Rachel Andrew produces quality content and lots of it. As a product person and speaker in the web industry she has loads of great advice to share.
Brian Casel’s email course Productize Your Service which is a preview of Productize course. The email course covers documenting your processes in order to be able to outsource them elsewhere.
Amy Hoy has a bootstrapping email course with “kick your arse into gear” attitude.
Benefits
Of course, there are other benefits to signing up for these newsletters. These guys are the experts. You get to learn how they do newsletters so professionally. You get to see how they connect to customers. Rachel Andrews uses Drip to capture emails. A big part of the signup process was an emotional want to complete the Drip popup.
You can maybe use this as an opportunity to connect these people and bring yourself to their (and their communities) attention.
You can also find out who they are influenced by. Rachel lists Brian Casel, Ian Landsman and Sasha Greif as interviewees in her book. That’s how I signed up to Brian’s course and found that I should already be thinking about life after freelancing. That’s how I became a regular listener to Ian’s podcast Bootstrapped and signed up to his newsletter. That’s how I came to notice this AMA by Sasha Greif.
BONUS – Newsletter tip: In Gmail, apply a label to all your newsletter sender addresses. Otherwise, you’ll miss them. Then, when you’ve got time, you can catchup on your list as if you were using an old skool RSS reader.
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- The Freelance Web – Web
- Unfinished Business – Web & Nonsense
- HappyMonday – eagerly awaiting the return of…
- Mobile Couch – iOS Development
- Release Notes – iOS Development
- Bootstrapped – Bootstrapped product development
These are all proving useful in suggesting tools, products and services that will be ideal for me. The last few podcasts also focus on creating products for yourself rather than for clients, which is an option that I’d like to explore with TinyShinyApps.
My regular podcast listening is also complimented by these iOS Development focused shows:
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The main points of the talk for me were:
Stop Caring
Stop caring about past projects
Stop caring about possible future aims
Stop caring about it being perfect, it never will be
If you love it let it go
Be generous with your ideas
Collect them constantly. Don’t be left with one thing to hold onto.
Make it. Then forget it. “The past is over.”
Spread your motivation over a short amount of time. Find people who inspire you. Keep making.
Stop Having Any Ambition
Ambition means you’re not happy yet
Ambition means you’re looking at everyone else
Let go of your dreams
Forget the “and then”. Don’t even think about whats next.
Stop making claims
To yourself
To your employer (on CV’s)
Let others make up their mind, claiming slows you down.
Make “things” not “statements of intent”
All supplementary writing=distance.
Something that exists is always better than something that doesn’t (except unicorns)
Barriers to fast making
Worrying about what may happen
Thinking you’ll never have a good idea again
Thinking it has to be successful
Describing instead of doing (CV’s, About Me)
Solutions
Play pointlessly
Detach from all goals
Make partial things
Make regularly, make fast. The faster you are the more you can make.
For more details check: (video) (slides)
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We posted all the Peru trip photos online but never got around to writing up the journal. Memories of the crazy old man in Puno, the over eager tour group in Cusco, the speeding taxi driver and the lost taxi driver, alpacas vs llamas, and the joy of Wayna Picchu will all remain on paper for now.
]]>Using services like Foursquare and Gowalla I cannot do anything without my social network hearing about it through updates to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’d like to see the same integration with Kiva. It goes someway towards doing this but not enough.
Foursquare and Gowalla award badges and mayorships for completing certain tasks as a reward for both learning the system and using it.
It would be great to be rewarded the ‘First Loan’ badge or the ‘Peruvian Loan’ medal, the ‘Repeat Loan’ award, the ‘$100 Milestone Mark’ or the ‘Entrepreneur x 10’ medallion.
Adding a game element is a proven way to keep users returning to a service. The rise of social gaming also makes this a more acceptable process too. It is no longer just in the realm of World of Warcraft where you have experience points but also Farmville. If we could have as many people ‘playing’ Kiva as there are ploughing on Farmville, then the game would be on.
