horsepigcow

Specific design decisions are important to achieve specific outcomes. The one that iss most poignant to me is the decision to build quantity or quality content.

If you want big numbers and lots of content, make it super simple to join/post/etc. “Of course we want big numbers, Tara!” you are thinking. But it’s not entirely desireable. The downside to simple signup/posting/etc is that it attracts low-brow content. Sure, there are lots of users, but the content can become terribly uninteresting and sometimes spammy.

If you want quality content and users, you make sign up a little more arduous and content a little harder to post. Not impossible or even difficult, but your design requires the user to sign up with a little more information and posts to require a little more thought.

But it seems that today, all people seem to care about is quantity. Big numbers. Fast. This leads to ‘hyped up startups of the week’ where everyone talks about how freakin awesome and huge a startup is for 2 seconds, then moves onto the next one and rarely (if ever) discusses that startup again. When the in crowd moves on, all that’s left is drivel content. That’s not a sustainable business or something that I ever want to build (but it seems to be what any angels or vcs want us to build).

“Allow anonymous posting!”
“Take out steps to adding content!”
“RE-tweet/share/post/tumble/pin/poke/blah!”

I think there is a happy balance of creating an app where there is an ease of use and quick posting while requiring real people that have something significant to say to have a voice.

Facebook used to be that place. You needed to sign up with your real name. If you were going to post, you’d have to come up with something fairly original and semi-interesting to say before you hit post. Not all content was interesting to everyone. But it was original and it said something about the person posting it. There were rants, personal photos, bad days, breakups, new relationships, inspirations, arguments, embarrassing drunken confessions, more embarrassing tagged photos of others in compromising moments, commentary, food porn….the list goes on and on and on. Whether or not you found something interesting in your feed was completely subjective. I, for one, love the mundane. I’m deeply interested in the bits and bobs of people’s lives.

And that content still exists, but it is starting to give way to something else: RE-posting.

The other day I thought to myself, “Egad, Facebook has turned into Tumblr!” I think Tumblr is lovely. It’s easy to use and well-designed, but I find the content on Tumblr shite. It seems to be all about following as many people as you can, then finding the best, most inspiring, funniest, prettiest, craziest stuff and hitting a little button to post it to your own Tumblr. It’s the image equivalent to retweeting and I wouldn’t mind it so much, but it creates a whole lot of noise without any originality.

Take, for instance, the screenshot I took today. Yes. I think the post is interesting and very poignant…the first time I see it. And I may even appreciate how others share it because it shows me who is aligned with this line of thought in my stream. But after 20+ shares (or REposts), I start to roll my eyes. And believe me, I’m JUST as guilty of this as anyone here. It’s a rush to REpost something poignant and have a whole bunch of people REpost it from you. “Look at all the people I influenced! I’m special!” But I’m not. I was most likely the 2,345,896th person to REpost this on Facebook. I just happened to get a jump on a few dozen others.

I hate to wax poetically about the good ole days (though I have been more and more lately), but back when I started blogging, people became popular by producing amazing original content and thoughts. And if you were going to discuss someone else’s idea, you would ADD to the conversation by coming up with some of your own thoughts and then link back to the original blogger’s post. And we got smarter and were made to think about why something resonated with us and how we could improve on the original rather than just add noise.

Maybe there is no such thing as original thought anymore? Or maybe we’ve just got too busy to form our own ideas and articulate them. Or maybe it’s just unpopular to do so. Who knows. But when every platform becomes a REposting platform, I start to get really bored of the “social web” and long for a small community of original thinkers who don’t care about popularity or REposts, but instead care about learning and growing and making something worth archiving.

Tumblr is great and it exists to REpost stuff ad nauseum and somehow it works for the communities it serves. Google+ attempted to do it, too (but when you start with poor content, the hype wears off fast – lesson?). If Facebook wants to go in that direction, then I’m worried about its future. Maybe we’ll go back to blogging. Maybe something else will come along to fill that void.

But popular or not, I’m going to continue to try to produce content that isn’t about hype and is about adding to the conversation instead of just adding noise. At least as much as I can.

