Supporting Doctors without Borders through Images without Borders
A project I’ve been working on in the background for a while has finally all come together and I’m thrilled to be able to talk about it. After the Haiti earthquake I donated some funds to support the rescue efforts there but I realized there was going to be a long-term need there and started looking at the right ways to get involved. One of the organizations that I’ve considered donating to for a couple of years is Doctors without Borders, which fits the kind of organization I look to put my donation money into (low bureaucracy overhead, low marketing expenses, high percentage of revenues “on the ground” and not in the home office, etc..).
Then I ran into another organization trying to create a place where photographers could donate images for sale to generate revenue for Doctors Without Borders. Images Without Borders seemed like a cause I wanted to get behind, so I did some research, decided it was doing the Right Things, and contacted them to see if I could donate some images.
I’m happy to announce that five of my images are now available for purchase through Images Without Borders, and all profits for their sale will go to Doctors Without Borders. Each image is limited to ten prints and will then be retired. I want to encourage everyone who reads my blog to support Doctors without Borders, either by going to Images Without Borders and buying a print (mine or one of the other donating photographers), or by donating to the organization directly.
I will sweeten the pot further — if you buy one of my prints via Images Without Borders, I will send you a free 11×14 signed print of any image in my portfolio as my thank you for doing so. Simply email me a copy of the receipt on the purchase and we’ll work out the details.
Here are the images I’ve made available:
To help spread the word, I’ve created some free mobile phone wallpapers of these images. You are welcome to make copies of these and pass them around or install them on your phone. I will also be doing desktop wallpapers of some of my images, including these, to help support this cause — stay tuned for that.
I hope you all will consider supporting this organization and cause, either by buying a print, by donating directly, or by publicizing this and spreading the word to others. Haiti needs our help, and this organization is there on the ground trying to make a difference, and it deserves our help.
Thanks,
Chuq
(p.s. observant geeks will probably notice that my photos are being hosted on Smugmug and not flickr. I’ve been working towards creating a portfolio site where I can start selling prints and licensing images, and Smugmug was the site I decided to use for this (Photoshelter, the site hosting and donating its services to Images without Borders, came in a close second). I’ll be using Smugmug as the site for my professional portfolio the way I use (and will continue to use) Flickr to distributethings more casually and socially. I’ll talk more later about my plans for Smugmug and how this all ties together, but this situation was a great opportunity to fire up the new site and get this next phase of my photography going….)
Yosemite on the horizon!
So having mentioned it was time for vacation a couple of weeks ago, I’ve actually done something about it. I was able to grab three nights at the Lodge on the valley floor, so I’m taking the week of March 1 off and heading off to Yosemite in about a week to get away from email and everything else, and just unplug and unwind and focus on recharging the batteries and taking some photos.
It’s still a ways out, but the ten day forecast for that period (3/1-3/4) is encouraging: maybe some overnight snow but temperatures above freezing during the day, and it looks like a storm will roll through during the trip, which I’m hoping for. Nothing scary in the forecast, and encouraging for landscape potential. So we’ll see.
What’s not settled is what to do around those days. I sat down and wrote up all of the things I might want to do and then started pruning out stuff that didn’t seem to make the cut from a time/energy/interest level:
- Grand Canyon (too much driving, too little time actually there)
- Bryce/Zion (ditt0)
- Vegas for birding and hiking in Red Rock (intriguin, but.. not this trip)
- Disneyland (I don’t want to “go urban”)
- San Diego Zoo (ditto)
- Salton Sea and wandering the deserts for wildflowers (tempting on any number of levels; ultimately more driving than I wanted to do)
- Carrizo Plain wildflowers and then SLO/Santa Barbara/Morro Bay (too early for Carrizo by a couple of weeks, and a bit of been-there-done-that on the central coast. It’s been where I’ve gone to hide a lot the last couple of years, so time to do something different…)
- Out to Tahoe/Reno, then down the 395 to Morro lake and Bishop and out the other side (ultimately, it’s too early in the season for some things I want to do in the Eastern Sierra like Bodie, and just way too much driving, much as I’d like some winter time with Mono Lake; Devil’s Postpile is also buried right now…)
As it turns out, I got invited to go birding with a group down in Monterey on the 7th, so that was encouragment to stay a bit more local. Much as I’ve wanted to get down to Salton Sea to bird for a while (it was the trip that got canceled by my dad’s final hospital visit), I find myself interested in driving less and “doing” more. I’m not making final decisions about what I’ll do until I leave Yosemite, but I’ve got a few informal plans I’ve framed out depending on what I feel like and what the weather dictates.
