Also

Being Present

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:17:33 -0700

Got this email from a CEO I respect. Struggling with one of the essential issues for any working person.

Respect went up 2x when I got it:

Team — Now that some of the chaos is over, I need to focus a bit more on the family — or at least give them the time they deserve. To that, I am going to try the below schedule. Of course, doesn’t apply to emergencies/time sensitive things but if you could help me out (remove my anxiety) I would be incredibly grateful.

8am - 5pm — 100% available

5pm - 8:30pm — radio silent (going to try no electronics)

8:30 onward — will catch up on emails/texts/calls, etc.

I’m just trying to be present with the family. There will be occasions when we have a meeting run late or a call which is totally fine. I can communicate this so it’s ok if we have a meeting that starts late — this is just a general guideline.

Feel free to ping me with any concerns about the above — obviously when I’m traveling I’m always available and again call with emergencies.

Directions to my fellow clueless male friends on how to express...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:15:17 -0800

Directions to my fellow clueless male friends on how to express love this Valentine’s Day.

The Time for Parallel Entrepreneurs

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:28:01 -0800

The “parallel entrepreneur” idea has been around for a long time — since at least Edison. Even in technology, it’s been around since the beginning of the commercial Internet and even before.

But it seems to be intensifying now.

With betaworks, Science, Obvious, and others, some great entrepreneurs are making more than one thing at a time. They’re also investing while they build, and being flexible on the ownership and corporate structure for the products and companies they count as affiliates. Why?

The obvious: finding a new product’s market keeps getting less expensive. No need to commit to a single instantiation of how your product must be if you can try dozens of meaningfully different variations and get real user data. The Lean Startup movement has only accelerated this. Now, I’m side-stepping a lot of valid questions (some discussed in this wonderful Branch thread) about how to balance focus with the create-lots-of-things-in-parallel world.

Maybe less obvious:

The lines between products and companies are blurring. It used to be a product was owned by a company, and a company had one or more products — that was it. Now, with APIs, open source tools, products being launched before companies are formed, this rigid one-to-many mapping has broken, in a good way. The company itself is an old institution, it works well for many things (clarifying ownership and accountability) and less so for others (shepherding the messiness of new creation).

The professional divide between “operator” and “investor” is dissolving. Most entrepreneurs I know also invest in startups. Most full-time investors I know were previously operators. Many great talents I respect now have some-of-this-some-of-that professions (a fund that also builds startups, a side gig as a partner in a venture fund, etc.). Big venture firms now have substantial operating practices that recruit, market, design and do other day-to-day tasks once reserved for their portfolio companies. I do sometimes hear people saying “being an investor is a truly different set of skills from being an entrepreneur” — that may be true, but it is becoming less so every day.

There are natural reasons why both investing and operating is a good thing to do. Great operators allocate resources to different tasks — one of the most important resources being capital. Great investors have a deep understanding of the fabric of how stuffs get built.

Talent is getting more sophisticated, so companies can now recruit on messages other than “here’s our product vision.” A single emotionally (or financially) compelling hypothesis is still a great recruiting tool, especially for drawing the talent that likes to work on things where they feel a sense of purpose (the best talent!). But there are other recruiting tools: force of personality (or better, reputation) of an entrepreneur can really work now. And the evolving notion of a career — as a portfolio of activities vs. a succession of full-time jobs — means that talent is happy to pop in and pop out on projects in different and uncertain phases. This blurriness of professional affiliation is a real positive for parallel entrepreneurs.

The cost of specialists — and their value — keeps rising. Whether its A/B testing, acquisition marketing, SEO, not to mention software engineering — there are now phenomenally wise experts in each of these areas (and plenty of snake oil salespeople, of course). The right expert is worth it, but expensive, and may not be needed full time — so much easier to justify across multiple products. (This is a point Mike Jones of Science made in that Branch thread.)

Early-stage consumer products have become so competitive, that the “lottery” effect of finding a winner is becoming more pronounced. It’s just so hard to find a new vein that isn’t yet tapped. Early stage products, today, are a Plinko game.

That said, as with anything, true greatness may require that focus thing. I’ll leave that debate to… others, another time, something other than right now. Can’t focus enough to write that part up :)

Why I Liked Working for News Corp.

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:24:00 -0800

For longer than I worked anywhere else, I worked at News Corp. — and, with so much ink and so many pixels spilled saying this and that about the company, I thought I’d just add one closing note on my experience there. It was wonderful. At the risk of getting flamed, I was grateful to work there, and learned a tremendous amount.

