imperator

Democratically run businesses are companies with a lot of group autonomy, policies that are set by consensus of groups instead of through top-down hierarchical edicts, and there is a network of co-evaluation instead of just bosses being the sole evaluators. Notable examples of companies that operate on democratic principles are Semco and Gore Associates (the guys who make Gore-Tex)

When I pointed to the characteristic of democracy it was an ideal consideration. I am not so presumptuous to think that all ideal conditions will be met perfectly.

This is a prize that I put together over the past couple of days. It is inspired by the Network Challenge that DARPA hosted, and that MIT won in such a cool fashion. I am very poor at pursuing jobs in traditional ways, and often times get discouraged scouring Craigslist and other sites. So after seeing the success of the MIT solution, I thought a similar solution might work to find me a job.

The site was written in about three days in Ruby on Rails. I'd like to make it look better to reflect my design talent, but I realized that if I wasn't embarrassed by my first release, then I would have waited too long.

Even if this doesn't find me a job, it will have at least been an interesting experiment. Thank you.

This is reminiscent of the Dymaxion Map developed by Buckminster Fuller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

It may be useful to find out more about yourself.

Try going to http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx and taking the VIA Strengths Survey.

Positive Psychologists have found that focusing on your top strengths better promotes happiness. This is kind of an obvious finding, but it is good to know what those character strengths are.

I have a friend who is undergoing a job change that has caused him to question which direction to go, and taking this test helped add some perspective.

This idea was inspired by this post, http://www.nearsoft.com/blog/wave-is-to-interaction-as-the-b..., which I think puts Google Wave into context.

Scheduling my day the night before in Google Calendar. And then when I don't meet the schedule, I alter it so that the schedule then becomes a journal.

It offers amazing perspective and turns vague concepts like when I got to sleep, and when I actually played video games into solid temporal events.

I would change it. A better title could be good for its own sake, instead of just being provocative.

All of our comments may work for us, but there will be something that works for you, and that will have to do with putting whatever is out of balance for you back into a place so you can be healthy, happy and focused.

I find meditation relaxes me enough and gives me a sense of calm that is good enough to address both the personal problems and the work. Mainly this occurs because as my mind settles, I am more able to address the issues one at a time.

Good luck, you will move beyond this! Have hope :)

Working hard is hardly work when you are operating from the basis of your strengths. If you have a group of coworkers whose strengths are your weaknesses, than it is very easy to enter into a state of flow.

Working on which right things is not very elucidated in the essay, but part of that is asking yourself, "What is the write thing for ME to be working on?"

This is a very good essay.

I wrote this short story because I enjoy the culture on Hacker News and because I was reading Maslow on Management. In the Maslow book, he was talking about the psychological importance of entrepreneurs to a society, and even recommended something like a monk's robe for entrepreneurs in order to endow them with a respect similar to doctors or other respected professions.

I find my best short stories are ones where I restrict myself to a theme or idea. In this case, the restricting theme was entrepreneurship.

If you are interested in democratic and effective companies this is a great story. I wish more companies had a culture like Semco. Strong leadership should never go out the door, but autocracy should.

It is poorly edited, but full of excellent content. The author should release it to a wiki so that some enthusiasts can clean up the typos and other formatting issues.

I keep referring back to it. I think it would be good to read in parallel with a business partner.

The reasons are manifold.

1. They took every lesson from every MMORPG before them, and put it into WoW. This means things like PvP flags, and not having death exact a heavy toll. This was not obvious to WoW's predecessors. Generally, Blizzard does not enter a market first, they wait, let others innovate, and then combine features into a heavily polished product crafted around an easily understood theme.

2. They reward human psychological tendencies to generate habits. This is done through staging a series of rewarding goals. The repetitive parts are not so repetitive that you lose sight of the goal. If the user can hold the goal in their mind and find achieving it satisfying, then a player will return multiple times to what is essentially the same task.

3. They capitalize off of the desire for novelty. Blizzard did a great job of establishing variance in terrain, music, audio, objectives, and creatures. Little touches like non-enemy animals roaming the land broke up the environment into a place that felt diverse enough to be real. Providing places with enough characteristics to endow unique identity made the place even more memorable. A heavily carpeted room, a place that emanated foreboding, or a bizarrely twisted tree. Places like that were memorable and this prevented them from entering into the tedium.

4. They struck the perfect balance between the feeling of work and play by fostering the social component well. Try playing WoW by yourself and with others. These will be very different experiences. One will eventually be a boring game, and the other will incorporate the pleasant grooming of conversation so well, you'll discover you're talking more than playing the game.