- Plan A: overnight near Galt so I can spend more time with the cranes and geese at Woodbridge and some of the northern Sacramento flyway stops and do some birding photography and try to observe one or two fly-ins and a dawn up there, then home.
- Plan B: go home (but don’t tell anyone), and daytrip. Lots of things I want to do, from the SF Zoo and the aquarium to exploring the marin headlands and presidio or even play tourist from Pier 39 to Ghirardelli… tempting.
- Plan C: change my mind and head down to Morro Bay (because ultimately I really love it down there…)
- Plan D: who knows? I’m open to suggestions…
In any event, I’m really ready and looking forward to this. Definitely planning a busy week, just a week doing stuff I want to do… Blogging may continue to be light as I get things prepped at work and here at home for the trip; then again, maybe I’ll just start a cube sabbatical and get my blogging caught up…
What’s on my Pre?
The fun guys at Precentral have done an article where they all talk about the apps that live on their Pre or Pixi, so I figured now was a good time to chip in and do the same. Do I need to attach a disclaimer here? Nah. you all know the drill — and I pay for all my apps, no freebies out the side door on weekends…
Here are the apps I keep close and handy:
- To Do Classic — relatively new to the catalog, but I like it because it’s simple. I’ve used a number of other to do apps but this one is my current favorite because I don’t need the extra power some of the other apps have. I also like GroceryList.
- gDial Pro and Visual Voicemail — connects me to google voice, which connects me to the thirty-seven-gazillion phone numbers I seem to own now.
- TVMCalc — my current favorite calculator
- Twee — my current Twitter client. Because I know you folks can’t survive without constantly hearing what I have to say, even when I’m at a hockey game.
- FourSquare — who knew? people volunteer to be stalked! (but it’s fun!); I’m also starting to experiment with FourSquare as a location tool for birding, and it looks promising.
- Where I’m At — I’m experimenting with location based services and the GPS as tools for my birdwatching. This one is my current favorite tool for grabbing location data and archiving it.
- MediaClock — my travel alarm. One less gadget I have to carry in my bag!
- StopWatch — which I use primarily for timing captures for night photography.
Below the fold, where you can’t see them:
- textPress, because a way to quickly take free form notes is amazingly useful
- Evernote, because you need a place to store your stuff. Having your stuff available on all of your devices rocks.
- The Weather Channel, because when it rains, you get wet. So go inside.
- TealTime, because when you work with people in five different timezones on a regular basis, knowing when they’re at lunch or asleep rocks.
- Parking Place, my current “where in the HELL did I leave my car this time?” app. Now, if I could just teach it to automatically figure out it needs to take a location, I’d be really happy.
- Preware and AppScoop, because we aren’t afraid of homebrew here.
- SuperSudoku, Free Klondike, and Mine Search because, well, sometimes those important staff meetings run a bit long. I’m glad my boss doesn’t read my blog.
- OpenTable, because dinner isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law.
- Flashlight, because I don’t see those funky menus as well as I used to. Isn’t middle age fun?
- DOF Calculator, because I’m a photo geek.
- Yelp!, because I need to know where to get a good plumber who makes lattes.
- Tip Em!, because the pre can never have enough Tip Calculators and this is my current favorite.
- Backgrounds, because plain and grey is boring.
- Sunrise Sunset, because knowing when it’s dark is useful for a photographer for some reason….
- Friendsbook, my current favorite Facebook app
- DirecTV, so when I remember I forgot to schedule that show, I can fix it.
What’s NOT on my Pre? As most of you know, before I came to Palm I used “that other phone”, but I believe in eating my own dog food, and I’ve been chowing away. But there still are a few things on that other phone I can’t do yet. Here are things I really wish I could do on my Pre, but nobody’s written them yet:
- BirdsEye and iBird — my birding field guides. We just don’t have these resources on the pre (yet).
- Best Camera, Focalware, Magic Hour – Photography apps I use once in a while.
- Darkslide — there just isn’t a Flickr browser as good as Darkslide yet. Ditto one for Smugmug.
- TideApp — another useful thing for a nature photographer and birder, because it sucks to get your feet wet for the wrong reason…
- Sirius/XM Radio – 24 x 7 hockey sports talk, baby!
