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I’m sitting here on a Mayday Saturday morning (that is, last weekend) at Paypal Town Center here at eBay central in San Jose California.
It’s another Startup Weekend; Walter and I are building a new business in one weekend.
Here’s the problem we want to solve:
Sometimes I want people to contact me directly, sometimes I don’t.
But every application I use, such as Skype, and Gmail, and Facebook has it’s own status indicator. Except that some don’t have status indicators at all (yeah I’m talking to you, Twitter).
What we want is a global way of letting people know “I’m available” or “Go ‘way.”
Such that anywhere I’m at, like Website In A Weekend, or iPhone, or Gmail chat, or Skype, or Facebook (ok, maybe not Facebook ’cause they play by their own rules), I can set my status and it will be set everywhere else.
“But, what,” you ask, “has this to do with WordPress and blogging?”
That’s an excellent question Let’s find out.
What’s in it for you
If you had a notion that maybe this “Weekend Apps” or “Startup Weekend” was somehow related to “Website In A Weekend,” you’d be pretty close to the truth.
The inspiration for Website In A Weekend came from attending these startup weekends.
It’s a great model. In one intensive weekend, you get yourself crammed full of everything you need to get a business going.
Remember my writeup on Foodspotting? Startup Weekend.
A disclaimer, of sorts
I have to be completely honest here…
A lot of people assume they get weekends off. As in, every weekend.
I cannot relate to that.
The only time I’ve had much in the way of “weekends off” was the 4 years in the USMC (except for deployments, which are work every day of course), and a couple of brief stint as a post-graduate researcher.
Pretty much half my life, weekends have been nice to have off, but not something I could necessarily count on. When I was working construction, if it rained on Tuesday, we work on Saturday. Otherwise, lose a day’s pay.
School? Part time work to pay the bills, and studying, always.
So as an entrepreneur, it doesn’t feel strange at all to work on weekends.
For me, scheduling an entire weekend to build a brand new application – or a brand new website – well, that’s just how the world is. And I’m not the only person working this hard! I’m not sure if I feel validated or terrified, but most of the people at the top of this blogging craft put in 60+ hours per week!
What are you doing this weekend?
To be sure, working on weekends isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
But having a huge block of time which is all yours, that is, time your employer doesn’t have demands on, really let’s you focus on the task at hand. It’s like getting two weeks work done in two days!
What this means for you: when you’re ready to buckle down on a Friday evening… I’m all in! We’ll have you a brand new WordPress site, with all the bells and whistles, by late Sunday afternoon. You can even go get one of those “free” WordPress installs if you like. I’m totally cool with that, in fact, I’d love it if you did because that stuff is boring and having it handled already would be awesome.
Just let me know!
“I are building” That’s either a beautiful reference to lolcats or a typo.
Anyway, I work weekends too! Largely because I just have too much to do not to really, though I do try and take Sundays off (never quite get there though, oh well). Keeps life more interesting in my view :)
Nothing to buckle down with you on this weekend though, however sure you’re busy enough. ;)
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Orchid Texturing Workflow: Update =-.
“We are building”?
I’m taking a big hunk of tomorrow (Sunday – Mother’s Day) to hang out family of friends.
It will be good for me!
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Doing It By The Numbers – Blog Post Engineering =-.
By ‘we’ I mean ‘me under orders’ ;)
That’ll be fun ^_^ hope you have a great day! Our Mother’s Day was a while ago, but enjoy it.
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Review: Heroes of Might and Magic V =-.
Weekends off? Never. I have three children. What’s a weekend off? So far today I’ve written a blog post, made bracelets with my eldest, approved a community post, put the shopping away, replied to email, fed my children, set up databases and email access for someone else, and now I can’t stop, promised the girls we’ll make fairy cakes and cheesecake. Must dash ;)
P.S. If you ever find a solution to the Skype/FB/GMail thing, talk to me. I want in :) If have a solution that covers FB, GTalk, MSN and Yahoo by way of Ebuddy on my phone but Skype isn’t currently supported :(
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Weekend Wrap: Things you may have missed this week =-.
