I just read an interesting blog post by a Googler named David Wurtz. Summed up, he says that smart people should do stupid stuff. The point is that you don't have to tackle the biggest challenges to be successful; you can find something more down-to-earth and find lots of success working with that instead. A quote:

Although I endorse those  who attempt to spend their time defying gravity (the world needs these people), I simply think students simply forget that the real world is not graded by professors with untamed beards.  Students are largely unaware that they could realize just as much success, or perhaps even more success, if they point their incisive intellect at simpler, "stupider" problems. So why don't they?

The thing is, while there's always a place for another scientist hunting for the Higgs boson, or diplomats striving for world peace, we can't neglect those things that are closer to home for all of us. And ultimately, it's those simpler, more local, "stupider" problems that affect us most directly.

You don't need the fame and fortune of solving a big hairy problem to be a success; you just need to solve any problem we all face in the real world.

I've probably not done the post any justice with this write-up; go read for yourself.

Cover via Amazon

Last night, I attended DemoCamp Toronto 24, my first ever DemoCamp event. Shocking, I know, that it took so long for me to attend one. The night started off with an interview of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv about his experiences, as part of the tour for his new book, Crush It! (which, by the way, was being given for free to attendees.) After Gary's interview, we had a break for pizza and networking, after which there were six demos, spanning from GridCentric through to Cadmus.

I'll put down my notes from Gary's interview later on, but let's start off with the demos.

Like I mentioned, GridCentric opened up the demo part of the night. They demonstrated their product, a hypervisor for clusters, which could be summed up as "fork in a cloud". And when I say fork, I mean in the UNIX way; you can quite literally fork new virtual servers/clusters like you can in UNIX with processes. Very interesting.

This was followed up by dataTO, a community site where people can suggest new data sources for the City of Toronto to provide as part of its open data initiative. It's kind of a cross between Stack Overflow and Reddit self-posts. The people behind the site aren't just getting things running and building connections with the city, though: they are looking at ways of making the code behind the site usable by groups in other cities as well.

The third demo of the night was 5 Blocks Out. This is a service with a lot of potential, for people who aren't just looking at virtual communities but their own local, physical ones too. You can meet new people, and find out where to go for anything in the city (and your own neighbourhood). Right now, it's mostly restricted to about 200 neighbourhoods in central and west Toronto, but the duo behind it are looking at expanding the service as quality permits.

The next demo was for Datamartist, a great tool for quickly and easily transforming and managing data from various sources. It's a GUI based tool that serves as a "data scratchpad", making life easier for the IT people who have to get the proper data to the proper people, and take other data and stick it in the appropriate slots. It's pretty pricy for individuals, but at $750 per license, it's still a lot less expensive than its 6-figure competitors from Microsoft, SAP, et al.

Following that up was Eqentia. This is a news aggregation service that deals with semantic matches and topic based aggregation, rather than the simple matches and feed/service based aggregation we've been dealing with in the past.

Last but not least was Cadmus. Their service provides a way to find what's trending amongst your friends. They primarily handle Twitter sources, but FriendFeed and RSS are also supported.

My favourite demos were 5 Blocks Out and Cadmus. The 5 Blocks Out service shows an incredible amount of potential, and looks to be a great way of becoming engaged with your neighbourhood. I can't wait for them to expand out into Durham Region so I can make good use of it. As for Cadmus, well, I follow over 600 people on Twitter now, and it can be pretty hectic trying to figure out what the top stories are amongst those people.

Now, for the notes I wrote during Gary's interview:

• We are ahead of the game and don't know it
• What is my motivation?
• Don't read about it -- do it!
• Analytics, SEO, etc. = bullshit. Good feelings = THE GOAL
• We underestimate the ability to appreciate effort
• Always try
• Need to be/own yourself -- don't have to be someone else.
• "The big game is patience."
• Passion is required to have patience
• Problem is people chasing cash, rather than their passions
• Motivation: Desperation trumps innovation
• Always a lot to learn
• Don't be scared of having multiple passions
• "Create tunnels" to connect with others -- share more interests than just the primary
• Cost of entry nowadays is sweat equity, not money
• "The long tail is longer than you think" -- wider space means more winners
• Don't sweat what you can't change, but monitor it anyway
• "Five year plans are impossible" -- things change, you have to be able to adapt immediately
• Key to stickiness: Quality content and great customer/consumer service
• Caring is MORE IMPORTANT than cost
• "We're going back to small-town rules"
• Word-of-mouth drives caring & consumer expectation
• Expectations change, we adapt fast
• Massive culture shift re brands & caring

All in all, it was a great and informative evening. Many thanks to Gary for speaking to us, to David Crow and Saul Colt for organizing the night, and to Rogers Ventures and StartupNorth for sponsoring the event.

The next DemoCamp Toronto happens on January 26, 2010, and you can bet that I'll be there.

Image via Wikipedia

Something I wanted to do last year was get a Coffee and Code group up and running in Oshawa. Nothing much came of it, unfortunately, thanks to a lack of viable venues. However, a lot can change in eight months, and I'm again evaluating places which could host such an event.

I'm giving myself all of next month and half of January to figure out a good location. I've a couple candidates in mind, but nothing is absolute. No set date, no finalized details, nothing until I've figured out a good place for hosting a Coffee and Code out here in Durham Region. I've learnt my lesson.

A few months ago, I got the idea to use my Taskerrificbusiness cards as a way to invite people to use the service while still in private beta. It was pretty simple... Set up an invite code for an event, prepare a bunch of label stickers with the invite code on them, and then put those labels on the back of the cards I'd hand out at the event. Pretty simple.

Unfortunately, I've not seen any real uptake of this. I'd point out the invite code after telling people about Taskerrific, let them know to use it when signing up. But very few people actually bothered signing up, and then most of them didn't bother using the invite code I gave them on the card. Instead, they went through the dialog for getting an invite code in the first place. Kind of disappointing.

I wonder if the problem is poor execution, or if the idea itself just doesn't cut it. The labels include the line "Invite code:" but besides that and the code itself, there's nothing else. If it weren't for the fact I write out the labels by hand, I'd include a short link to Taskerrific's sign up page. (Perhaps that's the problem).

I think that this is a great idea for services still in private beta, but looking for testers. If you're in this position, give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

Image by coldacid via Flickr

It took long enough, but in my defence, I'm only one guy. But yeah, Taskerrific is up and in private beta, although it feels more like an alpha release to me.

Like I said on the Taskerrific blog, I'm going to be pushing weekly updates to the site for a while, then eventually going down to every other week as things settle in and functionality increases. Right now, the goal is to have a first draft of search pushed to the site before I go to the cottage for the long weekend, and teams functionality by the end of September.

At some point I also need to change from using CSS and tags for the main body layout to tables, to avoid the need for Javascript just to make the design work. (That is a horrible, horrible hack, and I'm still ashamed of it.) I know tables for layout are taboo, but I don't care. Call me when my layout works on CSS alone.

I need to work on monetization, too. Considering the self-employment program I'm currently in has income targets (I need to make minimum $750 by mid-December) it's important that I start getting ads sold, and quick. I'm working out rates, but they feel a bit steep for a brand-new service. So I might put up a donations box as well. I juts hope that I can hit the target to keep Taskerrific alive.

Anyway, go check it out. Let me know what you think. Even if you have to wait to get your invite code, it won't be too long (at this point, certainly under 24 hours, although if there's a lot of demand I'll need to start rationing). Have fun.