Given I own about 100 apps for “that other phone” (yes, I’m an app slut), that’s actually not bad for a new platform out less than a year. I figure it won’t take too long because I’ll have alternatives. Right, developers? RIGHT? Don’t make me hurt your dog… (and if you think about it, all but Darkslide are what you can charitably call “niche” apps for a specialty audience. they normally trail in availability while we build the audience for them…. ). My “other phone” now lives in my bag, relegated mostly to iPod duty and when I need one of the specialty apps, and if I wasn’t so lazy about it, I could move the music onto the Pre, but I just haven’t bothered…
Of course, I’m constantly trying out new apps and shifting stuff around, but isn’t that half the fun? These, however, are the ones I lean on and use on a regular basis these days.
A great way to start the new year…
The best laid plans… I have a bunch of blogging stacked up, none of which you’ve seen yet. Just as the New Year kicked in, so did a bug, which struck both myself and Laurie, and after a few rather grumpy days as a head cold, it headed to laurie’s chest and off camping in my ears, so I started off the new year under the weather and on deadline with both the CES announcements and our newly refreshed developer portal and blog.
Thank god for Sudafed, that’s all I can say, even though they make you sign 37 forms to get the damn pills now. I do not, for the record, recommend the sneezing, Sudafed and Starbucks Diet, but it does seem to work. After one last “battle of the bulge” over the weekend, I seem to have fought the bug off for the most part and the energy levels are returning, so the ability to string words together and have them make sense seems to be back. you really didn’t miss anything — insightful — the last week or so, anyway. Trust me.
But if you’re wondering why I’m just getting to looking back and setting goals as we roll into February, that’s why. So 2010 is off to a rousing start…
But it’s time to get back on the horse and start riding again, and I’m thinking through the next couple of months and one thing I’ve decided is it’s time for a damn vacation. I went looking, and I’ve suddenly realized that in the last
- 2009: 2 days (an extended weekend in Morro Bay for Photo Morro Expo
- 2008: 5 days for the trip to Yellowstone
- 2007: 3 days for my aborted research trip for Dare2Thrive after leaving strongmail, 5 days into the Northwest after leaving Laszlo, and 2 days for a spring trip into Yosemite
- 2006: 2 days for a christmas jaunt into Yosemite, and the 8 day summer celebration into the Northwest celebrating leaving Apple and moving on to whatever was going to be next…
The trip to Yellowstone (after spending most of the year dealing with Dad’s illness, death and the estate with my mom) seems like forever ago. Because to some degree it was. My moving to Palm was on a tight schedule so no time off, and this last year has been an amazing year that I’ve loved just about every minute of (the minutes I didn’t love were the ones I was considering throwing myself, or someone else, off a roof…) — but it’s time for a break, so I’m starting to plan out some time off. Not sure what, or where yet, but I know I need to get in the car and take the camera and mostly unplug for a bit.
I’m guessing late february or early march. have to figure out what the work and hockey schedules are, and of course get Laurie’s thoughts and permission (shh.. I haven’t mentioned this to her yet… literally just thinking this through tonight after she’s gone to bed). The obvious ideas come to mind, which include Yosemite (too late for serious winter work(?), too early for waterfalls and WAY too early for spring and dogwood), but also to finally get to Salton sea and maybe spend time in Joshua tree and Anza/Borrego and the deserts — I had a trip planned for Salton Sea when dad got sick, and it got blown up and I’ve never gotten it rescheduled. But I’m hearing other things whispering also, whether it’s Grand Canyon or Bryce and Zion, or even shooting up the coast into the Northwest (but I’m likely to hold that off for a summer trip with Laurie…); some other venues come to mind like an extended visit to the San Diego zoo (I haven’t shot at a zoo in a while) or Disneyland or Vegas for the kitsch.
Dunno. Have to think. Have to make sure I don’t overschedule and spend too much time travelling and not enough time visiting. Maybe define a starting point and then see what happens. Right now I can definitely feel a tug between revisiting comfort zones (disneyland, yosemite) and pushing into fresh territories. I think I need to lean myself towards the latter, this feels like it’s time for some exploring.
I’m definitely open to suggestion. Feel free….
