Archive for December, 2006

Dealing with failure

Published December 26th, 2006 in Entrepreneurship and Thoughts. 5 Comments

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This year has been a life changing year for me. I really feel like I’ve grown a lot and learned some valuable lessons. I’ve learned how to learn. How to seek out knowledge and how to intergrate it into my life. Some of it requires the ability to have blind faith, to read something and be non-judgemental, to sit at a table and try to have an open mind.

A big part of this year has been admitting that I really don’t have an open mind. That I am prejudiced and judgemental by nature. That my life and past experiences cloud my ability to see things as they are or more importantly to see things as other people see them. Of the many lessons I’ve learned the most important for me this year has been how I deal with failure. If you’ve read my book you know this has been a major issue for me. I’m extremely competitive and don’t take losing very well. The change in how I deal with failure has been simple.

I now view the outcome of things not in terms of failure or success, but as desired results and undesired results. When things don’t work out for me instead of punishing myself for failing I say “OK, that’s not the result I expected” and then I investigate why it didn’t work the way I wanted, then I try again. If I’m unable to convince someone to see things the way I see them I don’t get upset, instead I ask “OK, why didn’t they agree with me? How could I have explained it differently and do I really understand what they were thinking”

It makes perfect sense actually. If you are writing a computer program that doesn’t work do you give up and simply say “I failed!” or do you try to re-engineer the program? Lets program ourselves and try to re-engineer our thinking. How we interact with people, how we face challenges, these are all things we can control within ourselves. This change in dealing with failure has been a shift from being outcome dependant to process dependant. Now I realize that everything I do whether the results are desired or undesired is a chance to improve how I do those things.

Now that I’m process dependant I’m more willing to take risk. I don’t care if in the end the results aren’t what I expected, because I enjoy the process of doing and the process of learning. I have removed the word “failure” from my vocabulary and it has greatly improved my life. You should too. There is no such thing as failure, only desired and undesired results. You have 25K other words in your vocabulary. You’re not going to miss this one.

New Years in Japan, join me?

Published December 25th, 2006 in Japan and Travel. 7 Comments

I’ve made a last minute decision to spend New Years in Japan. It was a tough choice, Uruguay, Miami or sleeping in my apartment in NYC were all very close contenders.
I’ve also decided to become an elf. Anyone want to join me in the celebration in Japan?

What you should know about me. TAG.

Published December 21st, 2006 in Misc. 3 Comments

So, seems like I’ve been caught up in a small game of internet tag. Started by Jeff Pulver. I’ve met Jeff a few times and spoken at his conferences a number of times, but its taken probably 12 degrees of seperation to get to me, I was tagged by Brian at Comparison Engines. I follow his blog, but had no idea he read mine. So now I have to share five things about myself you probably didn’t know.

    I spend way too much time and money in nightclubs.
    I like wearing snakeskin and exotic boots and recently started a collection.
    I’m more religious than I let on, but believe that religion should be a personal journey.
    I’ve always dreamed of being a fighter pilot.

Now I have to tag five other people. Hiawatha Bray, Chris Sacca, Shinichiro Fukushige, Marko Ahtisaari, David Jacobs.

Big hairy audacious goal

Published December 20th, 2006 in gather at. 1 Comment

This is not truly a BHAG. But its something to aim for. The Gather.at Big Hairy Audacious Goal for 2007 will be “1 Million events around the world” by this time next year. Its not easy; in fact our first new release won’t be until after the Christmas and New Year holidays, by all accounts the busiest season of the year for parties and events.

We should have a counter on the site with the number events organizered. I wonder how many events are organized on eVite a month?

Looking for a UI Designer

Published December 14th, 2006 in gather at. 1 Comment

As we prepare to migrate to Version 1 (we should have a cool code name for this) of gather.at we really need to take the user interface to the next phase of evolution. Do you know a good user interface designer? If so, have them contact me.

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