Vote now! FUND$TER in the Global Startup Battle

I need your help.

Our start up FUND$TER from Santa Barbara Startup Weekend is competing in the Global Startup Battle. 

Would you vote for me? 
http://globalstartupbattle.agorize.com/en/juries/10/votables/315

Reasons to vote:
1. You gave birth to me or we're in some way related. 

2. We went to school together, we've worked together or we've dated(!) and if i win you can have bragging rights that you know me.

3. You still owe money on your student loans.

4. You have no idea how you're going to afford your kids' college.

5. I voted for something for you or your kids at some point.

6. You have ever had a conversation about the lack of women tech entrepreneurs.

7. You drink Coke. (They are sponsoring the competition.)

8. You think there should be an option for funding college besides student loans and your parents.

9. You need a distraction from your family over Thanksgiving and you can use this as an excuse.

You can vote every 24 hours until December 6th! Please help us make it to the finals!

And please share...thank you :)

Why more women aren't using Quora

I'm about to make some broad, sweeping generalizations about behavior based on gender. Yes, I know that opens up a whole debate where people will point to specific examples that run counter to my argument, and yes, they exist, and no, I'm not saying that ALL women behave one way or that ALL men behave another. But there are some culturally defined and perhaps genetically determined differences in how the genders interact (lots and lots of books written about this...) and this post is focused on addressing how those differences affect design, specifically community and user interaction design in social media.

I read a story this morning that came through my Twitter stream: Is Quora a Sausage Fest? 

And it immediately clarified for me why I don't like Quora. Quora is actually designed for men.

Let's take a step back. Lots of business and political arenas were designed by men, for men...they focus on the ways that men interact with each other. Sorry, guys, but a lot of what you do is just professional chest-puffing, testosterone-rich, back-slapping pissing matches. Sure, it may look more civilized in some contexts, but I'd argue that on any given day, C-Span taps into the political version of a Gladiator ring with a bunch of guys trying to out-argue each other over issues that neither party is going to budge on.

Why aren't women's professional sports more popular? Why are first person shooter video game players predominantly male? Why aren't there more women politicians or CEOs?

When you design systems based on the way men interact and communicate, men will be more interested in participating in them and will be more successful in them.

So let's look at Quora...

Although some people might call it a social media tool, there's not a lot social about it. If you don't know what Quora is...the simplest explanation is that its a forum where people can post questions and people can post responses. That seems gender-neutral enough, right?

Except, its really not. Quora has one formula to participate: question and answer. If we think about this as a community where everyone has the opportunity to become an "expert" then all of a sudden, the dynamic becomes "who can post the best/smartest/most relevant answer." In essence, Quora becomes one big competition to be the most prolific, the most engaged, the most respected...by answering other people's questions "the best."

This isn't a format that lends itself to conversation or discussion. This is a format that is a bunch of people getting up on their pulpits and preaching. This is Senators presenting on the Senate floor, gladiators in the ring fighting for their lives, people climbing over each other to get themselves up the corporate ladder. This is a format designed for men.

If you look at the most successful social media tools, Twitter and Facebook, there's one overarching feature that makes them just as appealing to women as they are to men. Its the opportunity for people to engage and interact in different ways. These tools allow for people to create their own experiences. They allow flexibility in participation. They create lots of different opportunities for people to define their own "success" or value in using the tools. With Twitter and Facebook, what you get out of it is what you put in...you create your own experience.

Quora, on the other hand, is a defined experience and type of interaction. There are values already built into the design and dictated by the interaction style. And the interaction style is very masculine.

I talk a lot in my presentations on designing experiences to account for gender differences. There are some general guiding principles in immersive design you need to pay attention to: how you orient new users to the environment, how you reward behaviors, how well defined success is, etc. These gender differences impact how people perceive these environments, all the way from "is it useful?" to "is it fun?" and its important to understand how people engage with each other to design for different types of engagement.

Women are more communal, collaborative, and like to talk things out. Men are more decisive, exploratory, and willing to take risks (trial and error). I could tap into all the research that shows how our language, behaviors, and decision-making differs along gender lines, and how that contributes not only to how we are perceived and valued in professional settings, but also how that reflects how we think about ourselves as women and men. There are powerful cultural forces that have gotten us to where we are today; many of those cultural beliefs are what perpetuate gender stereotypes and inequalities. The fact remains...there are differences between women and men. That's a good thing, when those differences are acknowledged and accounted for.