Jolie O’Dell, who is one of my favorite people in the world tweeted something yesterday that got the women of the tech world (and many men) up in arms:

It also ignited quite a lively backchannel conversation amongst the various women in tech groups I’m part of. The reactions (including mine) ranged from “I can see her point, but ‘embarrassment’ is a harsh way to put it,” to “OMFG &*#(&#)@#*@!” Mine was somewhere in between, but the biggest thing that struck me was how familiar it sounded.

And it isn’t a familiar because I’m a woman founding a fashion/shopping site, it’s familiar because in every single profession where the population of women starts growing, the same thing happens and the same sentiments get voiced.

As the number of women doctors grew, there was (and still is) an outcry because female physicians outnumber male physicians in pediatrics and female residents outnumber male residents in family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pathology, and psychiatry.

I’ve heard the same said about women lawyers: they pick ‘softer’ forms of law to pursue such as non-profit, family, government and general practices. Women are less likely to run a firm or become partners at a firm and more likely to be in-house council.

But this isn’t the issue. Nature or nurture or interests or whatever, if more women choose to practice medicine, law or do startups around the stuff we are familiar with, I’m not too concerned. I figure as time goes on and our entrance into professions becomes more common, things will even out. What I’m concerned about is the sentiment around the decision to pursue more feminized versions of these professions. The feminine itself is negatively valued.

Feminine = Soft/Bad/Stupid/Shallow/Underachieving/Embarrassing ??

Think about how we assign value to certain things like: logical vs. emotional. Or independent vs. dependent. Or analytical vs. intuitive. I’ll bet when you read the words, you instantly understood what ‘gender’ was assigned to each (and when I say gender, I don’t mean men vs women. I mean masculine vs. feminine.). Neither is better or worse, but depending on the context, there is a differential in how they are valued. And in the tech industry, being emotional, dependent and intuitive is a death sentence…unless you are a man who has a ‘proven’ record (proven being the uber masculine differentiator).

The same goes for types of startups. Business tools = good. Analytics = good. Content aggregators = good. Productivity apps = good. Shopping = bad. Fashion = bad. Babies = bad. UNLESS…you are a man. Diapers.com was founded by two men. They are super rich now. Zappos.com was founded by men. They’ve done pretty well. Amazon, Bluefly, Kaboodle, Shopstyle, Stylefeeder, eBay…the list goes on. One could argue all of the founders behind these have done pretty well for themselves and even the sites that aren’t super popular were acquired for good money and had good exits. I don’t know…sounds like a shopping (baby and fashion) startup is a pretty solid, awesome, smart, hardcore, good, kickass type of startup to have.

So why is it so embarrassing to have so many women entering the startup world through such a lucrative entry point?

Because, well, it’s embarrassing because we are so few and there is so much hope pinned on our performance. We’ve been begging and screaming to get included and then we show up in high heels talking about designer snugglies and nailpolish. Damn these women being all womeny talking about women stuff! Who invited these ones to the party? Where are the serious female entrepreneurs?

Right here. In high heels. Wearing great nailpolish (I swear by this stuff…it’ll extend your manicure for…nevermind). I’m emotionally and intuitively navigating through this. And I’m dependent on more people than I feel comfortable with: my customers, my users, my co-founders, my advisors, my boyfriend, other startups, my friends, the weather, the economy…you name it.

When I moved to San Francisco in 2005, it took me about 6 months to deny myself my femininity. It wasn’t fashionable to be fashionable. I moved to SF with a closet full of designer dresses, suits and shoes and within 6 months all I was wearing were jeans and t-shirts. I am ecstatic to see photos of events filled with women in dress clothes and high heels. My only embarrassment lies in that I didn’t have the *erm* balls to be the woman I am back then.

Instead of embarrassed that there are so many women doing startups involving fashion/shopping/babies, I’m proud. I’m proud of a truly inclusive tech scene where women can women, men can men, women can men, men can women and all sorts of other genderific combinations thereof. And I, for one, welcome the pink ghettoization of the tech startup scene – at least for the time being – because it means women are making a grand entrance. And what an entrance it is!

To Mr. Marc Perez for helping me do my painful transition between hosts. Nobody makes this ‘hosting your own blog’ thing easy, do they?

On day 1 of the Google+ launch, I joined as I was invited by a bunch of friends. I was pretty busy on that particular day and saw everyone buzzing about it, but didn’t have time to spend more than about 10 minutes setting things up.