(and I think I’m going to try for a long weekend or a mid-week jaunt to Yosemite for the dogwood this year, if I can. But I’m always up for more than one trip to that place, especially in times when it’s relatively quiet. It’s been probably 15 years since I’ve visited at a time when Tioga was open…)
Lists for 2010
Ten Photographers that made me a better photographer in 2009
- Mike Baird
- Ashok Khosla
- Howard Ignatius
- Hal Schmitt
- Steve Berardi
- Rick Sammon
- James Duncan Davidson
- Moose Peterson
- Jerry Ting
- Bryan Oleson
Photographers that influence my photography
Five Photographers that I’m currently studying to become better in 2010
Ten most popular postings at chuqui.com in 2009
In 2009, 17,000 people visited chuqui.com about 35,000 times to view 49,000 pages. Overall traffic was up about 20% over the year. The ten most popular pages for 2009 are:
- And the answer to the question is… — in which I announce I’m taking a job at Palm.
- More than you wanted to know about backups (also see Some More Thoughts and Following my Own Advice)
- This iPhone App is truly for the birds
- Santa Clara County Salt Ponds and Bay Area Birding
- Some of my Past Fades to Black
- Photo Links (and more photo links!) — early versions of what became “stuff you’ll like“
- MobileMe Renewal? Yes or no?
- Calaveras Bald Eagles (was out visiting them this weekend!)
- Apple Drops hints about netbooks (which is only tangentally about an Apple netbook)
- Some more thoughts on weight (which is way overdue for some updates…)
My ten favorite posts of 2009
- Three Rules “they” tell photographers, and why “they” are wrong
- A teachable moment (or why I love birding even when I make a fool of myself)
- 50 Reasons why I haven’t been blogging
- On Paying Forward
- Understanding the Starting Point
- More than you wanted to know about backups (also see Some More Thoughts and Following my Own Advice)
- In Search of Winter Birds
- The Summer of Hockey’s Discontent
- Some More Thoughts on Weight
- 25 Things about me
My ten best photos of 2009
My favorite fiction of 2009
Final Notes on Obama’s 2009 « Whatever
if Obama were on fire, the GOP would call fire departments a socialist plot. The folks losing it on the left, on the other hand, are being a bit petulant about both the actual human they elected to be president, and the practical constraints on his agenda. The man has monolithic, unified opposition in the Washington GOP, a fractious and fragile base in the diffuse Washington Democrats, and was handed two expensive, unpopular wars, a profoundly degraded political environment at home and abroad, and a national and global economy which were dual scorching pillars of oh shit we’re all going to die. That the man got anything substantive done, much less had what is objectively a politically remarkable first year, is impressive.
via Final Notes on Obama’s 2009 « Whatever.
I normally avoid talking politics here, mostly because it tends to attract the loonies and trolls like the plague (and who really cares what I think, anyway?) — but John Scalzi waded in, and honestly, it deserves a “what he said”, because if I were to write about this stuff, this is what I would have written. Only not as well.
Proposals For Librelist Moderation Strategies
To understand the feature requirements for moderation we need some goals. Keep in mind that no moderation will be perfect, and you can easily come up with scenarios that will work around anything we come up with.
Therefore, we should focus on just some initial goals that will work right now, and keep in mind that these will need to be constantly tweaked and worked on as the spammers evade the measures.
- If given the choice between restricting free speech and preventing unwanted communication, free speech always wins.
- The system should increase the quality of discourse for any project, regardless of human language used.
- It should never give a small group the ability to hide communications from others.
- It should be implementable and not have high hosting costs.
- It should not rely on a dedicated person’s constant intervention.
- It never gates email through system before sending it, but rather allows initial emails with moderation after.
- It should use information from people’s rating habits to classify them as “ratings trolls” to prevent abuse.
With those goals in mind I’ve teased out two potential list quality strategies that might work.
via Proposals For Librelist Moderation Strategies.
Someone I work with turned me on to Librelist because they knew me interest and history with mailing list systems, and I find it interesting that some folks have decided it’s time to rethink the mailing list again.
They’re right. When I faded to black on the mailman project, it was at least in part because many of us felt that mailing lists were a technological dead end, and that deliverability issues because of anti-spam systems made the “personal mailing list” an increasingly difficult thing to accomplish.
Both are — for the most part — true. I certainly would never run my own mail server again, because the advantages of doing so are far outweighed by the time and hassle of trying to manage deliverability and reputation to make sure mail it sends gets accepted, and the constant onslaught of incoming spam turns them into a permanent infinite time sink. That’s why I either retired our lists or moved them to Yahoogroups (which I personally think is a pretty good system).