Why?

The company gives its people room to do what they think best. I ran IGN for five years, and in that time felt my team had complete freedom to launch the products we thought best, kill the products we thought needed to die, partner with anyone we chose, and so on. We felt on the hook for our financial performance, but free to decide our own plans on how to achieve that performance. This was especially true for taking risky bets — zero feeling that one shouldn’t, praise when bets worked.

There wasn’t much nonsense. Whatever one part of the company might have been experiencing (and there was always something popping somewhere), we continued our work. I spent relatively little time making files ending in .PPT, I don’t think I ever got invited to serve on any committee, and generally my time was spent doing real work. Communication was informal and trusting.

There’s a sense of building to something more. It’s really hard to describe this one, but I never felt it was “just a job” or “just a company.” I also never felt any pressure to confirm, ideologically or politically, or in any other way — just to do my best work, and try to help our audiences understand and enjoy their world. A collegiality emerged out of those of us working for News, across different countries and industries, some with the company for five weeks and some for fifty years.

Rupert. Could write a whole book here, and others have. I won’t say more other than that I so appreciated seeing him in action.

It wasn’t perfect, and of course all big organizations develop nutty dysfunctions, but it worked well most of the time.

I don’t think I’m the only one who felt this way. Just in the world of digital, look at all the people who took a step forward after working at News or are still there: Jeff Berman who just joined the (no-relation) BermanBraun today, Mike Jones and Peter Pham of Science, Twitter’s Adam Bain, Gravity’s Steve Pearman and Amit Kapur, Gogobot’s Travis Katz, Bleacher Report’s Brian Grey, Rovio’s Andrew Stalbow, Jorge Espinel, Jason Hirschhorn, Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson of course, Jon Miller, Jeremy Philips, and I’m sure many more will occur to me and they’ll email me to say I left them out. Yeah, you too.

Doing Nothing

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 09:01:17 -0800

Since the end of summer, I have been blessed to be “doing nothing.” I left my day job at IGN, and have had the modern luxury of choosing how to spend my time. I am grateful for that.

This is what I learned. Mostly about myself. I think it will apply (at least to me) whether I have a day job or not.

1. Hang a “beware of dogs” sign.

Tell everyone, straight up, how you spend your time and why. “Can we have coffee, since you’re Doing Nothing these days?” “No, I’m trying to spend more time with my family and on my own stuff — sorry. Talk again in three months?” That works. People don’t mind. (I even set an autoreply that said “I’m only checking email once a day for the foreseeable future…” and I only turned it off because Gmail kept re-sending it, annoyingly, to the people who email me most.)

2. You are how you spend your time. Corollary: you are not who you think you are.

All those “I’ll do that when I have time” stuff on the side project list? Nonsense.

When I started the “Doing Nothing” phase, I thought I’d spend my days with family, puttering around the house. Fixing stuff? Doing the magical side projects. Learning to code. I didn’t know what, really. And, for a few weeks, I did just that. I spent afternoon after afternoon with my kids, a couple of date nights a week with my wife. I turned down basically all the inbound “let’s hang” asks, much as I like meeting good people.

Those few weeks were great. Then, things evolved. I started spending more time on one work-y thing or another. And these days, I basically leave the house in the morning, come back at the end of the afternoon (though I often pick my son up from school), have meetings all day more or less, and jump on email late at night. Why? Because…

3. I must really love what I do. Proof: Given the freedom to spend my time any way I like, I keep doing it.

A big part of it is OUYA, the open Android game console where I’m now chairman — I just <3 it. I’ve spent much more time on it than I expected. The team there makes it a joy.

But the bigger part is I love the things I get to do in my profession — talk to entrepreneurs, think about how to make the world a bit better, and sometimes much better, learn new ideas and skills, and watch (or sometimes make!) invention happen. The action junkie in me is in heaven.

My behavior mystifies some people around me: I have no day job and yet, there I am, “working.”

This said, I feel a much greater sense of balance and self-control than I ever did when I had a day job. I’m the one deciding when to work and on what terms. I appreciate my life (including work) so much more when I’m anchored by being present with my family and enjoying myself.

4. Ruts are good.

The word “routine” is almost an insult. We say you’re “stuck in a rut.” What I learned about myself is that, without a daily pattern, I falter. I don’t take care of my health as well, I’m not as productive, I waste time hand-wringing on “what’s my plan for today.” It’s helps me to have a skeleton routine. (I wish I were disciplined enough to create my own routine, but I’m not.)