The first thing that bothered me about joining was that it forced me to use my old gmail address that I retired because it was taken over by mailing lists and social network pings. Rather than just proclaiming email bankruptcy…even that would have been too much work…I just put a permanent out of office greeting on it that says, “I’ve laid this email address to rest. If you are a human being, email me over there instead”. Over ‘there’ is my Buyosphere email address. We use Google Apps, etc. to host it, but Google limits these PAID FOR accounts to anything social because…um…I think corporate stuff is supposed to be anti-social. Either way, I had to log into my festering gmail account to make the G+ leap.

I have to say…the interface is nice and clean and the javascript is way nifty. It was fun adding a few folks to circles for that 10 minutes. Their little round avatars looked like smiling bullets in a chamber. Zip! Zip! In all seriousness, though, the UI is awesome.

But then I went away and did some work type of stuff and kept getting messages that 18 people added me to circles here and 26 people added me to circles there. Next thing I know, I log back in a few days later and I have a mile-long suggested list of friends to put into circles. 2,500+ of them! Now, I’ve met most people who are suggested. I’ve had conversations and hung out with many of them. I would even consider most friends. But to put 2,500 of them in intelligible circles?! I have no clue where to begin!

I started with cities: Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Austin, Paris, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Sydney….then I started to get a little fuzzy on where some of my contacts live. Many of them I’ve met at conferences and hung out in places neither of us live. It’s quite difficult to keep track of the home addresses of 2,500+ people at the end of the day.

Okay…so I moved onto topics: technology, entrepreneurship, karaoke, fashion, social media…once again I hit a wall. I know people from certain conversations that probably have little or nothing to do with the topics they cover day to day. In fact, those that are Facebook friends talk about great personal stuff like families and their favorite restaurants. I actually enjoy getting to know them on that level.

Right. So default back into Friend/Acquaintance/Follow…but those are pretty broad categories. And I don’t know about you, but social networking has changed my definition of friend. I know more about many of my FB/Twitter “friends” than I do some people I grew up with!

And then I started getting a little fuzzy on why I was putting people in these circles anyway. I have no idea how I want to filter thoughts or feeds. The ‘sparks’ feature (where you can follow topics) is much easier for me to gr0k. If only I could mash the two up a bit. Or something. Something bigger. Better.

Oh wait.

YEAH! Google has all this information about me, right? They have been collecting it for EONS. They collect it when I search, when I email people, when I create documents, make meetings, shop on Google Products, use my mobile phone, etc. etc. They serve up incredibly relevant ads for me daily in all of my Google-y type applications. Sometimes so relevant I get a little scared. They seem to know my next move before I do. Google tells me who to add to cc’s on emails. They understand who are in my groups I’ve moderated for years and know what we talk about. You told me through Latitude that you know where I work versus where I live based on the hours I spend in these places. Google knows more about me than I know about me.

SO WHY THE FRACK CAN’T THEY MAKE MY CIRCLES FOR ME?!!

Sorry G+, but adding 2,500+ people to cute little circles when you have more data than GOD seems wrong to me. At least give it a whirl. Take a shot in the dark on who should go where. You could DEFINITELY figure out city for me…see that I’m creating City named circles and say, “Hey! I see you are putting your friends into locations! Let me help you with that!” Suggest topic circles based on people’s sparks. Or their descriptions. Or what other people group them as. You should definitely know who I work with. You probably can infer what a personal versus professional email sounds like.

I know people will be a little freaked out…but that is what makes for magical technology. And you have it. You have miles and miles worth of humming data farms worth of it. Stop holding out and making me feel like a GoogleMinus. Don’t make me work for another social network. Make your social network work for me.

I have been a rabid fan of Marilyn Waring’s work since the mid-90′s when I ‘discovered’ her work in a Women’s Studies class. My professor showed us the NFB film, Who’s Counting?, and, in a second, my life was changed forever. I always had a gut feeling that something was wrong about what we value and what we don’t value in the Western world. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Marilyn’s book (the documentary was based on it) unlocked the examples and language I needed to start down my path. It’s where my thoughts on humanizing tech come from. My thoughts about social capital come from. And now my thoughts on people owning their own data come from.

I conducted an interview over at the NFB blog to help promote Marilyn and her ideas. It’s long, but well worth the read. She is brilliant and changing the world. I have no idea why she isn’t speaking at TED.