So back to Quora. Its designed to post up a question and open it up to answers. This isn't a format like "Ask the Expert" where credibility and respect have already been established as part of the interaction design. This is a free-for-all of throwing yourself out there and making yourself an authority. If you look at just the basic differences between women and men, it makes sense why more men are engaged in this format. You're rewarded for having the most decisive language, strongest opinions, and taking a risk by throwing your opinion out there. Most women take one look at that and think "not interested." Then I'm guessing they go ask their question on Twitter or Facebook.

Asking questions and seeking answers are human characteristics that have nothing to do with gender. How we ask questions, who we seek out for answers, and they types of answers we value can be extremely gender specific. As we continue to explore social media tools as opportunities to engage people in new ways, we need to make sure we are aware of the differences if we want design to engage BOTH genders in the conversations. Perhaps before designing a tool that's whole purpose is to provide opportunities for questions and answers and then wondering why women aren't participating, it would be important to look at how women are already asking and answering questions and building those types of interactions into your design.

Unless you want, in the immortal words of Flight of the Conchords, "Too Many Dicks on the Dancefloor":

Too many men
Too many boys
Too many misters
Not enough sisters
Too much time on too many hands
Not enough ladies, too many mans

Why Spymaster isn't a colossal waste of time

A couple days ago, I started seeing people I follow on Twitter getting assassinated. My first inclination was to find out what I needed to do to start assassinating people myself. And so I signed up for Spymaster.

Let me start by saying that I've never joined into any of the social games, like Mafia Wars, on Facebook. But honestly, I have given up on Facebook for the most part, and Spymaster is run through Twitter where I spend an inordinate amount of time (thus the two weeks since I've blogged anything...). Immediately I saw complaints in my twitterstream on the Spymaster spam (yep, its annoying) and naysayers touting it as a waste of time. Still, there were a few people I wanted to assassinate and so I signed up anyway.



Spymaster is not a learning game. But it is a game run in conjunction with a social media outlet, and a lot of my Twitter friends (who I think are really smart people) were definitely engaged. So for the last two days, I've played Spymaster. Here are my observations and conclusions:

- Yes, incentivized spam is annoying: Spymaster rewards players for posting a variety of updates on Twitter. The more you play, the more annoying this is for your followers who don't care if you just wounded @spydeesense or if you just bought a new safe house in Rio. But the temptation is there to post these things, since the game "pays" you for each update posted. This is probably the worst design feature, and although the updates can be turned off, the incentives make you think about it before finally deciding that a few "rubles" or "pounds" aren't worth the followers you're going to irritate.

- Its fun to assassinate your friends (and people you don't know, too): People are competitive. Social games feed the need for competition in a communal way, and a social media tool like Twitter is an interesting format for combining social technology with gaming. Its been done with Facebook, it'll be done with other social media tools too. Wherever people gather socially, people will be inclined to play games.

- But can it be used for learning?: The question I always come back to is how can the engagement that is garnered through games be translated into learning experiences? Most games actually do teach something, its just not explicit. A lot of games for learning somewhere along the way lose the thing that makes people want to play them: they lose the fun.

Spymaster, on the surface, is a simple game of accumulation and leveling up: assassinate people and perform tasks to make money and gain experience, allowing you to level up and more easily assassinate people and perform more complicated tasks. There incentive to get your Twitter friends to join the game to make your assassinations stronger. There's an economy of purchasing weapons, buying safe houses, and "saving" money in a Swiss bank account.

But the real "game" is the strategy in determining HOW you're going to level up. Do you focus on assassinations, or performing tasks? How much risk do you take on? How important is it to get your friends to become spymasters in your network? Is it better to try to assassinate your friends, or strangers? How do you pace yourself so you don't lose all your energy? Ok, granted, the content of Spymaster isn't particularly useful for anything I do in my day to day life (although based on my performance in the game, I would make an excellent Russian spy). But what if the content were a bit more "serious"? Could this same format be used to teach job performance content? Could it be used as an assessment technique? I think there are any number of potential uses of social games for learning...and sadly, very few have yet been seen or taken seriously.