All those vehicles stuck in a rut? They know where they are going and can go pretty fast. Embrace the rut.

I wrote this all mostly for me, but maybe others find it useful. Soon, I’ll start a new day job, and I actually think most of these lessons will still apply.

Samsung pop-up store in Tokyo. Notice, zero Samsung branding

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 12:58:58 -0800

Samsung pop-up store in Tokyo. Notice, zero Samsung branding

Learning to Code: Are Humans Required?

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 10:25:01 -0800

I’m learning to code. Slowly. I can make a simple app that does something just for me, like scheduling text message reminders or displaying all the covers of digital books I’ve bought (gonna need that “virtual bookshelf” or I’ll forget everything I’ve read). I entered one of my old company’s hack days just to see if I could, and was the novelty entrant (“look, he coded on an iPad!”).

For a few years now, I’ve believed that coding could be the next mass profession — and is certainly a general skill, like writing, that almost every role will require to some degree. It’s a good, good thing this coding. So I’ve gotten involved with organizations that teach coding in one way or another. (For example, I’m on the board of CodeNow, a nonprofit that teaches underprivileged kids to code.)

One of the questions I’ve been thinking about is whether you can learn to code entirely from online tools, or if you need some human teaching. Fact is, there are many self-taught coders who learned from books and websites. And now, with new and better online services like Codecademy that make it a joy to take your first steps toward learning to code, maybe you can just do it all by your lonesome, or with an online community — no “warm bodies” required.

In my own experience, that got me part of the way, but I’ve needed a mentor. I was lucky to find a talented tutor who screenshares with me once every week or two and guides me. It’s invaluable to have that gentle encouragement, someone to cut through all the Googling of a syntax issue, help me think out loud on how I’m approaching something, or invent the right sized project to teach me some new skills without overwhelming me. If I were putting in more time on my own, my tutor’s mentorship would be even more useful, since I’d be getting stuck even more often.

I now can’t imagine how people walk the full path from “hey, maybe I can learn to code” to “I can work successfully as a developer” without learning from other human beings, live and in person. I’m sure it’s possible, but I just don’t see how.

So then I turned the question around: if you maximized your access to incredible mentors, how much faster could you learn?

Much faster. I’ve been following one program here in the Bay Area called Dev Bootcamp, a nine-week code immersion program that produces “world class beginners” who can (and do!) get hired as developers. They focus on putting their students in a state of learning flow for as much of the time as possible, and in-person mentorship is one of the most important ingredients. I’ve spoken with their students a few times and the environment is always electric.

Dev Bootcamp’s methods have been so successful, they’ve spawned a number of programs operating in a similar vein — Hackbright Academy, Catalyst, and App Academy among others I’m sure. Dev Bootcamp is the grandparent to them all. (And there are similar programs in other cities, like The Starter League in Chicago, though I haven’t had a chance to visit them yet.)

The full-time, in-person programs give students an enormous advantage: students have committed mentors, are free from distractions, and (maybe most important) they have each other. They’ve been selected for, among other qualities, motivation. And motivation is a contagion. So it’s no surprise they can go from zero to hire-able in just a few weeks — though of course they are still beginners and have much to learn. (Don’t we all.)

I’m looking forward to seeing how these programs unfold in the coming years. Meanwhile, if you’re hiring Rails developers and your organization wants to embrace world class beginners, send someone to Dev Bootcamp’s next hiring day — it happens to be this Friday.

How game development hasn't changed over the years -- or has

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:51:22 -0700

A few weeks ago, I read Jordan Mechner’s journal he wrote while creating Prince of Persia, from 1985-1993. Of course I remember loving the finished product, so reading his thoughts as a maker deepened that.

The thought that kept nagging at me: in some ways, things haven’t changed that much. Or, maybe, Jordan was ahead of his time. A few themes:

His life wasn’t singularly focused, it was a portfolio. We tend to think that inventing something brilliant is about dropping everything else in your life. In Jordan’s case, he was torn about how much effort to devote to his game vs. his film, how much time to devote to work, and his use of time ebbed and flowed. Of course, there were periods where he went into crunch mode, but that seemed to be the exception not the rule.