Here is an excerpt:

TH: It’s no doubt that you have been a major influence in political thinking, but it’s taken people over 20 years to start to grasp your ideas. You probably hate this question, but I’d love a glimpse into what you think the pressing issues will be 20 years from now?

MW: I am working with a lot of rights-based approaches in my work – lately with the Commonwealth Secretariat – our research on The Economics of Dignity, which looks at the situation of the unpaid carer inside a household with a person living with HIV/Aids, does this.

I’m also lucky in that I supervise a large number of doctoral students who wrestle with many public policy topics. At present a colleague and I are editing Permanent Head Damage and other thesis stories, which has been fun. It’s a collection of 20 essays.

I gain enormously from my association with AWID, the international feminist organization, and this feeds my feminism, and the knowledge that the next generations of women have energy and passion and intellect and resilience, and for those of us my age, it’s been worthwhile.

We are not disconnected with nature

In general I think about things other than the UNSNA. Most questions are more profound than economics. How do we manage and use water? There’s a major challenge around ‘public goods’. We are not disconnected with nature. We are nature. Thinking we are separated is a disorder, and economics is a key tool in this process. All of our lives are subsidized. We take from the earth without paying properly, dependent on extraction. Externalities are vast and interconnected, including major health outcomes such as the rise in asthma and bronchial disorders.

There is a convergence of crises- every living system is in decline – coral reefs, aquifers, rivers, the condition of the soil, air ….a staggering destruction of eco systems and the services they have provided and that economics has ignored. If we didn’t have occasional breakthroughs it could be very depressing.

Go read the rest of it here.

I’ve been attending SXSW Interactive since 2005 and I’ve been lucky enough to watch it grow from a toddler to an awkward teenager and now an interesting young adult. When I started going, there were probably a couple of thousand people there. It was pretty young and I barely knew anyone, but since it was still fairly small (in relative terms), I met most everyone by the time I left. I was really taken by the friendliness of the event.

Over the years, the event grew quickly, pretty much doubling year after year. The parties grew. The lines grew. The panels grew. Pretty soon SXSW Interactive was no longer a conference, it was a marathon. I missed most of the panels I wanted to attend because I’d run into people constantly in the hallways or, more likely, I was moving too slowly to get to them from party-hopping the night before. Lineups became a standard and I started avoiding the parties with the long waits.

Then the ‘stuff’ came. Big corporate sponsors realized that SXSW was a gold mine of early adopters, influencers and other movers and shakers. I started packing lightly because I’d come home with a suitcase full of schwag, free stuff and new tee shirts and hoodies from all over the corporate landscape. There were also more free dinners and open bars, which meant I was missing more panels than ever.

But in 2009 and 2010, the event I love was getting over run. It started to look different and almost awkward. I’d walk down over-crowded conference hallways and not recognize a soul. The lineups at the parties were so out of control, I started skipping them altogether. Even if I had a VIP pass, once I got in, I couldn’t move because of over crowding, let alone reach the bar for that free highball. The number of panels offered made it impossible to keep a schedule straight and I kept getting lost instead of lost in conversation at the conference center. Everyone seemed grumpy about it. I heard lots of murmurs around people I knew skipping it in the future.

But something happened this year. It seemed to grow up. All of the awkwardness of the previous two years that were bound to happen as the event grew bigger and bigger (beyond what probably anyone could imagine) melted away and all of a sudden, the world’s biggest geek fest became a magical place once again.

It could be that I, myself, have matured and decided to pace myself a bit more this year. I had some serious daily responsibilities (emceeing the Accelerator, my panel, breakfast meetings and a couple of planned runs in the early morning) so most nights were relatively early and I went to bed after one or two drinks rather than trying to pack a year’s worth of gin into my system. It could also be that a few companies decided to forego throwing the crazy HUGE parties and created nicer, more intimate affairs that allowed for much better mingling. I really enjoyed these gatherings and hope it becomes more of a trend in the future. Sure, they make for some exclusivity, but it helps curate great conversations whereas the big open bar parties attract people looking for, well, open bars and a big party.

Another thing that really added to my experience was staying with a group of friends at SF Embassy, a really awesome dorm-type apartment block organized by people from the SF Bay Area. I’ve been living alone for a while and I realized that I really miss ‘coming home’ to a bunch of activity. I’m a pretty sound sleeper, so it didn’t matter if the group was partying later than I was, but on those nights when I wanted to come home and talk about the day, I had plenty of opportunity. Since I’ve been back, I’m really missing the buzz of the SFE.

