Intersections and Happenings

On the Fediverse this morning I posted a thread about whether there is a map site that will show you a map area by commute time(s) ideally allowing you to specify the exact times so the area is generated based on average commutes at that time not some generic drive time. Then allowing you to use that map area to look for real estate in your desired area (whether you are buying or renting).

As I note in that thread I am not aware of any site that does this today (which isn't to say it doesn't exist). Many real estate sites today (like Zillow) allow you to see an estimate of the driving time from a home to an address (or multiple addresses) which is useful but not what I'm looking for as it requires you to have discovered that listing.

What I'm looking for is a tool to help people discover parts of communities that they may not have been considering that will offer a comfortable commute. Ideally not just for one location but helping households identify areas that will offer everyone in that household a reasonable commute.

I don't recommend anyone buy a home (or sign a long term lease) just because of one job's commute (as jobs change more often than most households move) but if you have some flexibility or need to move anyway such as tool may help you find areas to look that you may not have considered.

It is also important to be aware that especially in areas like the Bay Area the commute from one part of many towns and cities may vary considerably - not by a few minutes but by a large factor. When we lived in San Francisco and worked in the SOMA area of SF our commute from the Outer Sunset was much longer than you might assume from looking just at a map and this was true whatever method of transit we used (driving included). In the South Bay my brother-in-law lives a solid 10-15 mins from the closest freeways to his house, so getting to his part of his town is that much longer than getting to parts of the same town that happen to be closer to exits.

Just last night my wife and I encountered a version of the impact that small differences in parts of neighborhoods can make as we delivered some food to our son's school for an evening event, while the restaurant where we picked up the pizzas and salads was just a few miles ways, to get to the school we needed to cross a number of traffic lights that were long delays due to the railroad crossing that we also had to cross.

I didn't mention this final point in my Fediverse thread but it would be even better if such a tool actually showed multiple variations of the map areas by different transportation choices, including walking. We looked at a home that is just a few minutes drive from our child's school but while it is very close due to how the streets are laid out to walk there is over 20 minutes as there isn't a direct path. In many other parts of the Bay Area there are many neighborhoods that are entirely car centric so walking or biking or public transit may not even be possible.

So earlier this year I attended the last #XOXOFest in Portland OR. It was a wonderful event, an even better community and a bitter sweet reminder of the power of community and shared experiences and events for forming connections and friendships (and in many cases business - though this wasn't, exactly, a business conference). I have much more to write about and say about my time there but earlier this week I had an idea, one that builds on other ideas I have had in the past about conferences and events. And for context for some 35+ years I have been involved in the creation, organization, and hosting of conferences and events of various sizes and types and durations. These have ranged from helping found a long running science fiction convention (while in high school and before I had attended a regular science fiction convention in person) to many times over running monthly networking events to helping organize (and in some cases found) business conferences. These have been online and in person (and in some cases hybrids). So while running events and conferences hasn't been my career it is has been a core part of my life and career (and personal interests) for decades.

My idea - a hybrid conference that breaks lots of rules but is designed for our modern moment. It has a small set of speakers (none from sponsors) who each get a chance to give a talk with strong production values - great slides, seriously well recorded (it is overdone but think TED adjacent). BUT these might be recorded ahead of time - for this conference while in person in a way isn't "live" in the same way other conferences are.

Instead, after these talks are recorded they are made available in blocks (likely 4-5 speakers each so three main blocks is likely with 12-15 speakers or pairs of speakers). Then in person events - perhaps around the globe - are organized to meet before and after a viewing of these blocks of videos. With the possibility of the videos being time-shifted or streamed more than once each day.

These inperson events would all follow the same rough format but with local variations. Food and a chance to mingle before the viewing of the talks, a shared space to view the talks (this might be as simple as a rented movie theater) and space and time to mingle and share more food/snacks after the talks. With perhaps a mix of global, national and local sponsors with a presence around the local events (but importantly not as part of the "content"). Each local event would charge for admission covering the local costs as well as paying something towards the overall conference expenses.

