Arthur Chang

Lake Tahoe is more than Snow

I wish I had more time to go explore Lake Tahoe, it's scenically beautiful and it's history is all in the nature.  It's a great place to spend time with awesome friends for the long weekend.  I wish we were still there!

I'm getting a tad better at snowboarding.  I can carve pretty well without falling on the blues unless I'm about to run into someone else, which happens often.  My goal is to really get confident so I can bring my camera along with me up the slopes.

Below are a few more pictures I took, some of the lake, some of my friends just hanging out.  See more here.

Dogpatch Labs and Facebook Connect

It's a rainy day at Dogpatch Labs today, but the Facebook Connect meetup preparations is going at full force!  I'll post more pictures tonight after the event.

Get more details about Dogpatch Labs here, and follow them on Twitter here.

Did I mention it's raining pretty hard?  It's getting in!

Mike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures

More pictures to come!  Watch my photostream: http://twitter.com/kineticac

Update:

Amazingly enough, PG&E fails at the worst possible time, a few minutes before the event was to start!  PG&E had some kind of major equipment damage and there was no ETA for the lights to come back on.  We were all huddled around candlelight:

But of course, Dogpatch Labs SF is run by the awesome Ryan Spoon and Polaris Ventures, who pulled through big time and got us over to the Four Season's Hotel.  With us came the mountains of pizza and drinks.  Disaster averted!  On with the show.

Huge props to the presenters, Ryan Spoon, Mike Hirshland, all the Polaris guys, etc. for making this event awesome.  Definitely an enjoyable session and also great to see the Facebook Connect group come out to hear how the companies are using their product.  I'll now complain a bit less about the Facebook API Wiki now that I've met the Facebook crew.  ;)

Trip to Guerneville, CA

Last week it was all about dusty, dirty, broken down buildings.  Sometimes admiring the old and decay of the world is a good experience, but getting out to the beauty of nature and enjoying the fresh air is probably on the healthier side.  I drove north to Guerneville, CA with my sister, future brother-in-law (Pete), Issa, and my friend Tim, to take photos and check out the location of my sister's wedding this coming May.

The venue is absolutely gorgeous, and the surrounding is just as nice.  I took a few photos around the "downtown" which is two city blocks long.

Then ventured to the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve with Tim while the others did tastings at the wedding place.  It was pouring rain.

My camera and I were completely drenched, but the weather sealing did a great job of keeping out the water out of the camera.  Then we ventured out with the group to Jenner where the Russian River meets the ocean.  It was really storming and super cold!  Here's the proof:

Tim braving the storm:

Issa getting totally drenched!  Cute!

Abandon

I found myself a week ago, on the first floor of a three story building, surrounded by walls, a few pool tables, and a gigantic hole above my head showing me the sky above.  I was in an abandoned building, burned a few months ago, part of an old naval base.  It's amazing finding myself in these really different places, places where I would never have imagined existed or ever visiting, and getting quite an experience that I can't say is beneficial, harmful, or just plain useless except to satiate my desire to explore and learn.

I was afraid 70% of the time, and the rest of the time plainly numbed by the completely crazy places I was visiting, all my senses just overwhelmed to a point where none of it seemed real.  Here are a few tamer shots I've taken below.  If you are interested in all of the pictures from my group that went out, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sfbasmareisland/interesting/

Fisherman's Wharf Photoshoot with SFBAS

It's almost been a year since I organized the last photo shoot with the San Francisco Bay Area Shooters (a photo group on Flickr dedicated to organizing photo outings in and around the San Francisco Bay Area).  At one point I was going out every other weekend with this group, ranging from four to two dozen photographers each time.  It's a great hobby to really connecting everything else in life, either it be other hobbies, work, or random cool locations and subjects to take pictures of.

I decided to try to jump start the photoshoots once again, and this time we went out to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, CA.  This is most likely the most touristy part of Northern California, which certainly yielded some great photo ops.

We started out with 13 people, then finding a few along the way, and eventually the group dwindled to four.  The relaxed nature of these shoots is encouraging, as it allows those with less time during the day to come out and shoot, and those who are bored or crazy go shoot for the entirety of the day (and sometimes early mornings of the next).  I saw a few old friends, and met a good amount of new friends.

