Boris Mann's Blog

Mitch Joel laments the 'Death of the Unconference', saying "This past month, I've seen a handful of events that are billing themselves as unconferences when, in reality, they're just very shabby and cheap events."

I don't doubt that the term unconference has been co-opted. But I disagree with Mitch's take on what the one, true unconference actually is and means.

Maybe we should backup at this point and actually explain the core concept of an unconference. An unconference typically starts the day by gathering all the participants in one room, and those that want to lead talks pitch their sessions. From there, the grid of rooms and time slots are filled up, thus setting the agenda for the day.

This entire concept is based on open-space technology (Wikipedia), which you can read more about. It is the basis for the marketing term of 'unconference'.

No broadcast-mode speakers and listeners, everyone is a participant, rather than an attendee.

Mitch has a list of items that an unconference can't do, in his opinion, if they want to claim to be an unconference.

Update: Allen Pike had this to say:

@bmann Any term defined by what it isn't is doomed to meaninglessness. Maybe Ad-Hoc Conference? BarCamp-Style?

— Allen Pike (@apike) February 13, 2012

A good point - let's talk about the expectations we DO have of unconferences. In any case, below my comments on the "negated items" from Mitch that I disagree with or have some thoughts to add.

There is a pre-set agenda

I agree with Joel that setting the entire agenda ahead of time means it's not an unconference. But, I have set some sessions or topic blocks ahead of time.

For instance, for the upcoming Polyglot Conference, we want to have a focus on getting female developer participants. We're not sure exactly how we're going to set aside time for this (maybe a track or room dedicated to it).

Charging for an unconference

Mitch has this to say:

This will be a contentious issue, but the best unconferences I have been to, have been the ones where everyone took both individual and group responsibility for the event. If the venue requires a fee, everyone chips in equally to pay for it. If you're hungry and want to eat, either bring food or go out and buy some.

Sure, I agree that completely spontaneous community-funded events are great, and probably the best of their kind. In my experience, very few unconferences would even happen unless some smaller group of organizers willed them into existence.

I tend to charge for events not only to help cover costs, but because it makes people "buy in" to the event that much more strongly. I actually think that the unconference concept has become too accessible for want of a better word, meaning that people who come to free events tend to have an attendee rather than participant mindset.

I've seen ugly discussions on Twitter, with accusations of "you're corrupting the movement!" or similar said to well-intentioned organizers who charge for events.

I think of this in the same way that I see the concepts "agile" or "lean" being used. They are new things that go through adoption, and refinement, and, frankly, changes. No one wants to see their core principles co-opted, but at the same time, you need to remember that you were part of change, part of something that made things different. Lashing out at further changes, further evolution is usually not the right response. Keep an open mind to further refinements, and engage in discussion on whether those core principles could be evolving.

And if you find an event isn't a good fit for you, don't worry about it. Use the law of two feet:

If at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing: Give greetings, use your two feet, and go do something useful. Responsibility resides with you.

Ideally, that doing something useful includes organizing an unconference event yourself. I recently wrote "build more startups" as the conclusion to problems in the startup ecosystem.

I think the same applies to unconferences: organize more of them.

Last Thursday, Jesse Heaslip wrote 'Two Problems with [Vancouver's tech community] and Three Ways to Fix it'. If you don't know Jesse, know this: he's crazy-irrational-passionate about the Vancouver tech community. For proof, I offer the fact that he organized 40 tech events that were attended by 1600 people in 2011. Talk about impact!

Jesse lists the two problems as:

1. How do we get companies to the stage where there is interest from acquirers?

and

2. How do we get those companies to stay?

First of all, for a really great backgrounder on startups in Vancouver and the various funnels that are in place, read Greg Aasen and Danny Robinson's post on the BCIC blog. Money quote:

The only way to get more anchor companies is to start more companies. Some fail, some exit and some anchor. There is no shortcut.

For 1, I first want to re-state the problem as "How do we get more companies to the Series A and/or acquire stage?".

I added "more" to the statement, since I think that's what we want. Secondly, focusing on only acquirers is probably the wrong goal. Series A (before everything turned into super seed rounds etc.) used to be the first step of going big. Large VC funds¹ earmark millions not only for Series A, but to support companies in their Series B, and so on. We definitely do want anchor companies that grow big right here in Vancouver.

Jesse's answer is "build a better community", phrased as weaving the threads we have together very tightly. Allen Pike's response focusing on homes for startups goes one step further and suggests shared spaces as the tactic to get us there.

I think the answer is simpler, and more like web traffic or a funnel as Greg and Danny wrote about: build more startups. Will a tighter community help us get there? I'm sure that is part of the puzzle.