The agony! He worried. He was doubtful. He was unsure how to handle situations. He was at the mercy, at times, of others. But he kept going, made his best choices, persevered — and it worked. As is now well known, many successes spring from just that agony. (That said, he also had an ability to not take himself too too seriously — and seemed to be able to get some distance from time to time.)

Incredible things can be accomplished alone. Working as a solo creator, he was able to bring characters and stories to life that a team might not have been as capable of doing. He invented new animation techniques for (what we then called) computer games, and the finished work showed master craftsmanship.

A great game is a study in pacing. He balances big themes (the length and difficulty of levels) with minute details (how an enemy should fall when pushed off a ledge). He worries about whether the story has a flow to it.

Elegance — make every detail count. He obsesses over a mouse (not the kind plugged into a keyboard). Every element of the game does work to advance the experience. (I’m not sure if he edited his journal, but it seems there are few if any ideas that hit the cutting room floor.)

All that said, some things do seem to have changed… Jordan complains about “big” 40-hour weeks. Maybe 2012 is a little different… anyway, I’m looking forward to his remake of another Bahat family childhood favorite, Karateka.

How is Larry King like a game developer?

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:54:56 -0700

Power to the makers. Today, Larry King launched his new direct-to-the-audience show online with his new company with Jon Housman, Ora TV. (Larry’s first interview is with Seth MacFarlane…)

Larry joins Louis CK, Radiohead, and others who have taken their gig direct to the people…

Larry is already an established brand. He could have exclusively gone to his fans from his own website (as Louis CK did), but he chose something new. He’s distributing on Hulu. There are noteworthy aspects to that choice, which may be the best of both worlds of “going solo” and working with a gatekeeper.

Larry’s distribution isn’t exclusive — he still controls his own relationship with his viewers through his website at Ora.tv.
Retaining promotion — he still has the benefit of having millions learn about his new show when they show up on the homepage of Hulu.
Format control — he isn’t constrained by rigid slots to fit into for an electronic program guide on TV. He retains the ability to adapt the show as it unfolds.
Distributed distribution — what I mean is that Hulu’s participation isn’t limited to Hulu.com. Their video player is powering the experience of his new show on Ora’s website.

This should make, over time, for a more authentic experience where the content adapts to the flexibility of the web. But also one that’s instantly been exposed to millions — maybe millions more than he could have reached on his own. (And there seem to be more comments flowing to Hulu than to Larry’s own site.)

I’m a big fan of freedom for creators to choose distribution partners, when it suits them (and the distribution partner). I see the full range of choices in games: some, like Notch, choose to go direct to gamers. And then eventually they move their games to other platforms (like Xbox), once they have proof of a phenomenal product. Some, like Blizzard, remain exclusively on open platforms like the PC. Some, like Team Meat, choose the benefit of launching with a console distribution partner.

Over time, the openness of distribution means more creative experimentation for the makers. Will Larry’s show be better on Ora than it was on CNN? Maybe, time will tell. Was Louis CK funnier when he went direct? Dunno. But I’m a big believer that over time, more maker = more better. (It’s one of the reasons I invested in OUYA, a game console that gives gamemakers more choice over where they put their content…)

I’m excited to see, in TV, where Larry takes it. Congratulations on shipping your first direct-to-the-people show, Larry.

Learn to code all the things... back CodeNow to teach those most in need.

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:17:54 -0700

Learn to code all the things... back CodeNow to teach those most in need.

A new kind of game console, built for creators… OUYA is a...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 06:05:00 -0700

A new kind of game console, built for creators…

OUYA is a new kind of game console, that I’m personally supporting. It is totally different from what’s out there, and I think even people who have every console will want this one, too: it is open to anyone who wants to make a game. (So if you’re learning how to code, something I care a lot about, this is the game console for you.) All the games on it will be free to play, and it will itself be inexpensive. It’s beautiful.

But it needs you… It just launched on Kickstarter.

Is hardware getting soft?

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:53:00 -0700

Everyone now knows how easy it’s become to launch a software startup. You can do it for virtually no capital, by just learning the skills of coding and using widely available infrastructure services. (Oh, and having superhuman determination.)

But what some are beginning to realize is that the same is becoming true of hardware. It’s getting easier to do a hardware startup. With Jawbone, Sifteo, Pebble, Nest, Makerbot, Dropcam, and many others (I invested in OUYA, the new Android game console — in part to learn more about this), it’s clear a movement is on.