Once again, I missed most of the panels I wanted to go see, but this was due to actually planning a schedule of meetings, breakfasts, lunches and other events. At first, I was concerned that by over-planning, I would miss out on the serendipity I previously experienced, but in retrospect, the planning allowed me to get together with the people I really needed to see and still allowed me to run into others serendipitously between meetings and at the parties. In fact, recalling previous years, part of the problem I had with the growth of the event was that there were SO MANY people I wouldn’t run into OR meet anyone because it was overcrowded. I’ll definitely be planning all of my future SXSW’s.

Rumor has it that there was something like 24,000 people there for Interactive this year, once again doubling from the previous year (I think I was told 12,000 people attended the previous year). SXSW Interactive has grown into a festival, not a conference. I wonder if they could actually pare back the panels and focus more on the festival stuff. The panels seem to be more of a pre-text for actually attending. I don’t need an excuse. I would go no matter what.

Some observations, too, about the type of people who are attending these days. In 2009/2010, there seemed to be loads of corporate types and self-defined social media ‘gurus’. I think they were still there this year (which is great), but there were also more women and more startups and more angels and venture capitalists. And the corporate sponsors did a GREAT job of being part of the community (as well as serving it well). I thought Samsung did an amazing job of their lounge (bigger and more entertaining than previous years), Chevy did a bang-up job of offering drivers to SXSW Interactive participants and Pepsi had a pretty cool stage area. Nobody stood out as hustler pitch-y or slimy. It was as if they were one of us…but with more money (and the ability to make our experience that much better).

As for standout apps? I really enjoyed my switch to Gowalla this year. I prefer the pins and uncovering fun stuff when I check in rather than competing for an unattainable mayorship. Once I figured out how to use the Android app properly (my bad, but I did corner their Android dev at their party to give usability feedback), it was a great experience and I got the hottest tank top that I can’t wait to sport in Montreal this summer. I was also glad to leave my business cards at home and use Hashable instead. After past SXSW Interactives, I came home with oodles of business cards and the inability to make sense of them. By sending someone a digital business card with notes, I now have a wonderful list of follow ups with context to go through and no stack of wasted paper. I may never order another business card!

I’m actually sort of suffering post-SXSWi depression right now. I think I’ll stick around for music next year so I don’t have to leave right away. It was amazing to see everyone I did and if I didn’t get to see you this year, hit me up for a breakfast/coffee/lunch/drink/taco next year! Now I just need to find a way to keep that magical feeling in my life every single day.

Thank you Hugh Forrest and all of the people who work so hard to make this event so amazing!

A series of events led me recently to decide to make a really big switch – from checking into Foursquare to checking into Gowalla. Yes, Gowalla DOES give you the ability to check in everywhere at once, but there are always switching costs involved in joining a new network. New profile, find your friends. Connect this and connect that. Then learn the new ins and outs. Oh…and in this case, download a new app for my Android. Not to mention that many of my favorite apps are connected into Foursquare (like Runkeeper).

Either way, there are always switching costs. Always. Even when a product is new – like, um, Shwowp – it takes time to set everything up and learn a new behavior. And the higher the switching cost (do I need to give anything up for this switch? will it take a long time?), the less likely a person is to make it. I know this, not as a marketer, but as a customer (I’ve always been a customer first). The prize at the end of that journey (the time/effort put in) has got to outweigh the cost of the journey itself.

So, first let me tell you about my decision tree on the switch.

I’ve been a Foursquare loyalist since 2009 when I signed up for it right before SXSW. Signing up for Foursquare that year had a switching cost in itself. I used Twitter. Why did I need it? Now I’d have to check where my friends were and what they were doing in two places (mind you when Twitter started, I was loyal to Dodgeball, Dennis Crowley’s initial geo-location app). I recall telling Dan Fost in an interview that year that I was ‘yet to be convinced’ by it. Boy did I miss the boat on that one (usually I’m pretty good at picking the winners).

So when Gowalla came along shortly afterwards, I had made my switch and didn’t feel much like budging. I did what most early adopters do. I joined, claimed my ‘missrogue’ url and slapped up a profile pic. That was all you saw on Gowalla for the past 2 years. I had been there. Once.

