Birthday wish

Today my oldest turned 6 years old. There's something about this kid, lots of amazing things, actually. I could go on and on.

Before we sang "Happy Birthday" I told him to think of his wish. Just as we finished singing, he quickly blew out the candles. I thought he hadn't time to think of and make his wish. But before I had a chance to say anything, he started hopping up and down and said "OOOO, I really want to tell you what I wished for! It already came true, anyway."

So we told him it was ok to tell us. He said "I wished that everyone I love would be happy."

And right at that moment, we all were.

Happy birthday, Jackson.

Cost-benefit decisions

Every decision you make has an associated cost. It may not be monetary, more than likely its not. The trick is to make decisions where the benefit really is greater than the total cost. This week was an exercise in big cost-benefit decisions.

One example: in building one of our demos, I'm assuming a certain amount of monetary cost. The problem is, the process is costing me way more at this point. Costs are tricky--obviously time is a cost, but frustration is a cost, as are good vendor relationships if you lose them. All three of these "hidden" costs are what are causing me rethink the current demo building process in favor of a more streamlined process.

Course corrections are not just warranted when your budget is at risk. You should be looking at all of your costs and adjusting to make sure that your decisions aren't costing you more than you are willing to spend...

Concert etiquette

Honestly, I don't think I've ever read a commentary on going to a concert that gets it more right. Thanks Russ.

I always thought that perhaps I was just getting too old (cue visual of me shaking an old lady fist at the youngsters) to enjoy all of the bs you have to put up with at a live concert. Please, if you are one of the jackasses that ruin the experience for the rest of us, I implore you to read the article above with the highest level of self-reflection.

If you know one of these people, please forward the link along, for all of our sake.

New blood

The Tandem rockstar group has been stewing in our own ideas for awhile. When you live with an idea for a period of time, you get comfortable with it. You stop looking at it from new angles. You, in a way, start believing your own hype, that your idea is the best it can be.

It's dangerous, because as soon as you present your ideas to others, they will see the value that you see, but they will also see ways that it could be better.

If you take your idea and build it and start showing it to prospective customers without letting people pick apart your ideas first, you'll probably get a couple sales. And then someone who sees what you are doing and has the means to improve on your idea will do it, and probably make more money than you.

Yesterday I had an all day strategy meeting on our new products. A new Rockstar is entering the fold, and getting his feedback on our product ideas made me see them in whole new ways. We're early enough in the process to easily incorporate his feedback. I'm reenergized about starting to talk about these products with customers. I think it'll be awhile before anyone could seriously challenge us, and I would be surprised if anyone could build a better mousetrap as quickly as we've been able to put together our products.

It's a critical step to get new eyes on your ideas. The more insightful feedback you can get early on, the more viable your idea is likely to be.

Keeping up appearances

We're continuing to make progress on our demos; the Design Docs are done, the wireframes in place, and the specs outlined. Now we're at the scary point that we start defining what these things actually look like.

You know when you meet someone on the phone, but have never actually seen them? Based on their voice, and the content/context of your conversation, you start to make assumptions about their appearance. Text chatting is even more far removed and allows your mind to make assumptions purely on what people type.

When you do finally see the person, your mind often has to reconcile your assumptions with reality. Sometimes people look exactly how you expected them to. More often, they look much different, and you are surprised...sometimes pleasantly, sometimes not.

We're at the same point with our demos. We're defining styles as much as we can, but to a certain extent, these products haven't shown us their faces yet. I'm looking forward to *meeting* them in person.

Threes

I'm a big fan of trinities. We have a product in demo development for B2B, and another DTC (direct to consumer) product following close behind. All weekend I've been thinking about doing something perhaps a little more noble, based on a great conversation with a fellow Rockstar on Friday. A third leg of Tandem Learning to flesh out the trinity, perhaps.

We are a learning company, and as such, I'd like to think we're not limited in the types of training that we do. So, we're now exploring some ideas to use virtual world technology for therapy--my background in speech pathology got me thinking about the stroke patients that I worked with to rebuild communication skills. My fellow Rockstar has met all kinds of interesting people who use virtual world technology to work with kids with autism, and people with various disabilities that use virtual worlds for all sorts of interesting purposes.

I'm feeling decidedly optimistic about the third leg of the Tandem Learning tripod...

Form versus function

Had a great meeting today with the guys who are going to build our 3D graphics for one of our first demos. We had an interesting conversation about how real an environment has to be for people to "believe" it, especially when you are interacting with other "people" in this environment.

I do think the style of the avatars and their environment need to be consistent to be believable. I've become immersed in Second Life, as have many others, so I definitely think that style works as believable. I think the more cartoonish it gets, the easier it is for people to distance themselves from the interactions.

Ultimately, for our product, it may be the market that decides. More realistic = more money. If people see the value and are willing to pay for realism, then we may have a REALLY cool-looking product on our hands...