We started off from Ghirardelli Square, and walked along Bay and Embarcadero.  We went out to a few Piers, back out, and then finally all the way to Pier, near the Ferry Building off Embarcadero.  It was quite the walk, but worth it =)  The weather was cold, but we were all prepared.  Here are a few of my favorites from the shoot:

Finally, see all the photos from all the photographers out at the shoot here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=sfbas_ghirardelli&z=m&ss=2&s=int

Week Six

Here's week six in my series of documenting the early stages of my new startup.  The purpose is to document our progress, our maturity, and what we learn and experience every week.

This past week has really shown me a few key things.  

Lots of startups are trying to launch right around Christmas, either to tag onto the shopping spree of the economy, or to get things finished so they can go relax for the holidays.  There's quite a buzz in the startup community about now, and you learn a lot from them.  There's also a high level of stress, especially the balance between work and holiday festivities, which include shopping, family and friend events, traveling, and more.  Best thing to do?  Stay out of it.  Depending on Christmas for your app to launch successfully shouldn't be your strategy, though I won't deny the boost it could give.  Either way, the ultimate success of your product won't hinge on it being ready for Christmas, if it does, you have other problems to worry about.  Other stresses include the Apple App Store closing down to any changes or submissions you might have during and around the Christmas day, long lines to get approved, and other elements of your product that are totally out of your control.

Another cool characteristic about this time of the year is that you're more likely to be around friends and family.  Holidays are a great time to practice the elevator pitch.  I've learned a lot about my product by talking to a lot of people, strangers and friends alike, that I probably couldn't have in the same amount of time with my co-founders or buried in code.  I left my echo chambers last weekend to go on a photoshoot with a seriously eclectic group of people.  There were new faces, familiar faces, and old faces at the shoot.  The photo posted above is from the event at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco.  I met a few developers in enterprises, a few from Google, a few from startups, and then also a bunch of other people in various trades and fields.  All of which had at least some interest in sports.  If not before we talked, definitely after =)

At the event, I was able to take a breather and walk at least 7 - 8 miles, enjoying the outdoors and the holiday decorations.  I also talked to a lot of different people, about the new company, about my new product, and about what they thought about it.  Sure I wasn't the only one talking the whole time, but I did get a lot of reactions and feedback.  By the end of the night, my pitch had matured dramatically from when the day started.

I am a developer most of the day, coding, but that doesn't mean that's all I need to concentrate on.  Founder status requires the responsibility of keeping your head above the clouds, out of the echo chamber, and putting on many hats.  Gathering data from feedback and analytics through the product is one thing, but also just trying to describe and basically convince people that your product is awesome gives you an idea of what people want before even seeing the product.  In essence, I was trying to sell vapor.  I get a little credibility for the vapor since I'm actually building it.  This weird "Matrix" type stuff I do on the backend seems to add just enough mystery for people to give me a little more cred than I would have otherwise =)

What I've done in this exercise is further gain another set of feedback from a totally different group.  I've also further improved the pitch.  I've substantiated more of the product's focus, and have more ideas on how to market the main features.  Sure it's not the final or only set of data go off of, but getting out and doing something completely different with a totally different group of people has definitely helped me as an individual become better in experience and knowledge to continue development of the product.  It also helped me step back a bit in my thoughts of my product, to reorganize what I have been doing for a few weeks, and describing it in it's most primitive of forms.  It really helps to be able to get out of the huge hole you've dug in your product, so you can remind yourself what fresh minds really think about a potential product of yours.

This further substantiates my belief that being a successful entrepreneur and developer is strongly aided by your ability to take part in other activities outside of your daily work.  I'm not saying go out to random venues to try to push your products, nor take time away from development or from the product in order to try to gain more feedback.  But go out and enjoy the world from a different perspective completely, keep your own self achievements a little more diverse, and you'll be amazed at how people think outside of the world's startup bubble.

Practicing your pitch also gets you organized, fresh, and thinking.  It keeps you from putting yourself into dead ends, or too far down the wrong road.

Also partaking in some holiday fun will help you rejuvinate some of that spirit and excitement that is constantly being sucked away by memory leak issues, internet explorer compatibility issues, and dealing with battling third party services (apple, facebook, etc) that you depend on.

Happy holidays everyone!

What camera should you buy?

Photography is an amazing hobby, and a lot of people realize this.  Deep down inside, everyone has a desire to really express their artistic abilities.  Everyone has some fiber of artistic talent in them, it's human nature to at least appreciate art.  A lot of people also realize how awesome still photographs can be.  They can be artistic, they can tell a story, and they can do good, best of all it seems so easy to capture what you see as being beautiful and telling.