But there’s still room here to rethink the concepts and the Librelists seem interested in trying, and I think that’s great. Email and mailing lists are far from dead — but instead of stand alone delivery tools, they really shine as part of an integrated web strategy; Yahoo groups is a nice first generation of that, although there’s a lot more Yahoo could do if they decided to.
Message moderation really breaks down into two big problems:
- “Subscribe spam” where spammers sign up to the list to spam it.
- “Member warfare” where existing, approved members get into fights and they escalate into unacceptable territory.
The first is really simple to solve: new members are moderated, and messages aren’t posted until reviewed by someone to vet their content. Simple implementation; Yahoo Groups does it today, and on the lists I still manage, it works well to keep the spammers at bay. The way I manage it is all members are moderated until their first post. if their first post is acceptable, I turn off the moderation bit. To minimize delays in propogation of new member messages, simply choose a moderator pool large enough to guarantee held messages get reviewed and approved in a timely manner — you could even make that moderator pool all members in good standing if you want, because all you really need is someone you’ve trusted to post vetting that someone new is trusted to post.
Member warfare is trickier. I hesitate to call it trolling because the pure troll is a subset of the larger issue of two (or a small group of) people getting pissed off and going at it. A troll is simply one person going off on the rest of the list.
I’m more and more convinced the answer here are reputation systems, where over time a user’s membership in a group is used to define their abilities and restrictions. The longer a member is in the group in good standing, the more often they contribute material, the higher their reputation goes and the more the can do and the more sway they have on the decisions of the reputation engine. You can tweak the details of the algorithm almost any way you want, but if you define it in terms of “how long they’re a member” and “constructive contribution to the community”, you can come up with a metric on how valuable that member is to the community, and then use that to rank that member’s contributions and recommendations.
Here’s one rough view of how to build this. Please note that I firmly believe karma rankings are private and users have no way to see what their ranking is or compare it to others, except in really broad user categories (“member”, “senior member”, “top contributor”, “advisory board member”). As soon as you create a list of any form, you will attract people who see it as something they can game, and so they will.
User Karma is a value between 0 and 1, which starts at 0.5. Every time a user contributes to the system (a posting, a reply, a moderation recommendation, etc), the number gets bumped by some value. How much the value is incremented or decremented depends on how it’s rated by other users — so if User A posts a message, User B flags it as spam, but 80% of the membership feel that was a bad decision, User B’s karma is reduced in future decisions, they lose influence. Over time, the system self-corrects by giving increased influence of those who’s decisions match the community consensus and reduced influence to those who’s postings and recommendations don’t match up well.
The system can then choose whether to accept or flag for moderation a posting based on a poster’s karma score. You could potentially reject outright users that have karma scores below some value, or allow other members to choose not to see messages by users with karma scores below some value. Over time, users who are disruptive to the community will get karma’ed into the moderation queue (or out the door), and users who are seen as top contributors will have stronger influence.
My goals:
- A system like this can be built nicely with a good SQL backend and a bit of horsepower. I’ve actually done a detailed design and schema on this before, and it’s a fascinating thing I’ve always wanted to implement.
- It enables the power of individuals to police themselves.
- It limits the ability of an individual to harass or cause problems.
- It doesn’t lend itself to people playing the game of gaming the system by not exposing the details of the system (slashdot karma whores need not apply).
- Trolls get edited out of the system because the community will quickly recognize them for what they are and trash their karma, causing their postings to disappear to the bottom of the list.
- Cliques and Mafias have to be large to influence the results significantly. You don’t completely avoid the clique/mafia problem, but you can severely limit it’s ability to wreak havoc.
- It doesn’t require a lot of manual handholding or babysitting. Admins end up stepping in only in extreme cases.
- Because trolls tend to get edited out of the system quickly and automatically, they tend to go elsewhere because without feedback and controversy, they wither and die. And by editing them out of the system quickly, you avoid the whiplash and fighting that happens when people start fighting with the trolls and the wars break out.
Weaknesses:
- Any community tends to turn into an echo chamber. Automated systems like this encourage this because “different thinking” tends to get rated down.
- That’s usually a lesser evil to letting the trolls run wild.