I've lately been focused on ARGs as the next wave of games for learning. But social media games may be another viable model for learning, and a market full of immersive, engaging learning possibilities. Now back to my safe house to plot the next assassination...

Defying categorization

I've been working on my presentation for DevLearn 08 in San Jose. The title is: Virtual Territory: The Future of Learning in Virtual Worlds. I'm really excited to present, first because I have more than 5 minutes, and second because I'm a ham that misses teaching. But the presentation slides, which I typically have no problem pulling together, are going SLOWLY. I finally figured out why. We're not just talking about the future of learning in virtual worlds. I'm really talking about the future of enterprise learning, and our Virtual Territory doesn't fit into a nice, neat category like virtual world or simulation or serious game, or even learning management system. Its all those things, and more.

How do you explain a new concept? By trying to compare it, or contrast it, to other things that people understand or identify with. It's difficult to do that with what we are doing. I'm not a real sales-y girl. I don't want to sound too cocky, or full of myself, or oblivious to what work others are doing.

At the same time, I haven't seen anyone else doing what we're doing. It makes what we're doing that much harder to explain and describe.

But I'm holding out hope that in a few years, people will be comparing what they do to our stuff.

Not afraid of the big, bad economy

I've had numerous people ask me if I'm nervous about having just started a company before the economy takes a massive nose dive. I have an easy answer: no.

Maybe its my optimism, maybe it naivete, but I think if your company is built on talent, ideas, and work ethic, then unless your product is directly affected by the economic conditions (real estate, for example...) you can either look at the bad economy as an opportunity or a risk.

How can I see my new product as an opportunity? Well, for one thing, virtual worlds can enable organizations to reduce travel costs while increasing the intellectual capital of its employees...in other words, you can train people more effectively, remotely, using the Virtual Territory. And usually when companies are tightening down during bad times, investing in their people to improve performance is one of the ways to stay competitive in a bad market.

And it doesn't hurt that Seth Godin also thinks that bad economic times are times of opportunity for people who are willing to face the risk.

So, no, I'm not nervous. I'd be more nervous if there were more people who weren't nervous either. Then I'd just be one of the pack looking to make a buck off a good economy. Now my success will really mean something, and that means more to me.

Flashback: VW LA '08 recap

Apologies for not getting this out more quickly; see my previous post for my "I'm too busy" excuse.

Honestly, I delayed blogging VW LA '08 because of my level of disappointment. I had attended VW NY in April, and was completely energized. LA left me equally deflated. Because this blog is late, and because I'd like to keep to the salient points, I'm not going to write up a play by play, but just some overall thoughts and experiences coming from the conference. So without further ado or build up:

Keynotes:

There were some pretty big names that keynoted the conference: Tim Kring, Jon Landau, Collin Parris, Steve Parkis. Sadly, I thought the interview structure of the keynotes was a disservice to the speakers, and became as much about the interviewers as it was about the keynote speaker. Also a bit of a disappointment was that the keynotes obviously were peripheral (for the most part) to the nitty gritty of what's going on in virtual worlds, yet they were positioned as experts. What might have been more interesting (of course, just my opinion) is to hear how each of the keynotes, from their respective viewpoints, see virtual worlds impacting the future of media, movies, television, the Internet, enterprise, kids media, etc. The collective intelligence in the audience was far beyond that of the speakers, so to position them as experts was a bit of a farce that became painfully obvious as each of the keynotes progressed.

Exhibit Hall:

You know, most conference exhibit halls are the same. Booths, people looking awkward trying to talk to people about what they do and hopefully make some sales as a result of standing around for 2 days. I don't begrudge anyone for their conference efforts on the exhibit floor. AND...the exhibit hall was pretty small. I didn't see anything new that I hadn't seen in NY, and in some cases, booths were scaled down. There were less people/companies there overall. My particular favorite was the booth that no one was staffing, just some instructions on how to navigate to their demos on the laptops in the booth. Classic.

Sessions:

So the tracks included:
Virtual Worlds Hollywood
Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise
Virtual Worlds Kids
Future of Virtual Worlds
Technology and Results

My first question: where were all the people using virtual worlds in academia? Besides kids worlds, academia is where all the action, and certainly all the research, is. I was stunned that there wasn't an academic track. I was even more stunned that there really weren't that many people there from schools and universities. A huge miss, and an obvious one.