A lot of people will see prints in galleries, coffee shops, online, and think to themselves: "I could do that!"  And let me tell you in plain honesty, hell yes you could.  The photos are (usually) taken of real life situations and objects.  These things exist in everyone's world, whereas painters and such have to muster their art from the delirium brewing in their often stricken minds.  So of course, anybody could be in the exact same place and situation as the photographer behind the print that is being admired or scoffed at.  But what's the difference?  Well people immediately attribute it to the equipment.

"If I had a camera, I could do that too!"  That is definitely not the case!  I'm not discrediting your abilities before even meeting you, but just having a camera means nothing.  Now if you came to this article hoping I will tell you exactly what camera would be best for your budget, artistic needs, and purse size, you might not get that.  Instead I will help you understand how cameras are the least of your concerns in terms of getting the photos you want (snapshots, group family pictures, or abstract architectural marvels).

There's a lot of differences between a good photographer and a person who wants to be a photographer.  But first, let's go through the similarities first: Good photographers and photographers both want a camera.  Cool, *whew*, we're done with that list.  Now let's get into the differences:

• Good photographers need to get themselves in good situations to take a picture
  • People who want to be photographers want a really good camera so they can take a picture... somewhere.
• Good photographers take pictures all the time, and when lucky on a good day come up with one or two photos that they keep
  • People who want to be photographers want better equipment so that all the pictures they want to take look way better, like good photographers.
• Good photographers go.  They plan, the organize, and they go and take pictures regularly.  They literally go places they don't in their every day lives to get the pictures they want.
  • People who want to be photographers talk about needing a good camera to take good pictures.  And when the pictures they take in their rooms, to the club, to the Monday Night football hangout at their friends house, they curse that they don't know how to use their camera to take good photos.

Week Four

Wow, I've almost lost count of how many weeks it has been since we started building our app (photo unrelated... mostly).  It literally started from scratch 4 weeks ago, and tomorrow we are already ready for our second beta release.  This isn't a pure web app, mind you, it's an iPhone app.  We got backend, frontend, api's, stat servers, natural language processing processes, and more, all playing nicely in 3 weeks, and now 4 weeks ready for another release.  On top of all of that, we have all the nitty gritty business details: seed funding, design work, branding work, marketing strategies, PR relationship building, shmoozing, twittering, and blogging.  It all really gets complicated, and it's amazing how we're getting everything in line and organized.

This week was dedicated to improving our first release, w hich I'd like to call our alpha.  After using the app ourselves along with 20 or so beta testers, we've really gotten to know how our idea works in real life.  An idea and a finished product are basically two completely different things.  What you think your product will be, is actually not how it will ever feel once materialized.  Focuses shift, things are stripped out, and the core features are redefined and polished.  Every release is going to throw curveballs at you, you just have to be ready for it.  All the features and ideas you thought were table stakes might just be superfluous things that really don't make your app cool.

With FanPulse, we've found that, sure, there's about a hundred different things people would love in the app, but does that make them more likely to open up the app again?  Nope.  What do they like the most, what do they use the app for?  That's what we need to focus on.  If there's an outrageous amount of demand for a feature that's outside the scope of our core, even more so than what the awesome feature the app is centered around, maybe it's time to look at another product that has been unearthed by your previous idea.  Yes that could happen, but don't force it.

Tomorrow we're releasing a set of features that is a continuation of our efforts to polish and make our core functionality work even better.  I still regard the next release as an alpha, as it's still testing out our earliest ideas.  I'm not against saying that it's not perfect or ready for the public yet, because it will be soon, and releasing small and often will pay off big time.

If you're not in our releases yet, and want to get in on this next beta, send an email to beta@wethefan.com with your name and email.  If you have an iPhone and know how to get your UDID, send that too!  We'll get you in for tomorrow.

And if you're all wondering what the heck the picture is above, it is of a Porcelain Crab.  The Neopetrolisthes ohshimai is not actually a true crab, but a squat lobster evolved into what is more or less a crab looking thing.  I think this evolution is called carcinisation.  Basically shows how crabs might have evolved from lobsters due to environmental factors (hiding under rocks for example).

