Blogging 201” and shared tips, tricks, and tools she’s learned from being the Managing Editor of Offbeat Home.

I bounced between all three tracks throughout the day. Thoughts from a group conversation about diversity in technology and a presentation about networking and relationship building as a consultant are still bouncing around in my head after the fact.

I stole a little time from our busy weekend to buzz through Cedar Falls’ downtown area before heading home. Wow. It was a remarkably lively area on a late Saturday afternoon. Very cool-looking shops and restaurants. I was particularly impressed with the visual aesthetic of the downtown — nearly every shop, sign, building, and storefront was beautifully designed. I hope to get a chance to visit again with more time to explore the area.

All in all, BarCamp CV was A++, would BarCamp again. I’m very grateful to the organizers and sponsors that made the event possible and the welcoming attitude everyone showed a couple of conference crashers from Des Moines. Hope I can make the next one.

2012 Information Architecture Summit Schedule

I’m excited to be attending and humbled and terrified to be speaking at the upcoming 2012 Information Architecture Summit. The Summit is a week of programming aimed at people who design, plan and build things like websites and software applications. Folks at the Summit have job titles like User Experience Director/Designer/Manger, Business Analyst, Content Strategist, User Researcher, and, of course, Information Architect. If those mean nothing to you, try try this description: it’s for technology people who love sketches, whiteboards, diagrams, surveys, charts, wireframes, process, research and other stuff that makes technology strategy work easier and more successful.

The event is being held at the end of March in New Orleans. Organizers recently released the full schedule, and thoughts about the event have loomed large in my mind this week.

I’ll be debuting a solo presentation I call “Communicating Change”. It’s scheduled for 2:30 on Saturday in the “Exploring and Thinking” track. I’m sandwiched between Veronica Erb’s session on Sketchnoting and my e-pals Adam Connor and Aaaron Irizarry’s session on The Art of Critique, which I had a chance to chat with them about on The Flyover Effect. I couldn’t be happier with my spot on the schedule.

Here’s my session overview:

Communicating Change

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Q: What did the developer say to the users in the changelog?

A: Minor bug fixes and enhancements.

Whoops, sorry, that’s not a joke. It is unfortunately common, though. Far too often, changes in software and websites are communicated to users with a cavalier attitude — if it all.

In this session, you’ll learn why it’s important to communicate clearly about change, why we often don’t, and how to do it better. We’ll explore examples of industry best and worst practices, from the rollout of #NewNewTwitter to the bizarre PR backpedaling of the Netflix/Qwikster saga.

BONUS: Be prepared for a lightning round of comically-curt changelog text collected from apps and sites across the web. No brand is safe.

As stoked as I am about all this, that jerk Impostor Syndrome has been creeping around the edges of my brain and trying to bum me out. I think I’ll cover that more in another post, but for now I’ll say I’ve been doing my best to remember I wasn’t selected to be an end-all/be-all expert, but rather just to give the most thorough, professional and interesting presentation I’m capable of. There are a lot of really neat people who organize and attend the IA Summit, and I’m not embarrassed to admit I want to impress them and make them happy with their selection.

My flight is booked and I landed an adorable little spot near the conference site through AirBNB. If I’ll see you in NOLA this March, say hey! I’m getting in on Tuesday of the conference week and have Wednesday free for exploring the city a bit and getting oriented. Would love to make some new friends and meet more of you lovely internet people in real life.

DeMo Des Moines January 2012 Recap

I’m often asked if DeMo is just for “tech stuff”. It’s definitely not, and the conversation we had at January’s DeMo session proved that out. Four presenters shared a diverse group of projects and ideas including web startups and brick-and-mortar initiatives.

I used this slide deck to start things out. While it doesn’t contain info about the presentations (those are generally improvised on-site by the presenters), poking through it may give you a better feel for the event.

Below are my notes on the January 2012 #DeMoDSM presentations.

