Modern Management

Kristina B — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:27:00 -0400

Cynics call it “Bubble 2.0”, others call it “Web 2.0”, and everyone is full of opinions. Caterina Fake says it’s a bad time to start a company, many others disagree. For better or worse, Handwire is running a company right now, and, at the least, we’re inspired by what Kathy Sierra calls management 2.0.

Before this movement grew a label, the founding partners of Handwire started a company that already had what are now considered the right ingredients for success. It was a small company from the start and remains that way by choice. The team was built based on shared passions, curiosity and the desire to innovate rather than “x years of experience in x technology”. Through it all, the secretive and dictatorial atmosphere that Sierra labels so 1.0 has never really taken hold around here.

My favorite quote from the comments of Sierra’s post:

A resume itself is kind of 1.0ish… in a 2.0 world, you don’t list your accomplishments – the hiring team knows about you because they’ve seen your work on the web. They know you have technical chops not because they’ve grilled you on pointers in an interview, but because they’ve collaborated with you on an open source project. They know about your speaking and communication skills because they saw your demo at a User Group, or your talk at a conference. They don’t rely on references they’ve never met – they could be your references.

I like this idea, though I’m not sure how scalable it is. (If all of a sudden one day everyone up and decides to start collaborating on Open Source projects and speaking at conferences, most people would still only know of a select few by reputation.) Still, the idea behind it is a clear improvement on the way people both establish and evaluate professional experience. Wouldn’t you rather hire some one who you’re familiar with by reputation than based on their own claims about their skills? It’s a better situation for companies, individuals and clients. Why clients? Because they’ll have a much better experience if it’s delivered by happy, passionate individuals.

Handwire At The Conference

Kristina B — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 21:57:00 -0500

We’ve all been going to panels and parties, and though we are very close to achieving “plum tuckered” status, we’re keeping it alive for the rest of Interactive and then (gasp)... music. And when I say “it” I mean “us”. I, for one, both look forward to this time of year and dread it. Being an Austinite takes endurance sometimes.

Anyway, a bit about the panels we’ve seen. The general consensus in the office is that the Creating Passionate Users panel on Saturday was one of the best panels that any of us have seen so far. It scored not only on content but delivery. Kathy Sierra really did a bang-up job at conveying useful, intelligent perspectives in an engaging way.

The panel focused on the psychology of people’s reactions to things, and how that can be used to build community, buzz and loyalty around a product. I’m not a marketing person, and when I just reread that sentence it sounded like some kind of evil form of manipulation. There was a bit about that, I suppose, but it was delivered in such a genuine and realistic way that it didn’t seem either evil or manipulative. The reality is, for example, that people’s brains respond chemically to positive experiences and everything they are experiencing gets roped into that effect. So, for example, if you show someone a picture of an attractive, scantily clad person along with your product they will respond positively even if their logical mind identifies it as a cheap marketing trick. She really drove home the idea that, yes, there are cheap tricks you can use… but using them effectively is an art form.

Cheap tricks aside, the strongest message in this panel was to focus on your customers rather than yourself. Which, of course! Duh! Everyone knows that, right? Still, look around the web and you’ll find tons of marketing web sites that are really all about companies and products rather than their customers. It’s an easy mistake to make. This year really seems focused on creating user-centric products and marketing them in a user-centric way. Which is a good thing all around.

We sat around at lunch today talking about who the users of Bugwire really will be (people like us, no doubt), and what they might care about. There was no shortage of jokes about putting svelte, naked people on the Bugwire home page.

With the wayfinding work we’ve been doing recently, Steph was intrigued by the Online In Offline Spaces panel. The idea of tying web apps in to three dimensional spaces is exciting and Meetup, Dodgeball, and Socialite are brilliant examples of what can be done there. It’ll be interesting to see if this idea can find more traction in applications that go beyond social networks.

More on panels coming soon. If you missed the conference, some of the panels have been recorded as podcasts.

Handwriting: Tag kathysierra

Modern Management

Handwire At The Conference