Updated – 13 Jul 2010
There’s a great article on exactly this topic on Inc.com, How To Incorporate Badges Into Your Website. Using terms like virtual merit badges and trophies it describes how services are encouraging contributions to the site. Foursquare has awarded one million badges to 500,000 users.
We were given a room from the 70’s. Then got the room we had paid for as seen on the web site. The shower overflowed. The food in the restaurant was great. The service in the restaurant was great. Our shower was overflowing into the kitchen. Getting back to our overheated room was not so great. It’s summer in England and it’s hot – don’t complain. The music from the pub up the road is deafening. Close the window. Sweat. Sleep. Wake. Sleep. Sweat. Wake. Sleep.
Explain our situation to today’s receptionist. Trek to a room at the opposite end of the hotel to use the shower. Great breakfast. Great service. Great discussion about how we can’t stay there for another night and decide to cut the weekend short. Discussion with receptionist results in early checkout without charge.
The web site makes no reference to refurbishment. We lucked out on the room we had. Check the Trip Advisor reports for the Spread Eagle at Thame and you’ll see similar unhappy customers. Hopefully you’ll see them before you become one.
- 62% of travellers do not recommend
- “The sink is the size of a lunch box and far too small to be practical in any way.”
- “The website is very misleading, our room was not refurbished like some and felt more like a 3 star hotel which would have been fine but for £100 we were expecting something a lot better.”
- “Stayed at this hotel a year ago when they must have recently started the refurb, and a year on, they don’t seem to have made much progress. I gather about a third of the rooms are complete and there is a new reception desk, but otherwise the public areas/corridors are in a poor state of decor.”
Read more bad reviews of the Spread Eagle, Thame, then book to go somewhere else.
]]>Not even a rubbish performance from our football team could dampen the heated spirits of 180,000 revellers in a field. And my god was it hot!
With Glastonbury, but not other festivals, the best bits are not the bands, but the sights and sounds you see on your travels. And travel you do with it taking about 45 minutes to cross the site. The Healing Fields and Green Fields have the true spirit of Glastonbury and are a must see visit. The Park is a recently added area which give great views over the whole site and this year apparently saw Radiohead playing! Arcadia, Shangri-La and assorted other ‘weird’ areas must be seen to be believed.
Relive the experience with videos and photos. Listen to the bands on Spotify.
]]>- Live Music at Jam Cafe on Good Friday
- Short films at Nottingham Contemporary on Good Friday and Saturday nights. Music from Ed Lamps on Saturday. Rest of the weekend look around Star City before it finishes. Local real ale on sale in cafe.
- Afternoon Tea at The Walk
- Another ride on the Wheel of Nottingham
- Go on the Ghost Walk on Saturday night
- Watch A Single Man at The Screen Room
- See the new Robin Hood Exhibition at Nottingham Castle
- Peter Andre at the Royal Centre on Sunday
- Get some comedy at the Just The Tonic – Easter Sunday Bank Holiday Special
- Watch Notts Forest play Cardiff City on Monday at the ground or in The Approach
This post is experimental paid content. Please pay $1 via Twitpay if useful.
Being involved with Twestival by arranging the Nottingham Twestival in February was the trigger for much of the rest of the year. The event was a modest success and introduced me to people who would become friends over the coming months. Meeting a great crowd of creative and techies at Nottingham Twestival led me to setting up a regular event, Web 2.0 Surgery. The event was a great excuse for a meetup and this also coincided with a other events starting up and gaining popularity in Nottingham in 2009.
Our 3 week trip to Peru was an amazing experience which took us to Machu Picchu and everywhere in between. This was also a key reason for using Kiva to issue loans in Peru.
September brought Twestival Local which raised money for The National Autistic Society and there is another event planned for March 2010.
There was a great turn out for the last Web 2.0 Surgery of 2009 and with co-operation with the eBusinessChampions initiative it looks to be even better in 2010.
Happy 2010 to all!
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