Set up databases… woooo…
For such a simple concept (status), it’s quite a bit of work to coordinate everything!
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How To Unlaunch Your Ebook =-.
lol I wasn’t suggesting it was difficult. Just one more thing that had to be done today. I’ve also hoovered up egg, bathed three children and done a trio of bedtime stories but somehow databases and blog posts felt like a better fit for your target audience ;)
.-= Eleanor Edwards´s last blog ..Thankless Tasks: Looking for a button in a car park =-.
A whole weekend can be precious if you put your effort in specially for creating a website. It is possible and quite frankly very doable. Just have to know what you want achieved and get on with it. I have small websites, either for flipping or MFA (made for adsense) that I normally maintain on weekends. Not much time during the normal days:)
.-= DiTesco´s last blog ..Google AdSense Webinar – Free AdSense Seminars (Update) =-.
I have about 100 domains that could probably be pulling down a few dollars in Adsense every month. I should dedicate 1 morning per week to bringing those on line.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Wanted: Staff Writers for Website In A Weekend =-.
100 domains. What are you doing with them? are they all parked or just sitting there? You really should try to rakc in some few AdSense $$ specially if they are keyword rich domains:)
I think some of them are very good. I’ve kind of been waiting for WordPress 3.0 to release, so I could just install a bunch of them as a network.
That would cut way down on maintenance chores.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How To Unlaunch Your Ebook =-.
Back when I had a Day Job, every other weekend was an intensive. I’d write all day Saturday and Sunday – and end up with blog posts for a week or more.
Being able to set aside two and a half days to do nothing but create – and finish – something tangible is soul-food. Incremental, tiny victories kept me winning.
Now that I don’t have a Day Job, my time feels less bounded and I don’t set aside two or three days for a task. I’m constantly working on everything, all the time.
I’m putting myself back on the Day Job Schedule, where I work on my business stuff during the week, and give myself three days to create – and finish, oh god the finishing is important – things on the weekends. Or every other weekend (kids). Because that really, really works.
I’m glad you wrote this.
Finishing is *huge.* Sometimes, I “finish” things be simply declaring them finished.
This is the same strategy as “Never retreat! Declare ‘Victory!’ and advance in a different direction!”
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Doing It By The Numbers – Blog Post Engineering =-.
RE;Weekends
Lately, I have been working too much meaning not that I don’t have commitments that I will keep but that it just takes me too long to get done what I commit to do. I need to do some things which are not work – otherwise what’s the point? So my issue is making the time I work effective and productive. Lot’s of work needed there. I can work all weekend if I need to. It is just that needing to usually means that I slacked off earlier.
RE:Connections
Why can’t you just turn off Skype, Twitter, etc when you want to be alone?
.-= Ralph´s last blog ..50’s Nostalgia-Bill Haley and the Comets =-.
Ralph, I’m using timers to inch my way along chores that are difficult, unpleasant, or require a lot of focus.
Typically, I do two dedicated 60 minute sessions every morning.
Turning things off is a good point. Here’s a scenario: I want to get some work down, but I also want to be available after a certain time. I want to be able to set my status at, say, 9:30 am with a “Do Not Disturb” icon, and a message that says, “Busy now, I’m available around 11 am, let’s connect up.”
You could really help me with this by asking a lot more of these questions. Answering your questions helps me build use cases, which help me pitch. Yeah yeah I know I’m a lot of work.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Saturday Morning Surfing: Collecting ideas… or throwing them in the trash? =-.
So what you want is an interface to all your various communications channels that you can tell when you are available. Ideally such an interface would be able to handle them all. Would a virtual assistant meet your requirements?
You do raise a lot of questions for someone with all your education.