- To my knowledge, nobody’s ever solved the problem of the conflict between the group-mind reinforcing the echo chamber and allowing the free thinkers to poke at the community’s comfort level by pushing them to think about things that make them uncomfortable. One person’s rebel is another person’s troll, and that’s not solvable in real life, much less in automated life like this…
These techniques are all based on (or stolen from) things that are in use around the net, with Amazon’s review feedback being one I really respect; while trying to avoid the pitfalls I’ve seen around the net (yes, I’m going to keep bashing on Slashdot’s karma system, it’s way too easy to game and always has been). It also (I believe) avoids the nasty politics that have made Digg a bit of a pesthole. And it’s also pretty lightweight and low-key, or at least it should be. The implementation details will be crucial, as will be tuning how the karma values adapt…
Know when to hold it, know when to fold it
Sometimes you have to know when to hold it. Sometimes you have to know when to fold it.
One of the hardest life lessons I’ve learned is this: if the only person who knows (or cares) about a deadline is yourself, it’s not really a deadline — and don’t kill yourself trying to make it. I used to really stress out when I’d commit to something then not make the date because other things came up (even though I felt those things were more important, or out of my control). Even though the only person it mattered to was me.
I finally figured this out, and started teaching myself not to sweat over details that didn’t really matter. I decided back in 2006 I wanted to try to organize a second career around a camera; I never worked with Bill Atkinson, but you can’t be an Apple geek (or like me, an Apple alum) and not know about Hypercard, and in fact, I did a lot of work in Hypercard over the years. I did work with Dave Cardinal at Apple, and when I started dabbling with digital cameras and then run into their work, it was that seminal eye-opening moment that made me realize that I could make that shift as well, and that was the starting point for this second career planning.
That was in 2005.
In 2007, I thought I’d become a pretty good photographer and started seriously looking to fire up my second career plans. And then I blew out my knee by stepping in a gopher hole, then dad got sick (and then he died) and by the time I surfaced from helping mom through the estate, 2008 was almost over and it was time to try again. Then I landed the gig at Palm, and I knew it was going to an insanely fun few months and it went on hold again. And now it’s almost 2010, and I feel like it’s time to try again. So we will.
That doesn’t mean nothing happened in the meantime. In fact, the delays have been a blessing in disguise. I’ve spent a ot of time and energy in battling bits in photoshop and lightroom, in studying my work and really being honest about my strengths (and flaws) and working to fix the flaws; in studying other photographers and understanding their strengths and how to adapt them into my own work.
In 2007, I thought I was a good photographer. Today, I’m a much better photographer. Sometimes delays can be frustrating, but you turn them to your advantage.
There are always reasons to say “not yet” to your plans; planning is easy — and safe. Doing is hard, involves risk, and may fail. But sometimes, “not yet” is the right decision, even if you don’t like making it at the time. You might miss out on an opportunity, but if your plans are sound and your planning is done well, you’ll run into later opportunities later. (hint: if your plans revolve around a “now or never” situation, it’s probably a badly thought out plan. If you don’t have follow-on opportunities to build your business with, how are you going to grow your business?)
So knowing when to hold it — and using that hold time to improve your chances of later success as you can — can be a positive. You can’t be afraid to say “it’s time” and push the button and make it happen.
At the same time, you have to be realistic, and you can’t force yourself to push the button simply because it’s the date you said you were going to do it on — going in for the wrong reasons and at the wrong time makes the chances of failure skyrocket, and if it fails, it’s going to be harder to generate future opportunities or feel confident about going out and grabbing them when they happen.
There are also times when you simply need to fold the hand and try again. When I left StrongMail, I’d been working on a project called Dare2Thrive, and decided to take some time off and push that project into production. Once I left on my own, some outside factors kicked my motivation in the crotch, and I realized there were some fundamental flaws in my approach that I couldn’t easily solve.
The big one: I was putting myself into primarily an editorial role, not a creative role, and on a long term basis, I decided that was unacceptable; I wanted a situation that focused on my own material rather than creating an environment where I promoted the work of others.
That’s not something you fix by tweaking the CSS. I realized I needed to start over, tear it down to the bare assumptions, and starting over. I hated the decision at the time; at the time I felt it was fixable, but the external issues I was dealing with made it necessary. I realize now that not only was it the right decision — it saved me from almost certain failure if I’d pushed forward, and that was without taking into consideration what 2008 was going to surprise me with…
Holding it and Folding it. Never fun. To take something you really care about and want to do and stuff it back in the closet is hard. To take it out behind the shed and “Old Yeller” it is traumatic. If it’s the right thing to do, though, it has to be done, and many times, it creates new, better opportunities later if you let it.