Some of the fundamentals that are pushing this are about helping startups make hardware with lower fixed costs. Less expensive, more flexible manufacturing tools (so you can prototype and do small batches, go to places like TechShop to try stuff out, like a hardware PDP-1). Availability of funds (with Kickstarter, of course, and VCs becoming more hardware-familiar). Ability to prove demand early (Kickstarter again!). Communities of support and knowledge sharing, like Lemnos Labs, which I visited a couple of weeks ago — an incubator in San Francisco focused exclusively on hardware startups.

So is it as easy to do a gadget startup as a software startup? It’s certainly easier than it was when startups like Peek and MusicGremlin launched, or even Boxee.

But we have a little ways to go: in software, we have the “no phone call required” startup. You can incorporate, code up your service, register for all the needed hosting and technology services, and launch to customers. All by dealing 100% with automated, public, open services — in many cases, free services. In hardware, this isn’t the case — yet. While there are services like Circuithub that will let you design and make a single circuitboard, and Ponoko that will let you create and sell a single unit of a physical item, and of course many 3D printers… I still don’t think there is a way to put all the pieces together and create a gadget in a unit of one without picking up the phone —a “Heroku for hardware.” If I’m mistaken, someone let me know? Otherwise, someone make one?

P.S. The rewards to creating a hardware startup are enormous. They create real demand right away, since people are more accustomed to paying for atoms than bits. They have the joy of a tangible product in your hands. They may be harder to replicate (though that advantage may erode over time). And, of course, since many of them also depend on a tight integration with software, those who love working with bits get to play, too.

Just another day at the office (Taken with Instagram)

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:29:40 -0700

Just another day at the office (Taken with Instagram)

matt nguyen: Roy Bahat Speaks at DBC

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 19:19:18 -0700

matt nguyen: Roy Bahat Speaks at DBC:

matt-nguyen:

While most of the day was spent doing independent study, the class received a guest lecture from Roy Bahat, the CEO of IGN. For most of the lecture, Roy expressed his view on the current status of education and the conventional wisdom regarding recruiting. Skeptical of the “traditional ways of…

Don't Be Apple

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 08:46:04 -0700

Even if you could be.

I just finished reading Adam Lashinsky’s book on Apple; for the record, a much more illuminating read than that biography of Jobs. (But I’m a “systems matter” guy — much more a fan of The Wire than The Sopranos.)

What struck me is how few lessons there were to take, as someone running a company that makes a digital software service. So many of Apple’s ways seem to not be universally applicable — perfect adaptations to a hardware consumer products business working at Apple’s scale, but potentially disastrous for either a startup hardware company or any software company.

Secrecy, perfecting a product before its release, hitting a big brand campaign right on day one, etc.

No wonder Apple’s software products are generally mediocre (cf. mapping release at WWDC, Game Center, buggy operating systems, iTunes, App Store, etc.). Maybe this is one of the ways in which the culture of the company will shift over time.

And make no mistake, Tim Cook is already bringing change to the company. In a he-didn’t-say-very-much-otherwise interview at the D conference, Tim Cook did shift Apple’s stance on a meaningful market: games. He admitted that more people buy an iPod for games than for music, a statement you probably would never have heard from Steve Jobs (never much of a promoter of games as a use for his products).

Tim Cook: We’re already in gaming now in a big way—people buy iPod Touches more for games than for music allthingsd.com/20120529/live-… #atd10
— All Things D (@allthingsd) May 30, 2012

Personal note: I was disappointed that Apple didn’t extend applications to Apple TV at this last WWDC; it’s time for that.

All these are little, and maybe therefore unfair, examples of how even Apple’s prowess has its limits. This is a powerful lesson: you can be the greatest in the world, by selecting the things to be great at. You can, in fact, continue to be awful at many things — even as Apple — and everything turns out OK.

As the most valuable company in the world, it’s strange to say that Apple could become more universally successful — they certainly don’t need to be, financially or otherwise. But, for the sake of the products I care about, and the example they set to others, I hope they are.

Game Consoles Are Dead. Long Live Game Consoles.

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:20:13 -0700

Game Consoles Are Dead. Long Live Game Consoles.:

A piece that Scott Mucci, IGN’s head of research, and I wrote that appeared in the Huffington Post today.

I am in Seoul right now, my first visit ever. The car I’m...

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:34:12 -0700

I am in Seoul right now, my first visit ever. The car I’m in has a GPS with a live traffic feed showing which bridges are jammed.