Presentation One: Locusic Social Sharing

Jake Kerber from Locusic presented at DeMo for the second time. Locusic hadn’t even launched yet when Jake first presented. Locusic has generated a lot of buzz since then, and Jake is looking to add to that buzz with social media integration features. Discussion ranged from the literal (you could add a Like button right there) to the conceptual (could you encourage users to share “stories” generated by their behavior on the system).

Jake said he’s looking for a few hours of help from a developer experienced with social integration for web services and is open to discussing trade or pay.

Presentation Two: iDealer.co White Label Dealership App

Yas Kuraishi from iapps24 (also the sponsor of January’s DeMo) went through a sales deck for iDealer, a white-label app available to be branded and customized for deployment as a B2C app from auto dealerships for their customers to use. Yas sought ideas on how to best market the iDealer service to dealerships and how to structure the feature/benefit pitch.

Presentation Three: Bike Shop / Coffee Shop Concept

Nicholas Casber and Scott Bents talked through an idea for a combination bike shop and coffee shop they’d like to see launched in downtown Des Moines. They’re excited by a successful cafe with a similar model in nearby Minneapolis and thought it would be a great fit for Des Moines’ developing downtown. The group talked through possible various models, such as partnering with existing organizations and businesses, as well as potentially launching a traditional business such as a bar or restaurant with a strong focus on being cyclist-friendly, showers and all. Nicholas and Scott seemed most interested in simply connecting the right people to start making this happen, and are looking to have conversations with others excited about the idea. Ping me if you’re interested and I’ll put you in touch.

Presentation Four: “Iowa Stimulus Club”

Local ad man and buy local advocate Michael Libbie talked through an idea for the “Iowa Stimulus Club”, an organization designed to connect a network of local-shopping supporters with truly local businesses. Discussion included the plusses, minuses, and appropriate ways of integrating a charitable component as well as what kind of benefits and access consumers are interested in with local businesses.

What’s next?

You might not guess it from the above, but it’s still a bit of a struggle getting presenters to volunteer for DeMo. I plan on holding a session in February, but may play with the format a bit to see if I can make anything happen. I don’t expect to change the time or date for February (4pm on third Tuesday).

Help Me Solve DeMo’s Presenter Problem

If you’re not familiar with DeMo, read about it here, first.

I’ve been running DeMo for several months now with varying levels of success. With a full house and a slate of energetic presenters, it goes great. There’s one little problem: I’m having a hell of a time getting people to present. I don’t know why. I need your help.

I’m looking for whatever insights and opinions you can offer to see if this event is worth saving. I want to reach a point where people just ping me on Twitter, chat or text and say “Hey, I’ll take a slot, see you Tuesday.” That’s not even close to happening. Last month involved a lot of cajoling, arm-twisting, and even a little begging.

In a recent Juice article that talks about DeMo, I offer up advice for people starting a new project and seeking feedback to first give themselves a thorough critique and dressing down, thinking through possible problems. I’ll try and eat my own dogfood here with possible problems I’ve been able to think of:

1. People don’t get it. I’m on variation five or six of my elevator pitch by now. I must have really screwed the pooch early on in explaining this to people. Maybe the name is bad? No idea at this point. Here’s the bare skeleton of my pitch: Present a thing. Tell us what about the thing you want feedback on. We’ll give feedback on the thing. It is very easy. It is very helpful.
2. The time still doesn’t work. Possible, but seems unlikely at this point. Getting butts in seats hasn’t been too hard, getting presenters has been.
3. People are afraid to share. Their thing “isn’t quite ready” or they think they have to keep it secret until it’s 99% done. Getting people out of this mindset is the point of DeMo. I may need help solving this if people think it’s a problem still.
4. People think I’m an asshole and will be a jerk about their stuff. I’m not, and I won’t be.
5. People don’t care. They feel they get an adequate amount of feedback from the network and team they already have. I worry this might be the real problem. I hope to gosh it’s not. Personally, I would leap at the opportunity to have some of Des Moines’ best and brightest giving me feedback, for free, on a regular basis in a low-pressure environment. I struggle each month not to fill up an hour with my own stuff I want feedback on. Educating a potential audience on the value of feedback before I even get them in the door might be more than I’m ready to handle for something like this.
6. It’s too often OR people don’t have anything to show off. “I don’t have anything to DeMo” is something I hear a lot. It’s totally not true (have you done anything in the last month? yeah? gotten all the feedback you need on it?) but it’s a struggle to get folks to realize that. I need help.
7. The focus is too broad. Developers want to talk to developers, designers want to talk to designers, artists want to talk to artists. Maybe? Hard to say. Recurring events targeted at a more specific subset seem to have more success, and have been more successful for me in the past. Perhaps I am too idealistic about creating a big feedback melting pot.
8. Something else I’m not seeing…