And for the record, the core or Dare2Thrive — the piece that first made me want to do the project — is alive and well as part of this new project. And dammit if it isn’t even a better project now than it ever would have been in its original form.
And if anyone wants to buy them, I have the original dare2thrive domains available and parked, at least until I figure out a use for them….
You don’t take pictures for a living…
Many years ago, when I was doing book reviews for Amazing Science Fiction (at that time owned by TSR. I did say “many years ago!”) a common question I got was ‘How can I get paid to read books?’
It may sound like I’m picking nits, but this is an important semantical detail: I didn’t get paid to read books. I got paid to help readers decide whether to read (and buy) books.
Typing is a skill. Writing is a craft. You don’t get paid for writing. You get paid for selling what you wrote. What you wrote is an asset, and your income depends on how others value that asset and what they’re willing to pay for it.
Ditto photography. The act of taking a photograph is a skill. The act of making a photograph is a craft. You don’t get paid to make a photo; that photo is an asset; it has to be valued and bought to generate income. (or more wonderful thoughts on making vs. taking, see Scott Bourne and Chase Jarvis)
Nowhere in here have I mentioned the word “art” or “artist”. To a good degree, it’s an irrelevant concept in the discussion (except it’s not). In my way of seeing things, to be a craftsman, you have to master the skills. To be an artist, you have to master the craft AND have a specific inner spark or vision that drives your work beyond the typical. Few are true artists, but in some fields, defining yourself as an “artist” is a marketing tactic used to increase your value and and improve sales. That’s not a crticism — it worked wonderfully for Andy Warhol (but is what he did art?)
Stephen King
This is a somewhat round-about way of pointing out that business of selling your work has very little to do with the act of creating it. If you don’t understand this, I can’t believe you can succeed as a business — but you may still be a great writer or photographer.
Which is a round-about way of bringing forward the idea that there’s going to be very little discussion about making great photos. It’s a given that you can do that; you can probably market yourself to some level of success if you’re craft is technically mediocre, but you’ll be constantly shooting yourself in the foot.
So this conversation is really about what to sell. It’s about how to market it so people know you’re selling it. It’s about making sure that someone who wants to buy it can. It’s about maximizing the value of your assets, and making sure that what you sell it for makes you more than it cost you to make it.
It’s also about when to give it away, because many times, the best sales tool you have is the free sample.
But the trick there is how to give it away, without, well, giving it away. Because if it’s free, why should someone pay for it?
And that issue is core to success in the internet-enabled universe, and is both a massive challenge — and a bigger opportunity.
Designing a Web Presence
Filed under: About Chuq, Designing a Web Presence: Towards Chuqui 4.0, Thoughts on "The Second Career"
It should come as no surprise that anything I’m planning for the future involves the internet.
I suppose I could decide to move to Astoria and go to work in Starbucks. That’d be a perfectly acceptable second career — and if my other plans don’t work, it might still happen. That’d take a lot less work and planning, though, so I don’t have to think about that quite yet.
What I’ve known for a long time is that whatever this is going to be, it’s going to have a strong online component, which means a well-designed and well-built web presence. I use the term “web presence” here, not web site, because while a web site is a key aspect to this, nothing stands alone in the internet any more. You always have interfaces to other services, whether it’s social networking (Facebook, twitter), or communication (gmail) or to leverage other services instead of building your own (flickr, Smugmug, Cafepress, etc).
Because building a web presence to support this second career is going to be a large and complex beast by the time I’m done, and because one option both Laurie and I are looking at in the future is “build web sites for companies in Astoria” (or “build web sites for photographers”), having a portfolio site I can be proud of is crucial, and having the documentation on the how and why of the design and build process is a useful sales tool.
Besides, the conversation I hope this generates will help make it a better and more useful site; incremental feedback and early discussion is a lot more useful in fixing and tweaking when it’s easier and early.
So this is the second track of discussion that’s going to start showing up on the blog; there is the “why” of the second career, and here, the “how”.
But neither of those matters without the most important part.
Next up: the what. Because this all has to be about something, or it’s really rather silly to do.