All attendees of the in person events would gain access to an attendee only online space (with perhaps a just for their local region carved out section of that online space). Sponsors might offer a combination of digital and physical goods for attendees. At least one "local" version might be an entirely online one - with online mingling/networking options before and after the streamed content. And while the before and after networking/mingling/demonstrations would not be recorded the talks would eventually be published online for later viewing.

And I think this model might work across many different communities and topics. I'm not proposing this as a single one-off event for only one group of people or one specific area of interest. Instead I'm curious if this model might work for many different communities. It takes a lot of work to organize and promote - instead of a single one time event you have to first recruit local organizers all over, each would have to find a venue and make all the logistical arrangements and then figure out the financial costs and risks. All while others are finding fantastic speakers with content that is timely but not time-sensitive (i.e. this isn't good for a surprise "on stage" product announcement or launch or for content that is specific to an exact time and date)

To start this might work best with a single block of speakers and a one day event instead of trying for a 2 or 3 day event. However I was thinking that 3 days but a relatively short amount of time could allow for lots of other flexibility - i.e. I was thinking of about 1 hour before the talks about 1-2 hours for the talks themselves and 1-2 hours after the talks allowing for the event to occur in the morning, in the afternoon, or even in the evening depending on the best timing for that local area.

I would also want to see this in a model that encourages the local events being parent (and perhaps even kid) friendly so that parents can feel welcomed and able to easily participate. This means a start time that is after the usual school drop off/start windows and it might even mean having onsite childcare and welcoming perhaps teens and older kids into the audience (and yes this might influence the talk content/language used and may be less relevant for some fields than others - but I would argue that making the space welcoming in this fashion is helpful even for the most technical or industry specific of events).

This also means the suggestion would be to avoid alcohol even if the event is in the evening or on a weekend (or at a minimum to have plentiful alternative options).

And a version of this conference might modify some of these activities or format suggestions for that specific industry - i.e. a gaming convention (in a board game/table top game model) might have longer time set aside after the talks for open gaming or organized games. Or a video game focused version might similarly have a bigger space and time set aside for demonstrations and playing opportunities for attendees. But I think even in those cases there is a strong argument for avoiding many of the normal models in those industries for talks at conventions - i.e. talks by sponsors at a video game convention, or panel discussions at a board game/fan run convention.

Highly recommended read (or listen)

On Sept 12-14th 2024 the next Fediforum unconference will be held. Fediforum is:

The unconference for the people who move the Fediverse forward.

It is held entirely online and this Fall will be on a Thurs, Friday and Saturday. Past Fediforum's have been two days long and have been entirely during the work week. This change will hopefully allow some people who haven't been previously able to participate to join in. As an unconference the agenda is set by the attendees - anyone can propose of topic and pick a time from amongst the time slots of the event and then anyone who wants to join that session will be able to join it. And you are encourage to leave one discussion and join another if you are done with it or you want to check out other discussions - that cross pollination is inherent into how good unconferences run.

I have been to many of the past Fediforums and will probably try to attend some of this upcoming one. I've run many unconferences in the past and the organizers of Fediforum are highly experienced unconference facilitators and the event draws a great group of people shaping the future of the Fediverse.

My friends LaShawn Wanak and Victor Raymond are two of the many panelists and participants in the upcoming Gencon 2024 Writers' Symposium happening from August 1st to August 4th at Gencon in Indianapolis Indiana. If you will be attending Gencon this year I highly recommend you check out the agenda for the Writers' Symposium and if you have some free time attend a few of their sessions. Its basically a science fiction convention with some amazing writers (and editors) happening in the midst of the chaos and activity of Gencon. I've attended many past Gencons and occasionally managed to attend a few sessions at Gencon that weren't games - many of which were among my highlights of that year's convention. I'm not attending this year's Gencon as my summer travel plans and schedule were too much in the air to make time to attend. But if I were I would be hanging out for at least some of the convention at the Symposium.