Then a series of events fell into place that made me think about going back:

1. I spoke at Canada E-Connect, a conference for the Canadian tourism industry. At the dinner the night before my keynote, the group of organizers were having a lively debate on the advantages of Gowalla over Foursquare. They had been incredibly impressed by the Biz Dev guy, who was very responsive and really focused on creating value for their city guides based on checkins. (my status: still unconvinced)
2. The next day after my talk a very sharp dressed guy walked up to me to tell me how much he liked my talk. He happened to be the very same Biz Dev guy the group was impressed with. He introduced himself as Andy Ellwood. (my status: impressed with his style, willing to listen)
3. I ended up going to Andy’s panel on using geo-location for promoting tourism and really loved the way he described what they are doing, “A way to discover the world around you, share it with your friends, and have a record of places you’ve been. A Social Atlas/Digital Passport.” (my status: impressed with his outlook, considering, but still too early to switch)
4. Andy and I then became Twitter friends and went back and forth a bit here and there. I liked the way he thought about many things. (my status: liked Andy himself, and still considering switching, but not on the top of my priority list)
5. Then I get an email from Foursquare at one of the busiest times of my life. I barely had the chance to scan it, but it went something like, “We’ve limited the number of friends you can have, so we, basically deleted all of your friends except for the first 100.” I told a friend of mine who asked why I wasn’t following him anymore that, “I was too busy to be annoyed at the moment by Foursquare’s move, but I would take action once things died down.” In basic terms, THEY REMOVED THE SWITCHING COST. I had a choice. I could go through my thousands of followers and find my friends and follow them again, or… (my status: It was time to make a decision…and I was annoyed, so it made the decision a little easier)
6. Meanwhile, Andy contacts me to have a drink at SXSW and discuss a really wicked conversation we had on Twitter. Then he gives me the final nudge…mixed with an appropriate amount of guilt ended with a flirty emoticon, “http://gowalla.com/users/missrogue Looks like beginning of something awesome. =)”. (my status: switching)

It was a perfect switch scenario. A personal relationship formed that made me tempted to switch – in spite of the costs – then the switching costs themselves disappeared. I most likely would have switched anyway. Andy won me over. I’ve known Dennis and Naveen for ages. Not on a deep buddy-buddy level, but I had a Shake Shack shake with Naveen a couple of years back and Dennis came to a book launch party that Brian Solis and I co-hosted when our books came out. Enough to say I had a closer relationship to them than anyone from Gowalla. I still really like Dennis and Naveen, so it’s nothing personal to them. And the nice part of all of this is that I still get to ‘use’ Foursquare when I’m using Gowalla, so at the end of the day, I can be friends with everyone.

Oh…and as an added bonus: When I complained like a princess on Twitter that I would have to sit and approve friend requests all night in this switch, Andy ‘fixed’ the issue in about 5 minutes. He gave me my very own ‘approve all’ button.

The lessons here for anyone running a startup, whether you are the market leader or not:

1. Personal relationships reduce switching costs. They bring loyalty. And they matter more than anything else.
2. Reduce all other switching costs. Technical (make it dead simple). Time (make it fast). Emotional (make it compelling). Etc. (ask yourself what the switching costs are for the people you want to have use your service over other ones – even if there aren’t direct competitors – Gowalla is smart to integrate with everything else).
3. And if you are the leader, don’t take your lead for granted! Think logically about what you are changing for your users. You may be giving them the perfect OUT for making that change they have already considered. This doesn’t mean you lock people in (that’s an out in itself). It means that YOU SHOULDN’T GIVE THEM THE REASON TO LEAVE.

Off to give Gowalla a whirl. And looking forward to our drink, Andy!

As I prepared my talk at TEDxConcordia last week, I was told by countless people that certain talks would be ‘a tough act to follow’.

I was told this over and over again in my speaking career. Someone is either about to get on stage or they’ve been on stage and everyone is buzzing about the talk. This will be the one that nobody wants to follow. The speaker either has an amazing reputation or amazing content that everybody is eagerly awaiting. As someone who is always concerned about being the ‘best of breed’ on the stage – this used to be a daunting task…especially if I am following that ‘tough act to follow’.