I mostly attended the Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise sessions. I can't speak for the other tracks, but that one was a ghost town. I was SHOCKED that there were so few people in the enterprise sessions. And at least half, if not more, of the people attending the sessions were vendors not actual enterprises. In April, more than half the room was filled with companies looking at virtual world technology. In general, I was disappointed with the attendance at the conference, but I was particularly disappointed with the Enterprise track.

A point of comparison to the Game Developers' Conference in Austin last week: the GDC sessions actually tried to teach attendees something, the VW LA sessions? Not so much. It seemed much more that speakers were limited by their experience, or by their willingness to share lessons learned. Every conversation seemed like it was tempered by a question of whether the person you were talking to was a competitor. I suppose when no one is making much money yet, that's what happens. But I don't believe in sacred knowledge, and every session I attended seemed like they were sharing the last bite of their steak dinner.

Attendees:

It seems like the same people keep showing up over and over. As previously mentioned, I was disappointed that more companies interested in integrating virtual worlds didn't attend. At 1300 attendees, I'd guess at least 800+ were vendor attendees. Not a bad thing, if the sessions were more geared at knowledge sharing. Which they really weren't. So there seemed to be a disconnect between the people who attended the conference and the flavor of the sessions.

Overall:

For a marketplace that should be as dynamic as virtual worlds, very little had changed since April. The biggest thing I learned was that we're still ahead of the curve on our development of a training platform utilizing virtual world technology. Are there other sleeper companies out there? Perhaps...

And, my personal favorite quote of the conference: "There's about to be a knife fight in the alley between learning companies and technology companies. The learning companies are going to win."

Of course we are.

Winning and losing

I hate losing. I've already discussed the competitive/perfectionist issue, and let me emphasize that I squarely fall into the competitive camp. For me, winning, or succeeding, has become more and more important over time. And that has made me more and more competitive.

This week wrapped up a couple loose ends. A few of them wrapped up quite nicely. A few of them didn't. For the ones that didn't, I was really upset. I had to take a step back and think about why. Each situation is a little different, and there were different emotions involved with each of them, but the overarching theme for all of them was that I felt like I had lost.

I have a few people to talk me off the ledge. I think their advice is worth repeating.

* Sometimes when things don't work out the way you wanted, its actually for the better.
* Don't expect someone else's behavior to change just because you'd like it to. In fact, you shouldn't expect anyone's behavior to change.
* Just like in dating, in business, if he doesn't call back, he's just not that into you. If he was, he wouldn't be too busy.
* Sometimes its worth the money.
* Sometimes its not worth the money.
* It's better to be open up front then surprised later on.

So, there will continue to be successes and set backs. This week helped more clearly define the path to the successes and some of our risks for set backs. Luckily for my competitive streak, the path to success is much less cluttered now.

Competitors defined

One of the tricks successful businesses use is gathering competitive intelligence. Industry conferences are one source, as are relevant associations and organizations that collect and disseminate industry news. Another great source, if you can get them to talk, are your prospective clients. One way or another, you need to find out who else you'll be bumping into in the lobbies and what their story is.

I have a philosophy about competitors (if you haven't noticed yet, I have a philosophy about lots of things...). They are only competitors if you allow them to be. Sure, you may be selling similar products or services. But are you really? What you are selling are your ideas, your expertise, your customer service--basically, you are selling your talent and the talent of the other people of in your company. That's what your competitors are selling too. All the more reason to aim to hire rockstars and not accept mediocrity.

If you don't think you're better than your competitors, close up shop and cut your losses. If your ideas or talent aren't as good, your only hope is to be able to position yourself better. That may work for awhile. Eventually, though, the truth will be revealed.

Bottom line, you need to believe you're better than everyone else, walk the walk and talk the talk. If you're always chasing a competitor, you'll always be behind. Better to let them be chasing you.

And ultimately, YOU define who your competition is. Don't let others define this for you. Know what the differentiators are and be able to explain them. And whenever possible, play nice on the playground. It's always better to be able to give a wink and a nod to those other companies waiting in the lobbies.