And after the convention look for the anthology featuring new stories from 16 of the speakers, including my friend LaShawn Wanak.

30On Monday I posted about the surplus of events now today I want start looking at specific events. In looking at these events I will focus on a summary of what they did, some feedback from the portion(s) I experienced, and some observations about lessons for other events. 

I think there are a lot of lessons for events even after this current moment passes, in a post Covid-19 world events of all types will be different. 

For anyone who is not familiar with GenCon it is a very long running gaming convention founded in 1968 by one of the creators of Dungeons and Dragons who actually founded it before inventing that game, Gary Gygax. It is the largest table top gaming convention in North America and regularly draws over 60,000 attendees each day for a long weekend each summer in Indianapolis where the only larger event for that city is the Indy 500 race. Each year it has over 15,000 different events that occur over the long weekend with games happening 24/7 during the convention. 

Hundreds of vendors sell products to the attendees in the massive dealers rooms during the convention, with many companies launching new games at the show. While it is about having fun and playing games, it is also a very important business event for the industry with lots of new games launched at the convention. As an annual event it is also a chance for friends to gather and connect. 

Gencon took a long time to decide to cancel the 2020 convention. In the end they were forced to cancel for the first time in the convention’s history. But they also recovered. 

Last weekend Gencon held Gencon Online (from July 30th to Aug 2nd 2020). While smaller than the in person event, over 40,000 people participated in over 7000 different events that happened around the clock during the convention! Events were held in a wide range of online platforms - and ranged from tabletop games via Tabletop Simulator or other online platforms to role playing games held via virtual table tops and Discord to live streamed events on Zoom and Twitch and other platforms. They also recreated the dealers room online and had an expanded online store selling not just their usual convention merchandise but for the first time directly selling games from companies (mostly games that were being launched at the convention). The Discord server that Gencon set up for the convention will remain open indefinitely as a community resource. 

Badges for Gencon Online were free which certainly helped make it more accessible to attendees all around the world. But events were not all free and were ticketed. With prices ranging from $2 (most games) to over $30 (for some workshops). The tickets helped make sure that people attended events that they registered for and most of the games that I signed up for were full so the tickets worked (and getting tickets for events I was interested in was about as difficult as getting tickets for games and events are for the in person event - not impossible but it is always the case that some things you wanted to attend will be full)

A few observations. 

1. GenCon had the huge advantage over most conferences that they had already invested in building out their own ticketing solution for electronic tickets. So they were able to reuse that system and make all events digital/e-ticket only events fairly easily. They also already had payment processing in place with many attendees already having system credit in the GenCon systems from past events. And moving online meant that many events that would have had a physical limit on the number of attendees due to the size of rooms and fire codes could instead be made as unlimited events in the online context. 

2. GenCon got great support in holding the events from many of the companies and partners who each year hold a lot of events at the live in person convention. I mostly played games from Paizo’s Pathfinder system and they leveraged their usual network of game masters and organized play infrastructure to migrate to the online experience. Just Paizo alone held hundreds of games with two online “specials” that had over 70 tables (of 5-6 players each) all playing the same scenarios simultaneously online and interacting across tables via coordination from the organizers. Overall playing onine felt very much like playing in person - and in many ways was an even better experience!

3. Online allowed Gencon to offer many experiences that have never been offered at the live in person event. I hope that they continue to hold the online event in the future. For example, I saw games being offered in Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and other languages - something that is almost never seen at conventions held in the US. When I played online it was also usually via voicechat (via Discord usually) and a virtual tabletop (I played via Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds but D20Pro was also used as well as a few others). This meant that I was playing at a table with people who’s voices I could hear but whom I could not see. It was an extremely good experience - every table I played at was friendly, welcoming, and everyone made sure everyone had a good time. At one table we were talking and realized that most people at the table were parents - but the table also included one player who was a great-grandparant. While you see that diverity at the live event as well it was great to play with people without knowing much about them upfront (other than that they were fellow gamers). Going into the future I hope that Gencon continues to offer a robust online component because I think it can help make gaming even more accessible to all. 