Perhaps a new saying should be posed, "You get what you and your environment put in."

So one might say that an optimal size of a business is 150 - family members - external to business friends - significant acquaintances. With various employees being more or less numerically involved in a company.

1. Systems Theory with Buckminster Fuller and Russell Ackoff.

2. Recursion, not just in programming, but in other parts of nature.

3. Memory and social size approximations, such as memory chunking in seven plus or minus two, and Dunbar's number.

I did not intend the term to reference venture as in venture capital, but a venture regarding a hazardous attempt. Perhaps "Startup Expediter" is less misleading to those who see the word venture not in its original sense, but as related to capital.

The shortest description of Y Combinator I can think of is a "Venture Expediter"

Samurai Swords, which was formally called Shogun. You battle for control over feudal Japan. Unlike Risk, you don't have armies on every territory. Rather, you have three armies that you decide the composition of, and you leave garrisons in the rest of your conquered land. Also, there is a set of interaction that isn't just army v. army, like killing an enemy general with a ninja, hiring Ronin to run surprise attacks, and building castles.

No degree. Taught myself how to code when I was kid. Started a Computer Engineering degree, but I would get bored and stopped going to class. Switched to Econ, but never finished that. Started taking classes I wanted in an order and grouping that was never going to get me a degree. So I left. I've been a programmer ever since.

Go to as many events with open atmospheres as possible.

For example, http://ruby.meetup.com/99/?gj=sj2 (Ruby meetup)

http://superhappydevhouse.org/ (Hacker Party, not sure when we're having our next one)

If you have a blog, ask a hacker you like if you can buy them lunch and cover him or her in an interview, or just talk. Worst they can say is no.

Also there are a lot of coworking spaces opening up in SV, so if you get stuck with nothing to do for a day, you can try one of those.

1. If this is a difficulty that is permeating the rest of your life. Go to a doctor or therapists of some sort and get help. There's no shame in it. I had a bought of depression once, went to therapy, and am much better now.

2. If it's just this one issue, it sounds like you might need a partner who doesn't mind setup. I find I'm very good at sitting and coding, but it is about ten times as hard for me to do setup. And often enough you need to do the setup to start coding anyway.

3. The other thing you might try is getting out of the house. If you're at home, you can be acclimated to a certain behavior. Getting out to a coffee shop or a friends house can change things up in a positive way. I go to a coffee shop whenever I've hit a wall at home.

4. Thinking in circles trying to self motivate can be very alluring. It is a natural impulse to analyze a problem. But if you run over the same ground, you stop learning anything new, and thinking about it starts to create anxiety. Letting go of that cycle can be done, sometime it requires conversation with others. Your posting here is a very good step.

I use http://www.devjavu.com/ Subversion and Trac hosting.

This is awesome. This is the first thing someone put into the Foobity feedback form:

"Yellow white and blue

Foobitiy now what to do

I am hacker new"

Hacker Poems for the win.

Foobity still needs a lot of work. But it's at the point where we think it would be more beneficial not to work in isolation. This community is always very constructive, so please tell me what you think. Thanks.

On Craigslist. I put an ad up about my current company and that I was looking for a cofounder. I was contacted by two people. I contacted the first, but he never messaged me back. I corresponded with the second for a bit, and after a few emails we realized we had met before at a hacker party called Super Happy Dev House. We met for lunch, and the rest is history.

You should come to the next Devhouse http://superhappydevhouse.org/SuperHappyDevHouse21. It's on Nov 10th in SF.

You've set out the requirements you want in your cofounders - smart - talented - a strong personality (perhaps you mean fortitude)

Ask them to tell you stories about themselves that exemplify these traits.

I'm happily surprised that people liked this idea. I always expect my ideas to garner more resistance.

In regard to the market size, I think everyone who has friends and goals could use this.

In regard to creating revenue, I have two ideas. 1. The cliche: Targeted advertising. Having adds based on your goals makes a lot of sense if the ads can get enough context to be relevant. 2. Let people pool prize money. The person who reaches the goal wins the pot. My company would take a small fraction of the prize. I don't know where this would take the company though. Would the company have to be a bank? Would it fall under gambling laws? What are the complications of holding things in what could be viewed as mini-escrow? This path is probably more complicated.

Hrm...Foobity does sound kind of naughty. I'm agreeing and I'm one of the founders, hah! What would you like to know about the project (he said while avoiding developing it)?

I have noticed this slowdown as well. Mainly links lingering on the frontpage for more than usual. Perhaps it is cyclical.