But somewhere along the line, I decided to stop being the person who follows the tough act and start BEING the tough act. I thought to myself, “Screw it…Tara Hunt follows nobody…tough or not…I have the ability to set the bar high.” And so it went…and I carved my own path. That act that was not an act at all…that would be authentically me. The best me. The VERY best me. No more compromise. No more following. No more act. There would be no comparison because, at the end of the day, I offer something uniquely me. Some people would hate me and some people would love me and there would be nothing in between.

And it spilled into everything else in my life…well mostly everything else. I would be a tough act to follow to everyone around me. And the only reason I was a tough act to follow was that I would no longer compare myself to anyone else. There were no other ‘acts’. There would be peers and entrepreneurs and people carving out their own paths, but nothing quite like mine. And there never will be.

People have a tendency to compare. Unless one person is emulating another or copying another, there is rarely a comparison. We have crossovers and similar traits and experiences. We have politics and religions and experiences that may touch others, but at the end of the day, we are unique snowflakes. Yes, you can segment me in certain ways and get me 9 times out of 10, but that doesn’t mean you *know* me. And the thing I love most about people I meet is not only how we connect, but how we differ and experience the world.

Being a tough act to follow means that I am going to be the best, most authentic ME available. I drop all pressure about whether you will love me or hate me. I am a divisive person. I know that. I know that there are people that don’t like me…for whatever reason. I also know that I will connect deeply with others. And that is what matters to me.

What some call brave or radically transparency, I call ME. The most authentic person I can be is someone that shares her highs and lows to the world. I sometimes wonder why more people don’t. I see way more benefits than I do negative consequences. It holds me accountable. It pushes me through the times I feel most vulnerable and alone. And, above all, this transparency helps others feel like they are not alone. I don’t know a person throughout history that changed the world who wasn’t radically transparent. The passion. The crazy, audacious, delusional dreams splattered wonderfully all over the pages of history. All of that was part of their every day life.

Being a tough act to follow means putting yourself and your beliefs out there in a raw way. Everything that captures us has to do with that. It’s not bravery, it’s admitting we are human beings living in the human condition in odd, changing, crazy human times. Imagine the world as a place where we could all do that! Where could we go then?

We shouldn’t compare ourselves to others, but we CAN be our authentic selves and join those ‘tough acts to follow’ in being our own tough acts to follow. That’s how I became a tough act to follow. And every time I get scared that I don’t quite measure up…I recall that there isn’t really, truly anything to measure up to other than the best self I can possibly be. Because the toughest act to follow is always my own potential.

In early 2006, a group of us dreamers got together in a coffee shop in the Mission District of San Francisco to discuss how we were going to start a permanent space that was “like” a coffee shop, but was intended for independents and digital nomads who needed a place to work with others but separately. That meeting turned into a space and then another space and then something really amazing happened…because we did this all publicly and transparently, it started a worldwide movement.

That movement is Coworking, which at last count is a loosely-joined consortium of over 600 spaces worldwide and growing. There are now more than 3,000 members on the Google Group representing pretty much every country in the world. I have no idea how many people have been touched by Coworking (have worked in a space). But I’m pretty sure we can safely assume close to 100,000.

Citizen Space has always been my baby, though I still administer the Google Group and I used to be in charge of the blog (now that honor belongs to the fabulous Angel Kwiatkowski of Cohere) and tried to keep up the wiki (which now the equally fantastic Jacob Sayles of Office Nomads makes sure is clean as a whistle). I opened Citizen Space with Chris Messina in November of 2006 and expanded it with Hillary Hartley in February 2009.

When we opened CS, there were some other coworking-ish spaces in town: artist spaces, writers spaces and, of course Teh Hat Factory (which we opened with several others in spring 2006). But there weren’t any Coworking spaces. Today I think there are something like 7 or 8 of them. And they are doing a damned fine job of moving the movement forward and serving the needs of the community.

Which is why when we were told by April (Citizen Space General Manager) that the space was declining in membership and, well, it wasn’t really the community hub it used to be, I sat back and pondered the future of Citizen Space. It used to be the beacon for the movement – being one of the first spaces that launched the movement PLUS being run by a couple of the founders of the movement – but now the movement itself is well on its way and doesn’t need a beacon. It has real momentum and new hubs.