Lessons for other conventions and businesses

Consider how an online event can be more open and accommodating of diversity than your regular in person events are. 

Offer content and events in many languages - don’t limit yourself to just English. 

Don’t force attendees to all be using video if voice-online or voice + a specialized application would work just as well (or even better than a many to many video stream). 

Don’t just offer panels and events that are only a replication of the “content” tracks of your convention. Look at how you can replicate a LOT of interactive content as part of your event. As well for events that have a dealers hall or similar events think about how to migrate that online to support those partners. 

For the future, think about how an “online” event could compliment a live event and enhance it. Can you offer the online version of your in person event in the future when live events are once again safe to hold? (assuming that such a future will exist eventually) 

Leverage technology and processes you already have in place - but look also at how you can partner with others to not reinvent things. Discord for example is a very robust and well scaled way to create an online chat including voice chat experience that scales well, can be limited to the community, and works on nearly all platforms. 

Keep the focus on fun but also don’t be afraid of selling. But consider whether baseline access (i.e. a “badge”) can be free while you sell specific tickets to specific portions of your event.

Getting a handle on the surplus of events and resources and conferences and classes and networking opportunities and articles and discussions and books and podcasts and vidoes and much more is an exhausting exercise in seeming futility at the moment. All while of course also dealing with the new normal of life during a global Pandemic, life where for most of us our home and work have blurred and we're spending more time with our household (whether family or roommates)

I'm struggling with this - there are more events happening than I can find time to attend - and especially because my time at home has limited windows when I can put my headphones on and concentrate on words and images on my screen to the exclusion of my family. Work where I am working on my computer but without my headphones on is easier to find time to do as I am still present sufficiently to be helpful if my son needs something (a snack, a bandaid, a toy gotten down off a high shelf, a lego piece taken apart, the needs of a 2nd grader are endless even for one as self-sufficient in entertaining himself as my son - my writing of this post has been delayed by getting breakfast, finding a lost Lego piece and countless other small demands on my time and attention). And my son is only one child and mostly self sufficient and I have a partner who is also at home.

There are no easy solutions to this tension between home and work. It exists as well in the open office layouts so common (pre pandemic) across business. Even in offices this tension exists, if you have headphones on in an open office you may miss casual interations with your co-workers and may not have a passive awareness of what they are working on and what they are worried about and discussing with colleagues.

I'm not the only person thinking about this tension. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a podcast from Harvard Business Review from the perspective of people creating events or running businesses previously built around in-person presentations (a magician is among the guests on the podcast). Note that you may need to register to view/listen to this podcast from that link (but if you can't you can also download the podcast on your favorite podcast player).

While I pay a lot of attention to business conferences and events I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from looking at how all kinds of businesses and events are adapting to the new normal. That the lessons learned from popular culture and especially focused niches are, in fact, applicable to the biggest of businesses as well. (and in many cases represent much bigger businesses than many people outside of those specific cultures may realize). I will also look at a few business focused events that have also made a transition to an onine edition this summer, in a few cases with a complete rethinking of what an "event" looks like.

In the past few weeks there have been a number of very large online events in place of bigger in-person events that have been cancaled as a result of the globall pandemic. In looking a bit in depth at a few of these events I hope to share some lessons that can help events in all genres. I will look at each conference in more depth in a separate blog post.

In each post I will give a quick overview of the event for anyone unfamiliar with it, look at how they migrated online, and highlight a few lessons and takeaways. These are all big events with more going on in each of them than any one person could participate in so my perspective will be limited to what I have experienced or have read reporting about, if you have participated (or in a few cases are currently participating in these events) please leave a comment or response with any additions from your experiences of these events. I will also be focusing on these events primarily from the perspective of a participant in the events. Lessons for speakers and event organizers will also be looked at.