Problem #2 is "How do we get them to stay?". Jesse's answers here are really three problem areas with suggestions on how to work on them. Academic-industry ties, #WeAreYVR community pride, and Hack Hut (a new coworking space).

I'm not convinced on school / industry issues, other than promoting startups as a place to work for new grads. As far as I am aware, new grads are not the main creator of new startups. As a counter-example, instead of accepting offers with Google / MSFT / Facebook etc. Cristian & Mircea turned down offers with those companies to do their own thing.

However, A Thinking Ape took those offers after graduating in Canada, moved away, then did their own thing, and then ended up in Vancouver. Time will tell if they stay.

I left after graduation in 1999 because the local opportunities that I could find in Vancouver were small and sleepy. I came back in 2004 because it was my home, and it just so happened that things were looking up.

Do we need to raise the profile of startups as a career option to keep some of this great talent in the local pool? You bet!

#WeAreYVR. This seems to have the same goals as #MadeInVan. As I said in my blog post in response to that effort - great idea, how about we not re-invent the wheel - AGAIN.

This has been done badly again and again and again. A non profit entity like Vancouver Is Awesome (VIA) could be the long running entity that might make a good home for this effort. But focus on the brand, on telling the story of local companies, not on the directory-done-badly.

On Hack Hut. Allen's comments on this are excellent. Allen mentions The Hive. They look like an interesting organization, and I think working with them might accelerate this initiative. Also as Allen said, WorkSpace was the first hub, and it worked. I wish it was still here. Let's vote with our dollars and support the spaces we already HAVE before deciding we need to create a new one.

Lastly (still on problem #2), I also don't think "getting them to stay" is an issue. We need them to COME BACK. Stewart Butterfield and Avi Bryant are coming back. A Thinking Ape came back. We need experiences (and money and connections) from elsewhere to come back. So we can close the loop and do it all over again.

OK, now that I've made lots of commentary on Jesse's post, let me say … I agree with him!

I think working together to raise awareness of the community and having shared spaces are the two strongest areas where the community itself can make an impact.

Other than that, the only thing I can suggest is to build more startups in Vancouver.

¹I had a brief chat with someone from a large VC fund the other day. Accelerators and the collection of angels and super-angels around them are often focused on acquisition as an outcome: turning a couple of hundred thousand dollars into a couple of million dollars is a big win. For large VC funds, they NEED companies that want to go it alone, so they can put in millions that turn into 10s or 100s of millions.

I give larger VC funds a bad rap most of the time, but in this case the goals are aligned: they want companies to go big.

Go read Allen Pike's post about how important homes for startups are and what his experience has been like here in Vancouver. Here's the closing sentence:

Bringing startups close to one another is, dollar for dollar, more helpful to the Vancouver ecosystem than tax breaks ever could be.

Once again, I realize that my gut agrees with this 1000%, and it has for years.

In May 2006 I wrote about what I called the Innovation Commons - at the time, I didn't think coworking / community spaces could / should be for-profit. Last summer I referenced that post again in writing about coworking and supporting it with dollars and wrote this:

Vote to have something exist by supporting it beyond a retweet: with blood, sweat, and tears, or with cold, hard cash.

I think shared spaces are fantastic, and deserving of your dollar votes.

We are lucky to have spaces like The Network Hub and The Hive. If the economics of those spaces work for you, then pay for them.

If you can find a shared space and shack up with other startups: do it.

The article I was riffing on said "You cannot make a profit selling community". And there is a whole bunch of other stuff in there about what coworking MEANS.

So, all of us that have an irrational desire to have the Vancouver tech community be, and happen, and grow - we need to go beyond the dollars.

I'm thinking back to an idea that we had in the early days of the Bootup Society, about a membership based program. About paying to have the Vancouver tech community exist.

I'm saying right here: let's do this. I'm in for $50 / month or $500 per year. Maybe you can let me into some sort of space on evenings or weekends, but really, I just want to vote with my dollars that the Vancouver tech community is important.

I just saw this GrowLab post about an initiative to get local companies to get listed and link to a directory of Vancouver companies.

Now, I definitely think we can do more to celebrate being based here in Vancouver, as we digital creatives go out to sell to the entire world, but I hate seeing us once again starting yet another directory from scratch!

What other directories could we re-use the data from?

How about Crunchbase (143 companies listed)?

Or Angel List (172 startups listed in just Vancouver)?

Or the StartupNorth Index? Even Techvibes has a company directory!

Now, of the four, I think only CrunchBase has a Creative Commons license that easily encourages re-use of the data. (And yes, I'm still waiting for StartupIndex.ca to publish what their license is, and I've bitched … err, "suggested" to Techvibes that they should have an open license, too).

