If you are a rebel, jester, believer, thinker or curious planetary citizen, check out our concept for a game of debate and social values.

magic sauce prezi by jazzmann91; Encouraging you to Question Everything.

i know i can do a better job of it. and so i am.

for the first time in my professional career i feel very appreciated, trusted, and supported by the company i work for. which is great.

i have a hard time explaining to people what i do, because they don’t use these products … ever.

enterprise level ticketing, service catalog, change management, and process automation software, just isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. i understand it. i can figure it out. this makes me valuable. it feels good.

so i work away the days. i take this break to write this post. i’m still learning everything startup. working my online pitch. getting no feedback. my next spare time company task is v2 of prototype screens for what i’ve finally boiled my MVP down to. still wondering when my co-founder or two will show up. i need to make more friends.

speaking of friends … i keep making friends with women starting businesses. nothing like mine, but entrepreneurs all the same. hula-hoops, feather earrings, fashion, accessories, their ingenuity, creativity, and persistence is inspiring and i’m glad i can help them figure out stuff. analyzing their market, customer relations, recording metrics, and the pricing of top quality products (which is especially difficult for artists).

it reminds me of my first time investing in a company. as i’ve been dreaming up my own idea, i’ve also been participating in the business community. i’ve already been an angel investor, of a very small variety. 5 years ago i helped two friends fund their business making, and selling screen-printed leather belts. i’m wearing a prototype to this day and it’s still a great piece of art. i let them use my credit, i borrowed it on my low-interest credit card, and then charged them a slightly higher interest rate. the first loan went great, they made money and great products, and paid me back within a year and a half. we decided to go again, smaller loan, just to secure some hides for the next batches. which is mostly still outstanding, but it was worth it for me to take a risk and support my friends.

in the very beginning someone learned leather working, and then screen printing in the basement suite next door. then a factory lived downstairs from me for a while. then we all moved. then they got a workshop going. eventually they expanded to a much bigger and efficient space. along the way they got some employees. factory workers. assistant sales people. artists. it was going gangbusters. products in stores all over western Canada and available at select universities and many music festivals.

my biggest advice was always to raise prices. they wanted to sell to people who loved their work and it was working, but they were run ragged keeping up with demand at the price point they set. i shared ideas about creating training material, franchising their business, so it could spread organically, but i was thinking way out-to-lunch compared to their day-to-day hustle. i encouraged them to ignore my advice freely, and payments were mutually agreed to, and occurred when the money was there. i’d like to think i was a really hands-off investor, mostly i just cheered every time things went well for them.  i like cheering for people.

eventually, one co-founder split suddenly. i don’t know why, but i hope she’s doing well. we never really talked about it. the remaining founder kept going valiantly for a while and then a health issue sidelined the whole thing. we still chat now and then, she’s back full-time into teaching sky-diving or working a wind tunnel somewhere.

i enjoyed being part of their success. i understand how much work it was, i helped a little here and there. it was a little disappointing when it all blew up, but i am totally proud of their products. and i bet their customers still love them.  i know i do.

Thanks for reading!

prototype

storytime: now and then by jazzmann91; Encouraging you to Question Everything.

R U A? #rebel #jester #believer or #thinker

a debate arena: the seven kingdoms by jazzmann91; Encouraging you to Question Everything.

Last week I got into my #1 competitor’s beta: Quora. This application is amazing and their name is way better than mine. I love that they share the same central idea in their product: No duplication of questions.  There are some great strengths and obvious weaknesses to me, but I’ll save that post for later.  Today I redo my go to market strategy for my non-existent prototype, which I can’t seem to start by myself.  I keep saying I’m more of a fixer than a build-from-scratch guy, but maybe I should just get on with it.  I’m definitely way behind these guys technically.  I hope my story will catch their eye and we’ll talk about teaming up.  Either way I’m sure we’ll talk eventually.

My initial target market:
Brands trying to market on twitter and facebook that aren’t satisfied with the effectiveness of their campaigns.  As well as, other social companies and organizations, that want to capitalize on their value conscious way of operating in the world.

Positioning statement for economic buyer$:
For socially aware organizations who need to engage with online audiences in a meaningful fashion, the QuestionCollector is a value centric debate community, where we can all share our big picture values.  Unlike twitter and facebook we offer a rich cultural experience for brands to grow their online social identity.

Positioning statement for user buyers (free):
For rebels, jesters, believers, and thinkers the QuestionCollector is a debate hosting website for people who care about our collective future.  Unlike Yahoo!Answers, StackExchange, and Quora we create a deep cultural experience to organize us around our questions and values, while empowering people to participate in a story of freedom.

Value proposition for organizations:
We believe that organizations with social capital should be able to increase effective engagement with their people by achieving a greater reputation in the marketplace, through our ability to organize people around their deeply held beliefs and values, as a result of our unique multicultural experience.

Value proposition for users:
We believe that honest, caring, thoughtful people should be able to increase their freedom by participating in their own unique way, through our ability to provide an organized, cultural debate site, as a result of our unique ranking and privacy systems.

Just by doing these exercises repeatedly I’m finding great value in the process.  The sentences quite often end up absurdly too long, but they are excellent at squeezing out the answer, of what our product will be, and what we know it will do for our subscribers and our users.  <~ I think it’s training me to make my sentences too absurX… nevermind. It has also helped me see my business model more clearly, along with helpful advice I’ve been getting.  I look forward to getting a whole bunch more.  If you have any questions about what these mean,  I want to understand your perspective.  Please bang out a quick comment or tweet me and I’ll be sure to respond.