Some context for that. I have been a conference founder and organizer for decades. In high school I helped found a small science fiction and fantasy convention at my high school - a convention which until 2020 had continued to be held every year. I was then a volunteer at many Chicago area science fiction and fantasy conventions including a Worldcon held in Chicago. In the 1990's I was an organizer of regular business networking events in Chicago. In the 2000's I started a business and academic confernece which I organized and held in Chicago and in the Bay Area in a variety of formats. I also continued to organized regular networking events and to work as facilitator and organizer at a variety of other business confernces and events. In gaming fandom I have been an active attendee of gaming conventions including Gencon since the late 1980's and have run many games at conventions over the years (I have attended more gaming conventions as someone running games than I have as someone just playing in games). From time to time I have also organized regular gaming events outside of formal conventions.

While I have spoken at a handful of events over the years and been a facilitator at many more I am not a professional speaker as so many of my friends and colleagues are. But from knowing them and observing them over the years I have learned a lot about events around the world.

A few days ago I wrote a post for my friends on Facebook talking about the businesses I am considering starting (the ideas I’m considering will be in a follow up post). In the past weeks I have written about some of the questions I am exploring and my processes.

1. What are the best current resources for getting a new company (pre-seed) started?

2. Of the current cloud platforms and related services what are the best for the very early stages of experimentation (again pre-seed)?

3. What accelerators/incubators or early stage investors do you recommend?

4. Should I write code or make prototypes in a no-code manner)?

Before I write about the ideas I’m exploring, first let’s consider the biggest problem any business owner or entrepreneur faces:

What is the problem you are solving?

It may sound simple but knowing the problem usually also means knowing who the customers are (it is fine to solve a problem you don’t personally have — but make sure you really understand the problem and that your solution solves it). Furthermore it implies you know the problem in sufficient detail to know, or at least have a strong hypothesis about, how to solve that problem. Typically not for everyone — but for enough people you can reach to sustain a business.

If you have an existing business it is worthwhile to from time to time make sure you still know the problem(s) you are solving — and for whom. As the world around your business changes, your answers may also change — whether or not you have changed how you run your business.

Brainstorming mode

When you are considering what problem you are solving make sure that you are in a brainstorming mode — by which I mean the goal is to jot everything down, not to go back and edit or filter or second guess yourself — that comes later. When you are brainstorming get everything down — don’t filter or edit yourself. This is why brainstorming is usually best in private by yourself or with a very small, very trusted team that understands that part of brainstorming is coming up with crazy ideas, with impractical ideas, with thoughts you will write down once and recognize that they aren’t good.

If you love everything you come up with when brainstorming — for anything — it should be a sign that you haven’t challenged yourself enough or that you have been holding back and filtering yourself.

Instead you should hate some of the ideas you come up when brainstorming. It is important that you have these negatives — the stuff that when you see it written down you recognize that it isn’t right (at all or specifically for you and your team) — in this recognition you learn why it isn’t right, why it isn’t what you want to do, what makes it obviously wrong.

After brainstorming you should feel a bit exhausted and a bit overwhelmed, likely pulled in a bunch of directions with a lot of ideas for how to frame your business or the business that you want to start. The next step is one of the hardest.

Take a break.

Walk away from your lists, if done as a group, go get some food but also go spend some time apart from each other. Rest and quite literally sleep on it.

In a day or two, take out the whole list and review it with now fresh, well rested, no longer in the moment of not editing anything, eyes and see which ideas pop and still resonate, which are bad and unworkable, and which are a bit crazy. If you brainstormed in person consider doing the brainstorming in a room you don’t need to access for a few days to just leave all your notes up on the walls. But pro tip — make sure someone still has taken detailed notes/photographs in case anything gets disturbed or cleaned up.