Anyways, these guys are cool!  They use their claws to fend off predators or in my case a few harmless snails and fish, but use what's called setae to catch food.  Setae are basically a pair of arms that stretch out from underneath them that have "nets" in them.  They catch particles (planktonic food) and shove them into their mouths:

I currently have a mated pair in my tank, they sort of just hang out together and grab stuff out of the water column.  I doubt I'd be able to keep any of their offspring successfully, but it's fun having them as a pair nevertheless.

Week Three - Stay focused especially with a release

The Calcinus laevimanus (Zebra Dwarf Hermit crab) in my reef tank gets blown around quite a bit.  I have flow that amounts to about 7500 gallons per hour flow through the tank, so as soon as the hermits lose grip on a rock, they go flying.  This little guy tumbled quite far, but was able to get back up after a little rocking back and forth.  Determination and focus to survive is as simple as getting your house upright again.  Well, maybe simple for a hermit.

Week three of my startup company has been pretty exciting.  We met up with one of our board of advisors, who provided really good feedback and information.  It's always great to have people who really make the effort to share their knowledge and insight.  It's not like you rely on that for direction, but it's good to keep your head out of any echo chambers you might be in, and really listen to other experts out there to see how other people and groups think in the same industries.  That is one of the most important things to learn in a startup: how everyone else is thinking about the same problems.

The worst that could happen to a company is for all the founders to put their heads down, bury themselves in code and business details, talk amongst themselves, and in essence, persuade each other that what they are doing is exactly right.  Echo chamber.  Everything really comes down to the same way of thinking for startups: release fast, often.  This will get you the most feedback from real life people, and with what they say you can easily determine what to build next as a feature.  There's no need for you and your founders to be geniuses, knowing exactly how people will want the app to behave, knowing the perfect UI flows.  There's also no need for countless hours discussing how exactly the best way to present information is.  Just present it as best you see it, and let the people tell you.

And of course there's simplifying.  If you find yourself needing more resources and hires to build stuff, you are definitely NOT focused on the one goal.  If you need to branch out to maintain some completely separate product to give your core product some value, you have just created two startups.  Whenever you are faced with tons of features that aren't maintainable, you've probably gone too far.  Focusing on one strong goal, either it be 140 character status updates (or face it, 140 characters of bragging), or it be checking into sports games with your friends, will keep you from biting more than you can chew.

Our next release will not be a ton of more features that 1 to 5% of our users wanted to see, but it's going to be polishing up and making the core functionality that 100% of the users have used, even better.  Of course making it even better doesn't mean just making buttons shiny, or fixing a few bugs, but it can definitely include features that all go towards the same goal of making the core functionality that much more appealing.

It all comes down to a fine balance of not building non-core functionality features, and giving people enough things to be excited about for the next release.

This will be our next biggest challenge!  Utilizing user feedback to determine what's next on the list.  I'm not going to lie, we do already want to do about 100 different things, but we're going to try our best to keep it simple.

Thanks to all the feedback so far on FanPulse!  Those beta testing are really the ones behind exactly what this product will become.

Week Two

Week two has felt like an eternity, and surely the amount of productivity is close to that.  I've never expected to have put together something so quickly and with such high quality before in my life!  The requirements for the upmost quality of code and timeliness is as extreme as you could imagine, since the one I have to answer to here is simply: me.  You are your harshest critic.

Week two went really smoothly, as I started hitting my stride in feature development balanced with all the other planning, management, and what nots of the product.  There has been awesome feedback so far from our advisors, and just bouncing the idea off people is easier and easier, meaning the problem we're solving, and the solution, are understandable and clear.  It's not completely perfected yet, but everything's pointing in the right direction.  The minimum viable product is stripped down pretty far, and definitely scary to release since it's not exactly what our grand vision is (far from it really).  The human tendency to try to completely bedazzle the audience with the first splash upfront is difficult to ignore.  We must see the value in quick and lightweight releases of the product, as long as each release provides a solid, unique, and easy to understand message each time.

People don't need your product right away, if they do then it has to be perfect right away.  Without even having people try it, there's no way to know what they want.  Instead the approach the company is taking is to give people something that's different, that begins to solve the fundamentals of the problems they have.  Once they commit to that one single idea we've released, they're hooked! Now they NEED new features.  And that's what we build =)

Aside from code, I decided to get out and take some pictures again this weekend.  This time I was pleasantly accompanied by my #1, and we did some exploring around Moss Beach / Fitzgerald Marine Reserve.

See all pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinetic/

Teasers below: