Helter Skelter: Thoughts on Working During a Shelter in Place

Most people wake up on a Friday morning happy to wrap up the week, but my alarm clock last Friday was something that I hope to never experience again.  It was the Belmont Police Department notifying me that my town, my home were under a “Shelter In Place”.  Shelter In Place! It's usually beneficial to increase one's vocabulary, but that particular phrase is one I hope I never hear again. The reason for the SiP: Belmont, MA (my town) borders not only Watertown but also Cambridge.

My first reaction was to turn on the news, check my phone for messages and then try to piece this together.  I had text messages from neighbors and an email from our CEO that the office was closed with instructions to work remotely.  Then the phone calls started coming in from my family that live in other states.   

A mile down the road in Watertown, minutes from our HQ,  the biggest manhunt the city of Boston has ever undertaken was underway, as what felt like the world watched. 

Let’s try to put this in perspective.  Boston may be a big city but almost all of us knew someone that was running that day, in fact, my co-worker, Elise Kovi had an amazing run!  She finished in under 4 hours and crossed the finish line minutes before the first bomb exploded.  This was her first Boston Marathon and we were tracking her every step of the way!  Our excitement was quickly dampened when the first report of attacks surfaced, and our hearts broke as the horrific events unfolded. Thankfully, though, Elise and her family were not hurt.

Shifting my focus to the (then) present,  I wondered what could, and should be done to keep my projects moving forward given the straining circumstances.  Leading talent acquisition for this team, a big part of what I do is promoting our brand, our culture and a company on the cutting edge of technology.  If you are in this line of work, employer branding is big.  I am the first person that candidates talk with when they are exploring a role on our team.  

Quickly, I decided that Friday, April 19, 2013 was not a day for me to reach out and introduce who we are and what we do.  Instead, it turned into a day of inbox zero and planning my searches for the week.  I knew in my heart that Boston would prevail as a city and Monday, April 22, 2013 would be the start to an awesome week.

From this recruiter, headquartered in Watertown, MA and proud to be part of a very strong community!

Were you in the Boston area last Friday? How did you handle the Shelter in Place?

The Menu Is the Meal: 10 Startup Names that Don’t Suck

Something’s rotten in Startuplandia, and it starts with a dropped vowel and ends with an ly.

As others have noted, the startup landscape is teeming with terrible, how-is-this-real-is-it-even-real-yep names. Many of them bare only the faintest whiff of their etymological root. Some of them don’t have etymological roots. Some of them still think substituting “K” for “C” is cool. Er, kewl. A lot of them think space marks are for codgers, even if their app is aimed at codgers. (Hello PawPawMail!)

Butttt, this post isn’t about shaming the offenders—it’s about celebrating the defenders, the companies who may subscribe to descriptivism but still hold certain linguistic truths to be self evident, eg: thou shalt never append a noun with “zie.”

In summ.ly, before I regress.io into that dark place where wordplay goes to die (take your pick: dead soci.al or departedlife.com), here are 10 startups who played the name game right.

1. Proletariat

• What it is: A mobile gaming company, started by ex-Zynga Boston employees.
• What’s in a name: While “proletariat” comes from Latin proletarius, or “citizen of the lowest class,” the word has more recently come into its of the people, for the people own. As such, it is well suited for a young company made up of people laid off from a much bigger company, who aim to make games for gamers like them.

2. Vayable

• What it is: A vacation activity marketplace.
• What’s in a name: As it’s spelled, Vayable connotates movement, particularly to speakers of Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese. Used here, the suffix “able” makes perfect sense. Then there’s the homophonic connotation: in English, viable means “feasible”—a comforting thought when entrusting your cash and life to a stranger.

3. Shopify

• What it is: A platform for building ecommerce sites.
• What’s in a name: The “ify” suffix  means to cause an increase in the stated quantity, which is exactly what ecommerce business owners hope Shopify’s platform will help them do. And even if users don’t know what “ify” means, they do know what “shop” means.