The police officer who learned to code: one of a kind, or first in a movement?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:56:25 -0700

In the press on the launch of a new shopping app called Smoopa, you might have noticed a remarkable fact: one of the developers, Derek Langton, only learned to code a year and a half ago, and before that he was an 18-year veteran of the Massachusetts State Police.

I met Derek and his business partner (and husband), Mendel Chuang, the other day, and heard Derek’s story – perfectly reported since then by Kim-Mai Cutler. She captured all his tips for learning to code. I love that he mostly used YouTube videos from kids, not educational materials produced by professionals. She also nailed his fundamental insights about the main ingredient – motivation.

But I found myself asking one big question: is Derek an anomaly, or could there be millions more like him?

Yes, he had some generally relevant, and uncommon, background — Derek came from a family with a technical bent (his dad repaired VCRs), took a BASIC course in high school, had some trade school, and was always tinkering with technology. There were early signs, he told me, of him doing engineering-like tasks even in his work in the police. “I was the person automating payroll in Excel.” But is that all it takes?

And, true, he did need extraordinary motivation (“I saw the world was going to change”) to piece it all together. But most of his learning was about how to solve a detail. He wasn’t learning rocket science, he was repairing a 21st century VCR.

As time passes, that learning, today scattered in a thousand corners of the Internet, will become easier to find and use. More people will grow up familiar with how technology works, less fearful of it. The programming frameworks will become more powerful, and abstract (i.e., simpler). Maybe it won’t quite take Derek’s massive store of willpower, and then become much more accessible to millions.

So if Derek can code, can you?

Applications are due today for IGN’s Code-Foo program, where if you’re passionate about IGN and know how to code — even if you taught yourself, never worked a day in your life, and don’t have a degree — we’ll hire you.

(Side note: having more developers “trained” in this way may make for better teams, because they’ll bring different approaches to bear than traditionally-trained engineers. Derek said, “I build it and then break it 10 times,” gradually watching a consumer-grade app emerge. It will be interesting to see the companies built by this new generation of recent-learner hackers.)

BD is the new SEO

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:47:00 -0700

Or, the return of the human.

There was (once upon a time, in the early 2000’s) a generation of Internet products built on the premise that if you mastered Google’s search rankings, you could grow traffic. Services like IMDb, About.com, Wikipedia, etc. provided value to their users, but were also able to accelerate their growth by playing the SEO game. Making your Internet service findable was, in some ways, as important as making your service great.

Roger McNamee and Mike Maples wrote on some fundamental ways today’s Internet is changing – and these changes have real implications for how new services get found.

They point out that the iPhone, by taking us away from the SEO-driven world of URLs and websites, with their freely available but uneven user experiences, “did more than change the smartphone market: Its success serendipitously changed the architecture of the Internet.” And they talk about the growing power of brands and content in this world – which would be great if it turns out to be true (and I agree it will).

If making a great Internet service is only as important as the number of people who discover that service, how exactly will new digital services get found in this new world?

Search won’t come first, as Roger and Mike point out. There is already a new generation of Internet services that was born without ever really needing to master search: everyone’s i.e.-of-the-moment Pinterest, Angry Birds, Flixster (where I got to observe the action for a period), the social networks themselves, Tumblr, and many others. (Though of course we’ll all still have to practice good SEO.)

So how do the new kids get discovered? Some think social media optimization will replace search engine optimization – and I think that’s part of the answer, but it will go further. Some of it flows from the nature of the platforms and devices that are connected to the new Internet. The keyboard is no longer the primary input device, and so text (and search based on text strings) declines with it.

There are advantages and disadvantages to the SEO era: on the one hand, it’s a fair system in that the rules apply equally to everyone and it is tough to game through status and relationships; on the other hand it’s an algorithm that rewards sites that learn the tricks without necessarily providing other value. Quirky sites with occasionally-middling content can thrive. (Google “buy a lawn chair” and see what you get.)

In the search era, you get websites with millions of users who arrive predominantly through search, and who never form much of an ongoing relationship – or sometimes even realize what site they are on. (I call this the “if you’re so big how come I never heard of you” problem.)

In the next era, dominated by apps and (as Roger and Mike think) HTML5 web experiences, it’s different. There’s an entirely new set of skills required to get to #1 in an app store (or the App Store). Of course, a great service helps – and is still the single most important factor. But copycats can thrive (at least until they are taken down), as can masters of the viral loopholes left by platform creators (which are much bigger than the imperfections of the search algorithms), or those who find marketing vendors who help them work the system with incentivized installs and other methods. And, of course, black hat techniques still work, for those willing to use them (like the bot farms found downloading iOS apps en masse a few months ago to boost App Store rankings).