Not a perfectionist, just competitive

When I was young, my mom always told me not to be too hard on myself. She was worried that I was too much of a perfectionist; I would get upset if I wasn't the best at everything. I realized earlier this week that I'm really not a perfectionist. I don't care if I'm perfect, as long as what I do is better than everyone else. Sometimes that means I do have to be perfect, which is probably where my mom got confused--I would get upset in high school if I got a B on a paper. But I wasn't competing with myself, I really just wanted other people to think I was the best (which wasn't going to happen with a B).

Trying to be perfect now would be an effort in futility. What is perfect in sales, in training people, in developing relationships? Its impossible to define. So I compete with other people I respect, who I think are really talented. And I strive to do such great work for my clients that they don't want to work with anyone else. And I try to surround myself with people who are better than me (and then I try to stay out of their way).

Starting this company has triggered a whole new range of competitiveness in me. I'm setting big goals for myself. I'm working hard not to make any huge mistakes. But to be honest, I have already upped my stretch goal for the year. Go big or go home.

Turf war of words

Yesterday I got into a turf war with another vendor over their audio scripting. It was funny for several reasons. But let me set the scene...

My client copies me on an email regarding an audio script that another vendor wrote; since we were going to be incorporating the video they were producing in our e-learning module, he wanted me to review it. So I reviewed it as I would any script that one of my writers would send to me. I changed it from passive to active voice, and I changed the "we" point of view narration to "you" because of the personalization adult learning principle (people remember more if content is personalized to them and their direct experience).

I knew before I sent it that the other vendor was going to be upset about my edits. There's nothing that riles a person up more than another vendor coming in and correcting something you've done in front of your client. So when I sent my comments, I did the whole "hey, this is just my opinion, I put all my comments in tracked changes, you and client can totally ignore if you see fit," blah, blah, blah.

No sooner do I send my edits than the other vendor sends an email back to our client, explaining why my comments should be ignored. I know this because I was on the phone with the client and he was reading me the email and I was again explaining why I made the edits and he could totally ignore me without my being offended. So he went through the pros-cons cycle: he DID ask my opinion and expertise in the first place, and I DID have rationale based on learning research to back up my changes, and ultimately I'm getting paid for providing them with my expertise in learning. So in the end they kept my changes (of course, while I was on the phone there was also an informal survey on the client-side of what everyone in the room thought, but I also won that by a narrow margin).

Score one for research, grammar, and a little tenacity. And on National Grammar Day, no less...

Breaking up is hard to do

When you leave your old job to start a new one, or in my case to try to start a new one, I've found that people generally have three reactions:

1. Indifference: Typically a general "good for you" because your leaving either doesn't effect them or because maybe they secretly wanted you to leave anyway
2. Where are you going and can I go there too?: Its amazing who comes out of the woodwork on this side (and sometimes who doesn't). In some cases its great to get this reaction, especially out of the people you'd love to keep working with. In other cases, this can be tough, either because you can't immediately see how this person fits into your new gig, or because you were secretly glad you were leaving this person behind
3. How dare you!: This is the tough one. This is the one that leads to ugly behavior on the part of your ex-coworkers

So let's talk about the "How dare you!" people. They could be benign, cut any personal relationship they have with you and rally the remaining troops to move forward and succeed, hopefully better than when you were working with them. I understand (to some extent) hurt feelings when someone leaves, and this seems to me to be the high road that people who have this reaction can take.

But then there are the people who want to try to hurt you back. For whatever reason, people get so overprotective of their current positions, or see an opportunity to raise their value in the company, that they turn to the bully mentality of trying to make themselves look good by cutting the person who is leaving down. I'm not talking about the people you work with that do this all of the time, you'd expect this reaction from them. I'm talking about the people who you respected while you worked together, maybe even were friends with, that not only cut you off once you announce you're leaving, but look for ways to get back at you (threats of lawsuits, etc.).

I've heard that since I've left, co-workers have been reading through my old emails looking for "wrongdoing" or evidence of some sort. I'm sorry to say they'll be disappointed--I wish nothing but success for them and did nothing while I was working there to put the future success of the company at risk. I do feel a little sad that this is what they've resorted to--I hope that someday, when one of the key leaders in my company leaves, and I'm feeling hurt or angry or suspicious, that I'll remember this and take the high road. Better yet, I hope I just wish them well, figure out how to up my game, and look forward to competing with them.