4. Etsy

• What it is: An online marketplace for handicrafts.
• What’s in a name: Co-founder Robert Kalin, who came up with the name, says it doesn’t mean anything, but was inspired by the phrase "etsi" in Fellini’s 8 1/2 (“and yes” in Italian; “although” in Latin). Another possibility, per Quora: In Unix, the miscellaneous folder /etc is pronounced “et-see.” Regardless of orgin or intended meaning, to me, the name implies a friendly hodgepodge, which is exactly what it is.

5. Kickstarter

• What it is: A crowdfunding platform for creative projects.
• What’s in a name: There are many synonyms for “to kindle,” but kickstart is the friendliest, and, for those who haven’t heard the word before, the most easily parsed.

6. 37 Signals

• What it is: A collaboration-focused software company.
• What’s in a name: Amidst the billions of signals out in the universe, there are 37 which remain unexplained. Or, that was the case in 1999, when 37 Signals co-founder Carlos Segura watched a Nova episode on the SETI project. Is 37 Signal’s suite of collaboration web apps unexplainable? Nope. Proof that a great name need not be rooted in logic.

7. Square

• What it is: A mobile payments solution for merchants and customers.
• What’s in a name: Square works on two levels. One: it connotates both fairness “square deal” and simplicity—both very valuable in the oft-murky payments world. Two: the payment technology itself is wrapped in a square card reader.

8. Prismatic

• What it is: A news reader personalized to your interest graph.
• What’s in a name: Prisms can have many facets, all of which refract or disperse beams of light. Prismatic is a personalized news reader whose contents depends on editable topic facets gathered from your social networks. The -atic suffix means “pertaining to,” so it isn’t additive to the meaning, but it does make the app more memorable.

9. Groupon

• What it is: A daily deals site whose offerings are made available after a certain number have been purchased.
• What’s in a name: Groupon’s spate of fiscal and personnel troubles may have permanently besmirched its name, but as far as portmanteaus go, Mason’s is hard to beat. Why: it blends the two words that best describe what it is (coupons) and who it’s for (groups), and these two words happen to be so phonically similar that the blending is seamless.  

10. Yelp

•  What it is: a user-submitted review site for local businesses.
• What’s in a name: Yelp’s meaning—call out in pain/alarm—may not be pleasant, but the word sounds playful. Few words start with “y,” and plosive ends are bouncy fun. It’s a common verb, but not a commonly used one, so the Google test isn’t a problem.

Disagree? Have more to add? Let me know in the comments!

Stuff Tech Blogs Do That Bothers Me

Offender: Business Insider

Some people thought Gourmet's demise was a nail in good journalism's coffin. Others said no, it's just another sign that the web is the future of journalism, good and bad. Today, the consensus seems to be that the latter group was right. And, happily, there is quite a bit of good journalism on the web. Short form, long form, data-based, image-based, crowd-sourced… all can be found, relished, and easily shared. 

Unhappily, there is also quite a bit of drecky journalism on the web. I can't tell you if technology really does take up a lion's share of drecky journalism in general, or just a lion's share of the drecky journalism I read. Regardless, there's an awful lot of it, fueled by both the traffic-winner-takes-all maxim and tech companies' willingness to stroke the egos of tech reporters in exchange for headlines. The following 12 tics are the icing on my insufferable cake. If you have any of your own, or just want to tell me to shove it and stop reading these sites if I despise them so much, feel free to let me know in the comments!

1. Slideshows. Especially slideshows that are one image/page. If gddamn Buzzfeed doesn't use them, you don't have to.

• Capital Offender: Business Insider

2. Attributions listed below the post. This is shady and shoddy journalism, for it at best de-emphasizes and worse obfuscates the source. (1)

• Capital Offender: Engadget

3. Headlines that are two sentences of keywords, strung together with a minimum of prepositions.

• Capital Offender: TechCrunch

4. Headlines that follow this formula: [adjective] data startup [startup name] lands/gets $[number] Million in Series A/B/C to disrupt [noble cause like social network for cats] market. 