When reviewing the output of your brainstorming session watch your immediate reactions and use them to sort the ideas into broad categories. Here is my suggestion for categories but create a few buckets that work for you and your team.

Bucket 1 — ideas that are just “ok” you neither love nor hate them, they don’t seem crazy or impossible but neither do they seem very exciting

Bucket 2 — ideas that are obviously bad, unworkable, or not what you want to

Bucket 3 — ideas that are crazy that feel insane but might be amazing if they worked

Bucket 4 — ideas that immediately feel right and resonate and exciting

Broadly you likely should have most things in Bucket 1 and fewer and fewer things in each of the remaining buckets. And while the ideas in Bucket 4 should be explored in greater depth don’t immediately discard EITHER bucket 2 or Bucket 3. Instead use them to help you refine your thinking.

From Bucket 2 — explore for a little while WHY each “bad” idea is now that you are in a judging and evaluating mode. What makes it something you don’t want to do? Does it cross an ethical line? Does it require serving a different group of customers than you are comfortable serving? Does it require skills or resources you don’t have and aren’t sure how to get? In short make sure you think about why you are rejecting each idea but especially on the ideas that are clearly to you “bad”. If the idea is just poorly formed or a random idea you jotted down don’t dwell too long on it — but do think about why you put it in this category — something about even a short note may have reminded you of a bigger issue with your business.

Knowing what you do NOT want to do is incredibly valuable and should help you focus on all aspects of your business — team, customers, partners, and investors. Do not lose sight of what you won’t do as a business even as you should primarily focus on what you do — on the problems you solve and who you solve them for.

From Bucket 3 — explore what makes you immediately reject these ideas as “crazy”? There are very different categories of “crazy” — a review is a chance to explore which categories your specific ideas fall into. As you review them, think about what would be required to make a crazy idea happen — is it more resources? A different set of skills? The right partners? The right customers? Some new invention that doesn’t currently exist (as far as you are aware)? What makes you define this idea as crazy?

Spending a few minutes as you review the “crazy” ideas might help you identify the ones that aren’t impossible — and which you might want to aspire to achieving. And from the others as you identify what made you think of them as crazy it may help you refine the ideas you choose to pursue. But importantly don’t reject a “crazy” idea immediately.

From Bucket 4 with each idea review why the idea resonated with you, why you got excited. Think about whether that idea will continue to excite you in a year? In five years? In a decade? Can you find a team of people who will also be excited? Beyond it being exciting, is it achievable? Can you and your team make this idea a reality?

And having reviewed your “bad” and your “crazy” ideas it is likely that while you are reviewing the most resonate ideas from Bucket 4 you will also be thinking about whether your idea will grow to cross any of the lines you identified from Bucket 2. And perhaps can think about how to be even more ambitious and set your goals higher and broader after reviewing the “crazy” ideas in Bucket 3.

Finally don’t completely neglect the likely many ideas in Bucket 1 — the stuff that felt boring but achievable but not particularly exciting. Often some of these types of ideas might be useful and relatively simple steps you can accomplish while focusing on your larger more ambitious ideas.

Now pick one, yes, just one, of your ideas to focus on as a business

Don’t give up on all the other good ideas (or the best elements from the not as good ideas) — but when answering the question of what PROBLEM your business solves you should find a way to focus and answer that question in a clear and simple way. Frequently as you start to grow and expand it becomes harder and harder to answer that question in a way that includes all aspects of your business. The impulse is then to start saying something like “we do this for these people and that for those people and are also working on this other thing for these other customers…” and fairly rapidly you have lost any focus and cohesion as a company or organization.

When you have the focused problem your business is solving all the pieces of your business start to make sense — you have a way to decide what to invest in directly in terms of facilities and staff as well as when and where to partner with others. This includes what customers to serve and seek out and likely will help you think about pricing of your goods and services and even the legal structure of your enterprise and how you will seek to fund it over time.

All from a seemingly simple question.