What’s keeping you from presenting at DeMo? I really need to hear from you. If it’s all still crickets come Monday, I will probably call off the event, and may decide to pass the torch or just put a kibosh on the whole thing. I hate to do it but booking for DeMo is unfortunately starting to eat up way too much of my attention.

Ping me on Twitter at @scottrocketship or write me at scott@scottkubie.com. Thanks.

The Next DeMo Des Moines is on January 17th

DeMo returns to Startup City Des Moines on Tuesday, January 17 at 4 p.m. It’s in the Bank of America Building on the 5th floor, downtown. You can enter from the street or the skywalk.

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WHAT THE FIRETRUCK IS IT?

DeMo is a monthly check-up for Des Moines’ designers, developers, makers, builders, hackers and planners. Whatever you do, you can show it off at DeMo. It’s a sort of focus group meets design review.

CREATIVITY + TECHNOLOGY

Presenters DeMo app concepts, event plans, plug-ins and widgets, hobby projects, websites, whatever…if it’s got a little bit of creativity and technology jammed together, we’ll want to hear about it.

EVERYONE PARTICIPATES

Everyone at DeMo is a participant. If you’re not presenting, you’ll be expected to pay attention, take notes, ask tough questions, give feedback, and offer help. Lots of people come just to learn. We had roughly 25 people at the last DeMo and of those, five presented.

DEMO WHATEVER YOU’VE GOT, DONE OR NOT

DeMo is low-key but high-energy. No pixel-perfect pitch decks; bring storyboards, screenshots, sketches and the like. It can be raw and rough or perfectly polished. Share with the group and see what happens. Maybe you’ll get some good honest feedback. Maybe you’ll meet a kindred spirit that wants to get involved. Heck, you might learn something just from trying to explain it in front of an audience.

HOW TO PRESENT

The five presentation slots are first-ask, first-serve. To reserve a slot, write scott@scottrocketship.com with your name, a link for you or the project (if you have one), and a topic. Be specific; “Pongr’s New Account Creation Workflow” is better than “Pongr”.

BUY THE BEER!

Want a guaranteed DeMo slot for you or a friend and guaranteed adoration? Be a sponsor — aka, buy the beer! Hugs, friendship, mucho social media love, and I’ll read anything on Earth you want me to read in front of the group (within reason, anyway). $50. scott@scottrocketship.com

Three Techniques I Use to Edit and Organize Blog Posts and Other Articles

Between work and other projects I’ve been doing quite a bit more writing over the past few weeks than is typical even for me. It’s given me some insight into how I actually put posts together. I thought putting my process down into words might help me improve it and learn from the feedback of others.

My current technical approach to editing and organizing blog posts is dominated by the following techniques.

CTRL+F Editing List

It only took one read-through of Ken Rand’s The 10% Solution to make it my favorite book on writing and editing. Rand got his start in broadcasting and I think his conversational approach to language helped the book click with my verbally-inclined brain. He offers a series of discrete editing techniques supporting the “10% Solution” approach:

• Cut 10% of whatever you just did.
• Do it again.
• Keep doing it until there’s nothing to cut, or it starts to lose clarity.

