Sez : Dan Wilson     August 2, 2010 10:16 AM

Wally Kolcz is taking a very bold and selfless step. He's interested in creating a fun online virtual world for sick kids in Hospitals. He needs your help.

See, Pepsi have put up a challenge to fund good ideas. Anyone can vote on an idea. Each month, Pepsi awards funding to the ideas with the most votes.

Wally's idea is to make a web portal that allows kids, in children's hospital, who cannot leave the hospital, or sometimes their rooms, to play in a virtual world and enjoy games, do arts and crafts, get homework to keep up with their classes, and meet and befriend kids in their hospital or around the county.

I know a good idea when I see one, and lifting the spirits of sick kids is as noble as you can get. I'd like to ask for your help in promoting Wally's plan.

How to help

1. Visit http://www.refresheverything.com/mywindowproject
2. Vote for the idea (button on the left)

Simple, right? So, please go vote for http://www.refresheverything.com/mywindowproject

Sez : Dan Wilson     May 20, 2010 10:02 AM

I've been a conference attendee, speaker, advisory board member and organizer. Each of those four roles has taught me something. I'd like to share a little bit with you so you can make the most of your conference experience.

Point 1: Introduce yourself by name. A lot.

Introduce yourself by name to everyone. Even to people you know, or who you think should know you. The biggest opportunity you have at a conference is to network. The number 1 reason behind failed networking is your name. People may choose not to greet you or connect with you because they are embarassed they've forgot your name. No one will think you are weird if you say, "Hi, I'm Dan Wilson". (Unless your name ISN'T Dan Wilson, that is).

Point 2: Expect good things to happen, tolerate mistakes

As a conference attendee, you should expect a well run conference. However, you should also strive to be tolerant when things go wrong. The people behind the scenes have been busting their tails for months to coordinate a million little details and want you to have the best experience possible. If something goes wrong, it will get fixed. Especially if you are nice about it.

Point 3: Stop checking your emails

Sure, in a 1 hour presentation, there are plenty of opportunities for distraction. However, if you have your face buried in your email, you are missing out on something good. Email is asynchronous communication, leverage it!

Point 4: Be realistic about what you can learn

In a one hour session, you probably have the ability to remember 3 things on a surface level. Thus, take notes about what you are interested in so you can google later.

Point 5: Ask for slide decks

Pretty much every presenter will share their slide deck. Sometimes you'll remember great things from looking at the slides... this should augment, not supplant your own note taking.

Point 6: Give honest and fair feedback

As an attendee, you have the right to give feedback to speakers and conference organizers. This DOES include positive and negative feedback. While no one really likes negative feedback, professionals learn from it and want bare opinions. You paid to be there, you have the right to voice your opinions. Choose whichever medium you are comfortable with.

Point 7: Take a chance

For fun, attend a session you know nothing about. You might find something really interesting!

Point 8: Pitch in where you can

While conference organizers love feedback in any form, what they love most are people who will chip in and help. This could be as simple as folding T-Shirts or making an introduction to a new sponsor... Or just stopping by and saying how much you enjoy the conference.

Point 9: Make friends.

You've got plenty of opportunities to meet people who are interested in the sorts of things you are interested. Make friends, some of those friendships will be very valuable to you.

Point 10: Get plugged in

If you enjoyed the material and the environment, get into the stream. Join a local user group. If there is no local user group, start one. There is strength in numbers.

Have any pointers I missed? Share them in the comments!

Sez : Dan Wilson     March 5, 2010 8:15 AM

IgniteRaleigh was a smash success! A big thanks to Our Hash Tag LLC and Phonebooth.com for putting on a well run, creative event. A big thanks to M.C. Zach Ward (@zachward) for his skill in creating a fun, positive mood and keeping it going all night. He's a true professional.

As some of you know, I was very pleased to be chosen out of the herd to present at IgniteRaleigh 2 on Why Your Health Is The Most Important Thing You'll Ignore All Day. Having watched a number of Ignite style talks before, I knew it would be challenging to stay on message and on timing. Not much room for creative expounding when the slides auto-advance, is there? I also knew the other speakers would set a high bar by being dynamic, funny, creative and inspirational.

As I was presenting, I missed a good bit of the show. I did catch a few of the sessions, though like:

• Janet Kennedy (@jkennedy93), 5 Bucks is Change. Her presentation was inspirational, approachable and the presentation most likely to change my life in some way. Take a look at her website http://www.5bucksischange.com/ for more information. When the recording comes available, I'll post it here.
• George Smart's (@georgesmartTMH) great presentation on Mayberry Modernism – Why the Triangle is America's Hotspot for Way Cool Houses. I enjoy modern architecture and had no idea there were 100 noteworthy houses in the area.
• Jess Commins (@renewabelle) made saving money sexy with her talk on How to save $100+ with a DIY energy audit. Great use of imagery to hammer the point home.
• Elizabeth Gardner (@WRALweathergal) spoke on A day in the life of a meteorologist who gets up at 3am. This behind the curtain look into her daily routine was funny and well delivered. I might have a new favorite weatherperson.

My tips for presenting at Ignite

• Every second counts. Either you are making your point, or wasting time.
• Plan Plenty of Preparation. A 5 minute talk about something you are passionate about, is 20 times harder to prepare for a 1 hour talk. I give lots of 1 hour talks and I definitely had to work more at crafting this short pointed message.
• Pick good images for your slides. I had over 100, which was whittled down to 16.
• Double up on a slide if it deserves more than 15 seconds.
• You will be out of sync with your slides at some point. No one will care.
• Make recordings of your talk and listen to them for practice.
• Put the best recording on an iPod and listen to it before your talk. It'll help you stay focused.
• Love the crowd. The vibe at an Ignite is positive and supportive.

Special thanks go to:

• My wife (@shannonscarlett) for helping me prepare
• Jim Priest (@thecrumb) for adding a great deal of polish to my slides
• Brian Erman for taping the event.

More Info

Here is a write up of IgniteRaleigh 2 by Indyblogs. Here is a Delicious page of book marks with blog recaps. Here are pictures from the event.

Watch My Presentation

Ignite: Dan Wilson from Brian Erman on Vimeo.

Get My Slide Deck

My slides are available on SlideSix, view Slide Deck for Why Your Health Is The Most Important Thing You Will Ignore All Day

Sez : Dan Wilson     February 18, 2010 7:51 AM

I've been selected to present at Ignite Raleigh 2 on Why Your Health is the Most Important Thing You'll Ignore All Day. I'm very excited to get to speak to this audience on such an important topic near to my heart.

Since launching ChallengeWave as a tool for businesses to help their employees start and stick with healthier activities, I've taken on the quest to raise health awareness and health happiness in people. Having the ability to share this with the fine audience at Ignite Raleigh 2, will be fun and exciting!

Ignite style presentations are fun, fast and informative for the audience. Speakers condense their topic into 5 minute presentation. During the presentation, 20 slides will be shown in a timed progression, 1 slide every 15 seconds. The audience gets to learn a lot about a lot of interesting topics in a short period of time.

Oh, and since the slides auto-change every 15 seconds, the speaker better keep up, or he'll be run over!

If you've not seen an Ignite style presentation before, check this one from last year's Ignite Raleigh by the master, Wayne Sutton:

Sez : Dan Wilson     November 17, 2009 5:05 PM

My wife and I just returned from our honeymoon. We spent 2 weeks in Australia and really loved it. I've got a few gigs of photos and a bunch of interesting stories, but for the sake of this blog I'll just post a few of each.

Qantas Airlines

We flew on Qantas Airlines the whole way and really loved them. Qantas was on time, organized and the flight crew constantly was bringing snacks, meals, drinks, socks (yes, socks), free headsets and pretty much anything possible to make us comfortable. Qantas even did a full meal service on a 1 hour domestic flight. Rather striking considering the weak, mealy-mouthed offerings from US based carriers... If you plan to visit, get the Aussie Air Pass, a package where you can visit a number of cities all for a single price.

Brisbane

Our first stop was Brisbane. Brisbane is located on a river system and is a really nice city with lots of nice things to do.

Where to Stay

We stayed at The Marque a neat hotel centrally located to the docs and the Queen Street Mall area, a center of eating and shopping. The staff was great and they had our room ready at 9AM when we checked in. I can't tell you how nice it was to have travelled so much the previous 2 days and actually be able to check in to a hotel room at 9AM.

Lone Pine Koala Reserve

We only had a few days here and visited the Lone Pine reserve, one of the few places in the world where you can cuddle a Koala. The best part of Lone Pine was the Kangaroo and Wallaby open area where you can touch and interact with these animals without restraint. Here is Shannon petting a Kangaroo. If you go to Lone Pine, catch a 10 AM ferry from the downtown docks. You get a great view of the many interesting houses on the river banks as well as a running historical commentary. The south bank of Brisbane is rather interesting, having a man made beach which was very lovely to dip into on a warm spring day.

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Sez : Dan Wilson     October 30, 2009 7:48 AM

This year has been a year of turmoil and also a year of blessings. Most years are like that, though this one has been particularly full of highs and lows. I wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to the most courageous woman I know.

My cousin, Erika Bogan was badly injured in a terrible car crash in early 2002 when she was ejected from the vehicle, suffered major damage to her spinal cord and was in a coma for 10 weeks. When she woke up, she found she was paralyzed from the waist down. Imagine for a moment, what it would be like to be riding in a car one second, awake in a hospital the next second to be told 10 weeks had gone by, and by the way, you'll never walk again.

Erika had a long road ahead of her. She had a lot of choices to make and none of them were easy. You can read more on her story on her blog.

Erika became an advocate for people with disabilities and became active helping and inspiring others. This year, Erika competed for and won the Ms. Wheelchair North Carolina 2009 title. She then competed against tough competition to win Ms. Wheelchair America 2009 title. We are all very proud of her.

The mission of Ms. Wheelchair America is to provide an opportunity for women of achievement who happen to be wheelchair users to successfully educate and advocate for the more than 52 million Americans living with disabilities. In her short term as Ms. Wheelchair America, she's:

• Served as Participant, Mentor and Speaker at Camp Discovery
• Learned to Surf, through Life Rolls On (Yay for surfing)
• Honored as Guest speaker for the Real Economic Impact Tour Kick-off on behalf of the IRS and the NDI along with Robert David Hall from CSI, at the National Press Club in D.C.
• Visited the White House

As we roll (pun intended) into the Thanksgiving holiday, I'd like to pause and give thanks to Erika for her inspiration to me and to the many people she's impacted with her life.

If you are interested in learning more about Erika, the Ms. Wheelchair America competition or advocacy for the disabled, you can:

• You can become a fan of the Ms. Wheelchair America on their Facebook page.
• You can donate to Ms. Wheelchair America via Paypal.
• You can follow Erika on Twitter.
• You can read her blog.

Erika Crowned Ms. Wheelchair America

Erika Before Speaking to the IRS and the NDI

Erika with CSI's Robert David Hall

"Come to the edge, he said. They said: We are afraid. Come to the edge, he said. They came. He pushed them and they flew." -Guillaume Apollinaire

Sez : Dan Wilson     October 22, 2009 9:29 AM

I'm from Florida, as you know. Florida is home to Alligators, a much maligned animal that generally doesn't deserve such an awful reputation. My brother wrote me to tell me of a recent gator encounter on the beach last night. I'll let him tell the story:

---

So the kids and I decide to go for a quick walk on the beach last night before homework and dinner...

As we are walking down the beach we see some commotion up ahead and decide to walk down there and see what's going on. As we get close I can see a 7 foot alligator and a guy with a cast net on the freaking beach! This is my second encounter with gators on the beach, the first was surfing on Vilano and a gator swam by outside the line up. This one is equally as weird!

We get up to this gator and you can tell it is very tired from swimming in the ocean, the wind and waves have just beat his butt cause he wants nothing to do with us unless we grab his tail, then he lets us know without question that he is pissed. Tail thrashing, hissing, chomping of the jaws, the whole bit. So a lifeguard comes up to us and while talking to him he says he has to call a trapper who will come and likely kill the gator because it will be seen as a nuisance to humans. So my kids and this other fellas kids start talking about how we should save the gator. So between the kids, tourists and hippy residents down on the beach this guy (Paul) and I become the "gator savers". It's at about this time my kids decide I'm freaking nutz for the plan we hatch.

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Sez : Dan Wilson     October 8, 2009 3:09 PM

This blog hit over a million total views today. Well, I think it was today, I can't be sure.