So…the time has come for Citizen Space to move on. We’ve put a call out to see if anyone wants to take it over or otherwise put the time into it that we no longer can (I’m in Montreal, Hillary has a baby and a house outside of SF and Chris is at Google), but really, I’m more than okay with letting it go. It’s done its job. She’s created her legacy.

Stay tuned for the next steps. There will be a sale of the contents if we do end up shutting down and DEFINITELY a big party. I’ll be coming to San Francisco for both.

Thank you for everything over the years. Working there. Supporting us. Coming to the events. Telling others about the space. And generally being amazing ambassadors of the movement that I’m incredibly proud of being a part of from the beginning. I love the community and what has emerged. I know that will live on. I hope you will be able to join me in San Francisco to bid adieu to one beacon of one era and ring in the next!

You know that state you are in when you are a child and pretty much everything is possible? Someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up and, because the sky seems like it’s the limit, you pick the best possible, most awesome thing in the whole world? Like astronaut or cowboy or princess or movie star…or in my case…pirate (post-Disneyland, I thought pirates lives seemed like the most awesome thing in the world). You could do anything, achieve anything, BE anything, accomplish anything.

Then people start telling you that you are unrealistic. I don’t know the exact age, but it happens slowly at first. People will smile sweetly at the crazy whims of a small child, but then at some point, they feel they really must let you know about reality. Reality is harsh. Reality means that sky isn’t really the limit, that there is a much lower rung on the ladder that you could reasonably expect to reach. Only 0.1% of people become astronauts or something like that. There are tests and years of school and more tests and, well, you probably won’t be the one to get to ride in that space ship to the moon, so maybe you should stop and think about doing something a little more practical.

I think that happens at a similar time to being told that Santa Claus is a bunch of hooey made up by retailers to sell more stuff.

Well, like pretty much everyone else in the world, I had a whole lot of years of having the ‘skys the limit’ ideas hammered out of me and I gave up that dream of being a pirate. That was, until I lived in San Francisco. San Francisco is crawling with pirates. Pirates of all types. And for the first time in my post-Santa Claus believing life, I started to see the sky again in my limits. It took my career from sputtering along to taking flight. I could do anything. And I achieved a great deal. I did impossible things all of the time and lived an impossible life. I became an author. I started movements that spread all over the world. I became an in-demand public speaker. I became a thought-leader. A country girl from rural Alberta who was told to be realistic unlocked her innermost unrealistic child again…but being unrealistic was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Years ago I read Tom Kelly’s The Ten Faces of Innovation (totally loved it) where he talks about the Devil’s Advocates as not being a desirable part of any organization. In fact, Kelly see’s the so-called Devil’s Advocate characters as being the biggest potential innovation killers in any organization:

(A) devil’s advocate encourages idea wreckers to assume the most negative possible perspective, one that sees only the downside, the problems, the disasters-in-waiting. Once those floodgates open, they can drown a new initiative in negativity.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kelly. Devil’s Advocates, or those people who like to talk about the downsides and think small, do only harm. Sure, sure. We don’t want to live unrealistically and haphazardly! That would be downright foolish! Or would it? The truth is what a Devil’s Advocate or anyone who tells you that you cannot be an astronaut or pirate or princess or that there is an age to stop believing in Santa Claus is doing is adding an artificial barrier to what you can possibly achieve.

The truth is, reality happens. But it happens very differently than the naysayer thinks it will. The minute I stopped putting false ceilings on my growth, I grew. If you somehow erroneously think you can make a billion dollars in the next year and nobody tells you it is impossible or silly, you will probably make it a good deal further along that road and -hell- maybe even achieve it because you missed that barrier! And if you don’t, you learn. Experience is very different than a naysayer. It gives you lessons…really personal lessons to understand how to do better. Devil’s Advocates are merely projecting their own fears onto you (ask a Devil’s Advocate about their experience in any area they are telling you that you can’t achieve what you want to and I’ll bet 9 times out of 10 that experience will be nil). Nobody that gives you the ‘realistic side’ of things does you any favors. I learnt that way too late in life.

It’s still a struggle for me. I still have plenty of Devil’s Advocates in my life, even when I try to limit it. Hell, I have one that lives inside of my head that I have to keep at bay 24/7. But my mantra is and will always be, “Why not?” because at the end of the day, nobody (who really knows) told me it’s impossible to be an author/speaker/ceo of a successful startup/marathon runner/pirate.