My favorite technique is the editing list. I have one taped to my monitor. It’s a list of words and word-parts you use as different lenses for editing your document. This is how it works:

1. Finish a draft. It can be your first or your hundredth.
2. Hit CTRL+F (Find, Find and Replace, or whatever equivalent functionality your editor has) and type in the word or word-part. My list starts with “that”.
3. Go through every single instance of the search term in the document, even if it’s not an exact match (like ‘thatch’ coming up in a search for ‘that’). Look at it critically. Does the word need to be there? How about the words around it? Use your instincts. Maybe nothing needs to change. Maybe a whole sentence or paragraph can go. Maybe something needs to be added. Make changes, or don’t, and move to the next entry.
4. Rinse and repeat for every word on your list (or at least as many as you can before your deadline).

It’s not about right or wrong, grammar rules, or stylebooks. The editing list helps me get out of my writer’s brain and into my editor’s. Phrases and sentences become abstract pieces of information I can evaluate more objectively.

The more I use my list, the more I find myself not needing to use the list.

Start your list with “that”, “ing”, and “ly”. Pay attention to the changes you make during your editing sessions; add additional problem words to your list as you go. You might want to add something unique to your brand or project worth paying special attention to, such as an oft-abused buzzword.

Begin With an Incident

This summer I was graduated from a Dale Carnegie course on interpersonal interactions and effective communication. I know, right? Beyond the safety net of my friends and family, I’m awful at basic social things like “using someone’s name” and “carrying on a conversation”, so the course was pretty useful on that front. I also pulled a writing trick out of it.

We had to give a presentation every week, often with little time to prepare. A simple technique they offered for starting your presentations made things easier: begin with an incident. “Begin with an incident” means the first thing out of your mouth should tell the audience when, where and/or how our story begins. “So there I was…”

You’ll notice I begin each section in this post by mentioning a specific occurrence, a thing that happened. It helps if your incident is exciting, but it doesn’t have to be (mine aren’t).

People are impatient. Beginning with an incident forces you to cut to the chase and lets people know what they’re in for and if they want to pay attention.

Note: I generally use this technique during editing, not writing. I start my writing sessions by just barfing out whatever occurs to me — don’t get stuck trying to think of the perfect incident to open with.

The Dotted Line

A YouTube video I ran across about a year ago completely changed my approach to organizing blog posts. I’ve since lost the link, but the technique is pretty simple:

• Add a long dotted or dashed line at the end of your editor.
• If you’re not sure where something should go in your post, stick it below the line. I jot down all of my initial thoughts, quotes, and brainstorm below the line.
• Put things above the line when you feel decent about their structure and where they go.
• Move things from above the line to below the line if you’re considering deleting them or putting them somewhere else. Do it immediately. This removes the small anxiety hit normally associated with deleting a sentence, paragraph, section or even just a word your creative little writer’s brain has gotten attached to. Putting it below the line is your internal editor’s way of saying “Hey man, this is pretty good stuff, but maybe it’s not what we need right here. Hold onto it for now.”

Like I said, pretty simple, but if going straight from blank page to blog gold has been a struggle, I definitely recommend trying out the dotted line technique.

Bonus: Clipboard Manager

Not a technique, but rather a tool I find completely invaluable: clipboard managers. I have absolutely no idea how I managed to create internet things before using one. A clipboard manager is a little piece of software that holds multiple things you’ve cut or copied to the clipboard at once. Ideally, it also lets you quickly call them up again when you go to paste. I tried a bunch of shitty and tedious ones before discovering ClipMenu for OSX. It’s fantastic. I hit CMD+Shift+V instead of just CMD+V and a keyboard navigable menu containing the last thirty things I’ve copied pops up.

A clipboard manager combined with the dotted line technique makes for really fast editing and restructuring of your posts. It also makes linking things up super easy. You can hop over to your browser and copy in five or six links you need for your post, hop back to your text editor, and quickly dump them all in to the right spots.

Throughout my workday, I often need to re-paste the same link or text snippet over and over again. A clipboard manager saves loads of time as compared to a scratchpad or sticky note. Give it a try.