Last week I noticed the page count was somewhere near 990k and I wanted to get a screen shot of when the site rolled over to a cool million. It looks like I missed it by a few hundred. Oh well, I guess I can try to pay better attention when I hit a billion. (Heh.)

So thanks to those who come and read articles from nodans.com. I hope you found them as helpful to you as they were to me when I wrote them.

Sez : Dan Wilson     September 11, 2009 6:09 AM

Bucky Schwarz, TACFUG Member, CFinNC Conference planner, Model-Glue contributor, posted a link on twitter today called The Unspoken Truth To Managing Geeks. I read this with my morning coffee and felt compelled to share it with the rest of you, since the article was so well done and happened to hit many fastening devices on their apexes. (Bonus points if you can translate that sentence).

Go read the article for yourself, I'm not going to delve into any insightful commentary, heck, it is 8:00 in the morning! I will, however, share two of the passages that prompted me to put this post in tubes for you all to enjoy.

...IT pros are sensitive to logic -- that's what you pay them for. When things don't add up, they are prone to express their opinions on the matter, and the level of response will be proportional to the absurdity of the event. The more things that occur that make no sense, the more cynical IT pros will become. Standard organizational politics often run afoul of this, so IT pros can come to be seen as whiny or as having a victim mentality. Presuming this is a trait that must be disciplined out of them is a huge management mistake. IT pros complain primarily about logic, and primarily to people they respect. If you are dismissive of complaints, fail to recognize an illogical event or behave in deceptive ways, IT pros will likely stop complaining to you. You might mistake this as a behavioral improvement, when it's actually a show of disrespect. It means you are no longer worth talking to, which leads to insubordination.

...later on in the article...

Most IT pros support an organization that is not involved with IT. The primary task of any IT group is to teach people how to work. That's may sound authoritarian, but it's not. IT's job at the most fundamental level is to build, maintain and improve frameworks within which to accomplish tasks. You may not view a Web server as a framework to accomplish tasks, but it does automate the processes of advertising, sales, informing and entertaining, all of which would otherwise be done in other ways. IT groups literally teach and reteach the world how to work. That's the job.

So if you haven't yet read the article, The Unspoken Truth To Managing Geeks yet, go for it. It is illuminating and will help us all to be personally productive as well as more useful to those we impact and manage.

Sez : Dan Wilson     August 25, 2009 9:40 AM

I skimmed a post on FlexCoders today that posed the question "If you had the chance to start up a RIA development company, How would you go about acquiring amazing developers without start up capital?". Being an entrepreneur and also being a developer, I wanted to put some thoughts out there. Keep in mind these thoughts are not directed at the original poster, but to the community at large who is constantly offered interesting and creatively worded business propositions by the non-development community.

On Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are an interesting breed. They function much like a proud parent of a reasonably untalented child. I don't mean this to offend anyone, but I do want to draw a metaphor. Have you ever been forced to sit through a child singing a very clumsy, off-key, screeching song, only to have the proud parents and prouder grandparents beam at the end and ask you what you thought? Parents are often blinded by their love and their involvement in their children and often value the allure of the child (and the metaphorical singing) much more than others with less involvement. This is a natural phenomenon, and I believe vital to the continuance of the human race.

Entrepreneurs often have the same blinded fascination and love for their own business ideas. They categorically believe in the success of their idea and will move heaven and earth to see the idea come to fruition. This often means sacrificing all else, family, social relationships, outside hobbies, etc, to further the idea of the business.

Entrepreneurs often consider their business to also be their principle hobby, effortlessly spending nights and weekends developing the idea and the business around the idea. Business is fun, for them.

Another noteworthy thing about entrepreneurs is they are perpetually short of funds, time and talent to carry out these ideas. See, ideas are cheap and any visionary can have several really good ideas per day. Ideas are easy to think of, and internal optimism and intuition can cover any potentially glaring holes.

On Ideas

Reality is, ideas actually do not matter. What matters is execution of those ideas. Actually, execution takes a back seat to getting paid for the use of the idea. Getting a check from a customer or a client is the highest form of flattery for an idea and often requires a series of efforts from a multi-disciplinary team all working in the same direction. The end reward for the entrepreneur is successful fruition of their idea.