Thanks for reading!  I can’t do it without you.

Positions & Props: the Play with no Prototype by jazzmann91; Encouraging you to Question Everything.

Are you a rebel?
Definition #2 To resist or defy an authority or a generally accepted convention.
Rebels want freedom.  They want control over their destiny and choices.  They want freedom from authority, rules, and restrictions.  We love freedom and think our democracies would be much better served if we promoted and valued our rebels more.  Marc Emery is a rebel who is currently locked up for selling seeds (a heinous crime indeed).  What rule or authority are you railing against?

Are you a jester?
Definition #3 a professional clown employed by a king or nobleman, esp at courts during the Middle Ages.
We do not want to suggest that you are a pro clown from the year 711 AD.  We do want you to be a person who pokes fun at serious stuff.  Society has modern jesters.  They host shows like The Daily Show or This Hour Has 22 Minutes.  They just don’t get their paycheck from the magistrate anymore (though technically the Queen does dole out the cash to the CBC).  If you like ripping on stuff in a way that is comedic, you are a jester in my books.  No, we cannot pay you, but if you are that funny we’re sure someone will help you go pro! :-p

Are you a believer?
Definition: #6 A person who has confidence in the truth or value of something.
This is our broadest category.  Most people believe stuff, but what we are looking for are people who believe very strongly in something.  If you have a cause, a religion, a conspiracy theory, or an opinion that you want to advance, we need you.  We need you to share that belief, so you can find others who agree, as well as, find where our values diverge.  Our belief is that questions hold the keys to peace.  What do you believe?

Are you a thinker?
Definition: #1 One who devotes much time to thought or meditation.
Philosophers, futurists, academics, and voracious readers.  You like broadening your minds and probably have thought this at least once about yourself: “I think too much”.  We definitely think too much, but meditation has helped. We need thinkers to examine and sift through the values we hold and ask the questions that will drive humanity to resolve our differences.  Without you, we get nowhere.

ACTION STEP:
1) Choose your faction
2) If you use Twitter get listed by us. Mention me and which list you want to be on.
“I am a rebel! @wizard_71 ”
“I am a jester! @wizard_71 ”
“I am a believer! @wizard_71 ”
“I am a thinker! @wizard_71 ”
3) Comment! Share your thoughts. critical feedback is what will make us great.
4) Consider following us on twitter, becoming a fan, or subscribing to the blog.

Why are we sending out the call?  We need a community of passionate, sarcastic, unreasonable, and reasonable people to test the prototype with, in the coming months.

Thanks for reading and especially for taking action!

rebels, jesters, believers, and thinkers by jazzmann91; Encouraging you to Question Everything.

First some background.  It is set in a dystopian United States which is suffering some form of recession.  The main conflict is between the industrial leaders of production(profiteers) and the political shamans of “the public good”, also referred to as the looters.  The looters are winning.  They are eating production faster than it can be produced.  They rack up the bills and then when they run out of interest to live off they start bending the rules to siphon the profits of the industrialists.  It’s similar to what is happening in the real world, except the producers are still ahead and will probably remain ahead.  Mostly because in the real world they end up being more intelligent than the looters and because we haven’t run out of key resources yet.  In the book a group of great minds decide to withdraw from producing in the looters world and to convince every other great productive mind to also withdraw.  This of course escalates the collapse of the economy, as the looters have less and less prey to suck profits from, and the people lack competent leadership.

Plot aside, the book contains many long solo speeches by the leaders of the withdrawal.  There is one towards the end that is a 3-hour radio address that stretches 57 pages.  Each speech contains positions about values, moral codes, love, or the backwardness of society.  These include themes like: the strong are punished by the weak for their virtue; and the productive rich are plundered by the poor and unproductive for their wealth.  The path of freedom is held up at gunpoint and told to bow before the need of the “public good”.

Society had become lost due to enslaving their minds rather than elevating them.  The looters live by a code that only listens to their hearts, even if their mind tries to show them the falsehood of their direction.  Thus they expect to live without earning their way.  They expect justice and the media to get in line or they threaten to discard them.  They expect everyone to give to their brothers without thought for themselves and on and on (literally) This flowchart typifies the existence of a low level looter dealing with everything as it breaks down:

Having hit an emotional low point in my life, this book was very good for me.  It encouraged me to reevaluate how I give myself away without standing up for the value I represent.  It displayed how emotions are a guide to true value, but are not good for creative strategy and planning.  Another example the book gave me is in how to take pride in what I accomplish, not the kind where one betters someone through competition, but in pure value creation.  It displayed how to take pleasure in producing for my own sake and to profit from the pleasure of others who use my product.  To do otherwise is to submit to being raped by a society, who will forever demand more of me than I can give.

Like many others, I have adopted the fears of my father and, in my opinion, I have followed this path for too long.  I’ve been afraid of success and have thwarted myself by not working as hard as I could.  It drives me to be distracted rather than focused and to avoid the most pertinent work in front of me.  I’ve also learned that my fear of success from another angle is fear of failure.  In the last few years I had taken failure as if it were success, and while it is important to go through failures to reach success, it needs to be learned from and tossed aside.  I was taking pride in my failure and while I learned from it, I wasn’t tossing it aside and moving forward properly.  Now with nothing left to lose and my passion still before me, I see the truth.  This book helped me see how to pour my love into producing the product that I know will give me great satisfaction first and sharing it with the world second.  Now I just need to practice what I preach and work really, really hard to make it great.  I think I’m much better prepared to do that now.

Thanks for reading!

Atlas Shrugged by jazzmann91; Encouraging you to Question Everything.