But it means that companies have an incentive to fill out and keep the information up to date. Both StartupIndex and CrunchBase are wiki-style, meaning anyone can help keep the information up to date.

So, let's re-think creating directories from scratch. Talk to some of these existing sites, and by all means make http://www.vanmade.ca an interesting hub to tell the stories of these companies.

But more stale directories is not what we need.

(ironically, this might have been just a brief comment on the GrowLab site, but comments are turned off)

There is great momentum about lots of people learning to code this year.

I just saw a tweet from @codinghorror --

RT @codinghorror: "everyone should learn to code" is a bad idea because it presumes code is the solution, when it's frequently part of t ...

— Rob Loach (@RobLoach) January 5, 2012

This is important to think about. First, from a business perspective, many don't understand the cost involved in code 'just for them'.

Hosted services or using open source might be better answers than coding something from scratch.

If you are non-technical and have a *little* money, then you should pay to get an education on how to work with developers. See Derek Sivers' excellent post on the subject: http://sivers.org/how2hire

Second, the happiest day in a real developers life is when she can DELETE code. The most stable, secure code is the code you didn't have to write in the first place.

In parallel to the NOT coding options, I feel strongly about people learning to NOT web host.

Technical as well as non-technical people fall into this trap: I'll just maintain and manage another server, it's "cheaper" than the platform or API or fully managed service equivalent.

All that being said, the expectation for understanding things of a technical nature is higher. Be technically informed, software really IS 'eating the world'.

I don't have any image editing apps on my Mac other than Preview.app (well, and Skitch), so I was looking for an easy way to make animated GIFs without having to have a dedicated app of some kind.

(All done on OS X Snow Leopard)

First of all, it turnes out that Preview.app makes it really easy to create animated GIFs. See Robert Harder's post for a full tutorial.

Short version: open the Preview.app sidebar, drag and drop your GIFs on top of the first GIF, save the whole thing to get an animated GIF.

But Preview.app doesn't let you loop the resulting GIF, or set the delay between frames. Enter this SuperUser Stack Exchange answer.

Short version: grab and install this precompiled .pkg of gifsicle, then run something like the following in the Terminal:

gifsicle -bl --delay 100 oh_yeah_andrea.gif

-b does batch mode and writes back to the source file name. -l sets looping, which is infinite by default. --delay sets the delay between each frame in 1/100 of a second, so 100 is a 1 second delay.

Let me start by saying that it feels like we're actually in a golden age of great online support & feedback tools. I'm sure there are more than the ones that I'm listing here. Also, at different times, I've recommended each of these tools for a specific purpose - many of them have broad feature sets.

With that in mind, I recently did a mini-analysis of 5 different services that provide support & feedback functionality. I was analyzing from the perspective of a small company that is just starting out, for a mainly B2C product, with desired features covering both support (email / widget / etc.) and public feedback / user suggestions. Low cost growing to a projected small number of support people (say: 5 people) was also a factor.

In addition, domain aliasing aka CNAME support to be able to use the domain name of my choice was a must have (I'm not going to build web traffic to somebody elses domain). In other words, I don't care if you have cheap starting plans, I'm going to care about the level at which I can do domain aliasing, otherwise I won't use you.

I actually started with Assistly, and really liked the system. But the deeper into it I got, the more confusing it was, and the more it was clear that it was built / optimized for much larger organizations. It is a relatively new service, so it may be going through some growing pains.

Testing all of these other services again*, it was clear that all of them were built around per-agent pricing, which seems to be optimized for the way larger companies work: there are support people, and there are the rest of the organization. Assistly's Flex Agent plan does a good job of recognizing that everyone in an organization needs to do some form of support, but at it's core, it also had the per agent pricing.

*except for Get Satisfaction, which I've used in the past. It doesn't offer domain aliasing (or private email support) until their $99 plan either so didn't meet my needs in terms of price. I think it's a great community support system and the one you should look at if you're mainly doing public community management.

And so, we come to Tender, which seems explicitly geared to small company support. It starts at $24, but includes 3 agents and pretty much everything you need to do support and public feedback / knowledge base out of the box.

It's next tier adds (more) custom branding and more agents, but in both price and features seems to be designed to be something you grow into (rather than the infinite progression of per agent pricing of the other services).

Tender is optimized for email. Notifications are sent out, and you can then either reply or perform administrative actions via email. Technically, it's also optimized for RSS, since it has both unauthenticated and authenticated RSS feeds which let you consume everything in it from the comfort of your RSS reader.

Perhaps more broadly I should say that Tender seems to be optimized for conversation. Which also seems to be a fit for how smaller companies help their customers, rather than "support".

Below, the table with notes on all the contestants.

Got other suggestions for great support & feedback services? Please add them in the comments.