.-= Ralph´s last blog ..50’s Nostalgia-Bill Haley and the Comets =-.
*chimes in*
Isn’t progression in education characterised by asking more difficult questions? Curious only. =)
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Review: Heroes of Might and Magic V =-.
So are you saying that you get stupider with more education? Seems like you ought to be able to answer more questions with more education.
.-= Ralph´s last blog ..50’s Nostalgia-Bill Haley and the Comets =-.
What I mean is that the more you know, the hungrier for more complex answers you become. Also the people that can answer them get fewer and fewer…
But you can answer each question up until you reach your own questioning level so long as it’s within the bounds of your area of expertise.
All pretty amusing/fascinating really. =)
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Review: Heroes of Might and Magic V =-.
Ralph, it seems counter-intuitive, but the deeper you dig, the more questions you raise.
Sure, the more education you have, the more answers you have as well.
It’s not really a matter of being “stupider,” more a matter of understanding that one good answer leads to many more good questions. The questions start to get harder, and faster.
Science, math and engineering are rife with examples.
I very strongly suspect that the BP disaster is going to expose questions that were never asked, and I’m willing to bet that BP designed and built that rig well within all known Factors of Safety. They would have been fools not to.
While I’m on the topic, the question nobody outside the geoengineering department (and probably the BP BoD) is asking is “What’s happening to the reservoir pressure?”
Depressurizing the reservoir is a far bigger disaster than a few clumps of oil washed up on a beach. The clumps will degrade, sooner than later. Reservoir depressurization is permanent.
Don’t leave us hanging Dave, did you ever figure out how to coordinate status indicators between platforms?
.-= Siddhartha´s last blog ..People I’m Following on Twitter =-.
In theory, it’s not difficult: have each client point to a centralized database (or scale to a distributed database like Google’s Big Table).
In practice, I need a Time Turner.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..Blogging Business – You Gotta License For That? =-.
I don’t get much work done on the weekends. Got 3 kids to tend to, games, parties, and all that fun stuff.
.-= Mike Roosa´s last blog ..Don’t Obsess Over Stats =-.
That’s far from being a bad thing!
Hi Dave,
My weekends are usually and always have been for my two sons, not so much lately at their age… 17 and 15, so, this weekend I am not sharing with my lads, so mountain of crap to catch up on. ;)
I am happy working weekends if it’s possible, for me sunday is no different to weds, unless I got my son(s) over.
When I was doing the stonecarving, I used to have to everything else at night.. *sigh, almost wore myself out a few times. ;)
Now with no stone work… and weekends becoming free more often, I am going to make the most of it.
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..Hung, or in the minority =-.
Stone work? You have photos? I’m intrigued, please share more!
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How To Unlaunch Your Ebook =-.
Aye mate, I am a stonemason by trade, one of the “famous” Portland stone ones. ;)
The last big contract I worked on was the British Museum in London.
Something I made my eldest ;)
http://bit.ly/cFcu2B
.-= rob sellen´s last blog ..Adsense, beginning of the end or time to adapt =-.
My belief is not to imagine the week as something divisible into “weekdays” and “weekends”, as that’s an imagining of time that is “bad” and “good” as we define the two periods.
When we do something we love that can be monetized, it stops being work, and it stops being something that blends into the weekend – it’s just part of the week.
We need a break from everything, though. If we went out every night we’d get sick of that. This Friday-Sat-Sun time, whatever it’s called – is a good time to interject some other fun stuff so I don’t get overdosed on the “work” fun stuff I do too.
.-= Ross Hudgens´s last blog ..Let’s NOT Do Lunch =-.
I could use a bit more fun stuff right now myself!
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog ..How To Unlaunch Your Ebook =-.
It really depends on the weekend for me. I usually spend the time with the family, but once in a while I get in the mood for creating a website and if my hubby agrees to mind the kids, I may just run through a project.
.-= Anne´s last blog ..Blogging about Blogging =-.