Mark Roseman's Blog

How To for Entrepreneurs

Anyone interested in starting a business, especially in today's climate, could do a lot worse than to check out this page about John Buckman's LeWeb talk. Nice, practical advice to get your head out of the clouds and put first things first.

Getting house ready for sale.

Been busy the last couple of weeks trying to clean up and reduce the clutter so that we can get ready to put this house up on the market. We're out in Edmonton Jan 5-10, so most likely will officially list when we get back from that trip. Of course, if someone offers us enough money for it before we list, that would be okay too. ;-)

If anyone is curious, here is some basic info about the place, as well as a few pictures...

• 67 King Street, just off Eramosa (5-10 min walk from downtown)
• 5 year old one of a kind executive style 2-story house located in great old neighborhood
• 3 bed + den, 3.5 bath, 2549 sq ft + 1000 sq ft in finished basement
• hardwood, slate on main floor; hardwood, marble, ceramic, berber on 2nd; laminate in bsmt
• formal dining room, open concept kitchen, dinette, family room w/ wood burning fireplace
• custom professional kitchen w/ granite counters, huge island, very high end SS appliances
• large master bdrm w/ two gigantic walk-in closets, ensuite w/ marble, granite, whirlpool, etc.
• 50x159 professionally landscaped lot, private courtyard w/ pool, huge double attached garage
• high efficiency furnace, central air, central vac, alarm system, RO water filter

Toot toot.

The annual Waterloo Region Technology Spotlight, a late October special insert in The Record, is now available online. It includes a nice story about me and CourseForum (pg 32-33), with an emphasis on the lifestyle decisions and balance (things that factor into the decision making process of a lot of microISV's). As with most media pieces, it's not 100% accurate, but overall not bad at all.

Twitter Survival Guide

I had a chance today to actually read The Twitter Survival Guide (see multisocialmedia.com) by Bob Walsh and Kristen Nicole.

Being familiar with Bob's writings, it was no surprise that the ebook was easy to read, well organized, and made it's points with little muss or fuss.

The book isn't intended as a gentle introduction to using Twitter for grandma, but really, you don't need much more than two brain cells to rub together to get the basics of registering and using the basic service. The real question is why bother in the first place, what kind of value it might provide you, and how best to obtain that value. That's exactly what this ebook does.

If you're one of the Twitter converted, or easily swayed, it provides some good content: an undoubtedly soon-to-be-obsolete list of Twitter-related tools, some tips for getting the most out of Twitter, pitfalls to avoid, and possible ways you can use it for different things. Also profiles and Q&A with some high-profile Twitter users.

However...

As a recent and still-not-convinced Twitter user, this ebook didn't do a lot to change my ambivalence. My feeling is that there's a bit too much unbridled optimism; platforms come and go, and while I think Twitter will stick around, it is and will continue to be one of many, and will eventually find its niches where it will do well. Yes, there are success stories, but I think they are few and far between. And yes, there are many ways it can be used, but the same has been said about every other "new and cool" technology.

A useful adjunct or addition to this ebook would be some sort of "skeptic's guide", that helps people realistically evaluate whether a particular use makes sense for them. For example, following breaking news is a great use case which Twitter does well for anyone interested in following a story. No prerequisites there, just jump on and follow a tag through search.

Many other use cases work well only if people have amassed a good number of followers, and a significant portion of those followers actually read a good portion of tweets they receive. I suspect the vast majority of Twitter users have fairly few followers, let alone active ones. And while I've got Twitterific sitting on my screen, new tweets showing up via Growl, and am not following that many people, I'm still pretty much ignoring most of it as I'm working on other things. And unlike my email, I'm not motivated to go back and read through the tweets I've been sent but haven't read. Is there any evidence as to how common this behavior is?

Evaluating the time and attention cost will also be different for different organizations. It's great that large companies can devote the resources to use Twitter to help their customers (which is a fantastic use case) but how realistic is that for many smaller businesses?

The other elephant in the Twitterverse of course is that Twitter works well when both you and most of the people who you'd benefit from connecting to live predominately and constantly in an online world, and (for the moment) use the latest tools. Again, being more explicit about that, and how to evaluate whether trying to generate a Twitter presence would pay off in your case would add a lot.

I think my hesitation about this ebook reflects my hesitations about Twitter as a broadly useful tool. Again, in particular situations, it does very well. Mind you, the somewhat breathless hype that accompanies any new technology usually gets my guard up.

Like other technologies, Twitter or one of its successors will settle into the niches where it makes sense, with some of the "yes it's possible but..." uses falling more away, and realistic expectations of benefits becoming more understood. As that happens, it would be good to see this ebook updated to reflect that.

Web Site Updates.

Spent a bit of time doing some updates on my personal site, including some changes and additions to the GroupKit and TeamWave content. Beats shoveling snow.

Moving Back to Edmonton(!)

This has definitely been in the thinking about/planning stages for a little while, but Pauline and I have decided we're going to be moving back to Edmonton this spring (no, not for the weather, pickup trucks, or conservative politics).

The exact what, where, when etc. hasn't been decided, but with any luck that will come together over the next little while.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to buy a really nice house near downtown Guelph... :-)

Obsolete Technology.

The Obsolete Technology Website gives us a glimpse into what we'll call the "good old days" of microcomputers. The fact that I'd probably used about 20% of them at one time or another is slightly scary...

Twitter Survival Guide

Micro-ISV specialist Bob Walsh, along with co-author Kristen Nicole, have just released a new e-book The Twitter Survival Guide. This is also the debut of their new website MultiSocialMedia.

I've enjoyed Bob's earlier writings, and am looking forward to digging into this one soon!

Canadian Politics Interesting?!?

Crazy times indeed. But one thing I don't think anyone disagrees with is that Harper definitely stepped in it this time.

The opposition to the non-con coalition is understandable and expected, and of course there's enough money to fan the flames. The parallels to how politics is carried out in the US (or has been) are disturbing, with the increased us-vs-them driving people apart more than pulling them together. Sad, disappointing, pathetic, totally predictable.

Even the arguments that a coalition is undemocratic because Canadians didn't vote for a Dion etc. government... it would make sense if the past election was about electing a president, rather than a parliament. While Harper may want to think he's president, and want everyone else to believe that, he's beholden to the House of Commons, not the people directly.

Of course, the real conclusion to draw is that looking at all the parties and the way they've been behaving, I'd hate to see any of them with majority control. The best (but highly unlikely) outcome of this coalition thing is that the parties start to genuinely work together and communicate in a more non-partisan way that is actually in the best interests of Canada, rather than finding every opportunity to take a punch at each other.