Let's look at software for a moment. Software requires development. Selling software requires marketing, sales and legal expertise. Running a software business requires people skills, management expertise and financial acumen. Oh, and it requires an idea, but we already discussed the worthiness of ideas, didn't we.

In a start up company, the entrepreneur will probably fulfill a number of those roles. This is key as it helps the entrepreneur marshal the scant resources available to bring the idea through the phases leading to a customer writing a check. Often, the entrepreneur is not a developer, but knows he/she needs developers and developers are somewhat costly in the grand scheme of things. So the wily entrepreneur seeks to procure developers for as little expense as possible. An economy of resources is a good thing.

However, I submit to you that the original question prompting this article is near a impossibility. The question was "If you had the chance to start up a RIA development company, How would you go about acquiring amazing developers without start up capital?"

Software developers have ideas too. Many of them are creative problem solvers and gain tremendous business experience by writing software that solves real problems in business. Most of them enjoy their work and often put in extra hours working on side projects to entertain themselves. So wouldn't it seem logical to procure a few good software developers that will work for free while the business got started?

As a software developer, my time is money. If I am going to divert my attention from a steady paying job, and away from my side interests, money is going to be involved.

I don't mean future money, like "Instead of paying you, we'll give you a trainload of stock options" but today money. Today money is money that I can go to the bank today and receive the rectangular green yuppie food stamps I'm accustomed to using for groceries and gas.

On Working With No Pay and Open Source

I often work on open source software for which I receive no pay. Is this the same as working in a start up for no pay? I submit there is at least one vital difference. In open source software, there is no money. Thus there is no schedule. We may publish a schedule of our intent, and are free to move that schedule as priorities change.

In a start-up business, the prospective client or customer controls the schedule. If you tell a prospect a demo version will be ready on Friday, you must meet your deadline. Missed deadlines communicate untrustworthiness and unreliability to your prospects. This is anti-cool and usually means less checks. So while I'm perfectly happy to spend inordinate amounts of unpaid time writing software, I'm not willing to have my schedule controlled by those not paying for the right to set my priorities. I'd bet most competent developers feel similarly.

On Evil Investors and Entrepreneurs

Most successful entrepreneurs have been through a money-raising event, like a bank loan or venture capital. These events are usually painful for the entrepreneur because the entrepreneur is not in control and has to listen to the unvarnished opinion of sophisticated investors who deal with hundreds of business ideas all the time and aren't blinded by the vision or the visionary.

I learned everything I know about entrepreneurship from my Dad, a serial entrepreneur. His last business was a contracting company. I would never be able to imagine my Dad offering stock options or deferred payments to his workforce, in lieu of payment. If he did, none of them would show up for work, and I wouldn't blame them for it.

As an entrepreneur, I want to instill the highest confidence in my prospective clients and customers, thus, I demand the right to set priorities and schedules of any team member in my group. For that right, I pay them. Since I pay them, they consistently deliver over and above expectations. This makes us look good to our prospects and gives me confidence to reach across the desk and shake hands to close the deal.

On Bootstrapping Thoughts

So, is it possible to assemble a team without start up money? I'd say there are some ways to make it work, but only for a little while.

1) Cult of Personality. If you have a very strong community reputation as a smart person who gets things done, you can probably get some reasonably talented people to drink your kool-aid for a little while. Make sure to deliver on your promises. Missed promises=diminishing team.

2) Project Work. If your business is service related, land a big project as the way to start up the company. Developers might accept a lower rate on the first contract if promised a higher rate on future contracts. This is certainly preferable to no pay at all.

3) Get funding. Why is it you have no funding? Financial Investors are trained professionals and want to invest in businesses to earn a profit. They MUST earn a profit so if your idea has appeal and your team is competant, you can usually get some funding.

4) Grants. There are a multitude of Entrepreneurial grants and programs available. Many of these have a simple application consisting of a few pages. Working on the application will likely help you refine your idea so even if you don't get the grant, you'll get something out of it.

5) Business groups. Find business groups, like Business Networking International or the Council for Entrepreneurial Development. They can often help you find interns which might help you get over the hump.

To the entrepreneurs out there, good luck to all of you. I know the road is interesting, challenging and rewarding like no other.

-Dan Wilson

P.S. To the reader: What sorts of opportunities have you been presented with? I invite you to share your stories and ideas in the comments.