Maybe the single most significant difference, though, is that in the next era, you can get discovered merely by having a strong relationship with one of the platforms of discovery: Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Android, maybe even the carriers and television manufacturers again, etc. You couldn’t do this in the search era. These platform companies pick early partners to test and premiere their new services, humans at these companies choose apps to feature, etc.

That’s why, in the new world, business development (BD) may take the place of SEO. This could be great for companies with well-known brands based on a quality service.

A relationship with the platform can get you early access to the APIs and other technical services (see the early partners for Facebook’s Open Graph, for example), the PR boost of being first, and the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the new distribution systems. That’s awful for new services with great content but no way to get an “in” – but it’s great for wonderful brands who might otherwise have struggled with the strange world of search algorithms.

Could coding be the next mass profession?

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:15:34 -0800

Like farming was in the 17th century, factory work during the industrial revolution, construction during the Great Depression, and manufacturing after World War II. Better, because writing code is a creative act which can be done with or without a traditional (antiquated?) office-based job, and can create enormous personal and economic value.

Most young people start in jobs that don’t have much of a future. Most don’t get higher education – only a third get any advanced degree. In the past, students who missed out on a higher education learned vocational skills – but this stuttered as we moved to an information economy. Today, students without a higher education generally enter service professions or trades where employment, if they can get it, doesn’t offer much career growth.

There is a new opportunity emerging for young people to do productive, entrepreneurial, satisfying work: they can learn to code. Code isn’t that hard to start to learn – one outsourcing firm takes people with no training and makes them full-time Java programmers in 3 months. (Of course, mastery takes tremendous talent and craft.) Coding isn’t expensive – with netbooks, cloud hosting and storage, and open source software. Beyond a certain point, coders are self-taught, and can continue to advance their skills.

They’re handing out Gutenberg printing presses out there: with services like Treehouse (I’m a dues-paying member) and Codecademy (and its expertly-timed year of code), countless university courses free online, Google Code University, the warm embrace of Stack Overflow, in-person courses like Dev Bootcamp, summer camps for kids, even the promise of a one-day result with Decoded (the six-minute abs of learning to code), and great organizations like CodeNow (which I’ve been supporting) reaching out to teach code in underserved communities. I’m sure I’ve left many out.

Yet very few high school students learn to code. Almost no high schools teach code as part of the curriculum. Though of course they should — code is literacy, not (just) a specialist skill. And kids can get started coding early. Many students who would be terrific at coding, a creative, tinkering act, also may not thrive in institutional (school) environments.

There is real demand for coders – even despite overall unemployment – so learning to code produces rewards quickly. Online marketplaces like oDesk and Elance hire starting programmers at rates as high as $15-20 an hour or more. Learning to code is one of the best paths to entrepreneurship. Coding also offers students the joy of creation and mastery of a complex skill. Code may one day be a basic workplace expectation – like emailing, or “proficient in Word.” Young people are also willing to learn: coding now has a brand. The kid who writes an iPhone or Android app, these days, gets the girl (or boy!).

It might even be possible to do more than just learn to code – but also to become an elite coder – without necessarily going to college. We are in the early days of teaching code as a profession. Most academic training is focused on teaching students theory, not practice. (One Ivy League computer science program only required one course where students actually write code.) Imagine if students who might not otherwise even attend college could become elite coders.

In the U.S., the STEM line of thinking is about creating the next generation of scientists. In computing, this is even reflected in what we call the study of programming — computer “science.” We could be doing something different (and complementary), teaching students to be makers, not scientists: creating the next generation who can hack, beget, get paid right away, and maybe become entrepreneurs. Learning this would make the high school experience more rewarding, because it would have an immediate result. (I went to a high school with a vocational tradition, Stuyvesant in New York, and wish I had more courses like the architectural drafting class I took for a year.)

I’ve become personally passionate about this idea over the last couple of years. I think it could be a path to helping fix a lot of what doesn’t work right now: our ways of teaching students, powering our economy’s future, and making work a creative and fulfilling way to spend time.

I’m sure there are many more out there working on this — if you’re one of them, hit me up and let’s find a way to make common cause. And if you think I’m crazy, tell me why.