• Capital Offender: Pando Daily

5. Headlines that follow this formula: "I'm quitting/Why I quit [currently cusping or widely-used technology]"

• Capital Offender: TechCrunch

6. Headlines that start with "Why." Especially headlines that start with "Why you should…" 

7. Interstitial ads. These days, very few advertisers use the PPC model, so the "click on stupid page-encompassing ad for computer-cleaning software, then immediately leave computer-cleaning-software site" behavior doesn't make blogs any money. 

• Capital Offender: Infoworld

8. Posts that purport to report on a new app/software/platform etc but actually offer no information beyond what can already be found on the app's press release or website. 

• Capital Offender: TechCrunch

9. Posts about a new app that make it pretty clear the writer hasn't tried the app. Sort of an addendum to 7, but needs to be said. 

• Capital Offender: Pando Daily

10. Posts that think any words that come out of a successful VC's mouth are gospel, and must be printed as such. 

• Capital Offender: Business Insider

11. Lemming-like worship of Marissa Mayer. She's smart, she made some excellent UI decisions at Google, and she hasn't done much at Yahoo! beyond buying Stamp and giving the employees she hasn't cut iPhones. 

• Capital Offender: Business Insider

12. Posts whose (conscious or subconscious) purpose is to humblebrag. Steve Jobs is such a peach for engaging in an email battle with lil' ol me. I'm going to reward his democratic attitude by publishing our correspondence!

• Capital Offender: Gawker

13. Posts about features that could possibly be on the next iThing.

• Capital Offender: Business Insider

1. Unless you were one of those people who actually relished flipping through 970 pages of Infinite Jest to get to the endnotes.

The Top 5 Reasons to Start Your Startup in Boston

[Photo credit: Jennifer Cimino]

Recently, I read a post by Francisco Dao in which the author laments Silicon Valley’s transformation into a Bravo-addled wannatrepreneur mecca. Which—fine. The post itself didn’t set me off. I mean, I know that amidst the Valley’s bloviating bloggers and angel investor “influencers” with two-letter twitter handles and three airport-code bios, there are real innovators, building real, useful products, but what’s the harm in a little hyperbole?

No, what set me off was Dao’s response to a commenter’s suggestion that Dao change his title from “Tech really is the new Hollywood...in all the worst ways” to “Silicon Valley really is the new Hollywood...”

“I use the term ‘Silicon Valley’ interchangeably with the tech industry as a whole...or at least the Tech industry in the United States.”

That hissing sound you heard was my blood boiling over, again. Because no: Silicon Valley is not representative of the entire tech industry. We are not, in tech as in music as politics, a homogenous nation.  Silicon Valley may be tech’s capital, but that doesn’t make L.A. or Boulder or New York its suburbs.  For proof, you need look no further than Brad Feld's new book Startup Communities. Feld writes about entrepreneurial ecosystems in all over the world, and makes the convincing argument that you can create a startup community anywhere, provided you have grit, determination, and an open-door policy.

I couldn’t agree more, but today, I’m just focusing on the city whose startup community I know best: Boston. The city on a hill is cold, old, and lousy with hardworking geniuses. Regardless of your startup’s industry, Boston won’t turn into a pumpkin, and if you fit the following profile, it may just be your glass slipper.

Characteristic 1: You’re in it for the long haul. Even a quick glance at Boston’s tech scene will tell you that its hotshots have one thing in common: they’ve been around for at least two years, and generally for more than 5.  Mark Zuckerberg himself told YC’s Jessica Livingston last fall that were he to start Facebook again, he would have stayed in Boston, because Silicon Valley "is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.” The whole short-term thing comes up again in Startup Genome’s recently released Startup Ecosystem Report. Among the findings: Boston entrepreneurs are 87% less likely to want to get rich, 37% more likely to be motivated by building a great product, and 100% less likely to create a quick flip than their Bay Area peers

 Characteristic 2: You’re not making the next great hyper-local virtual social farming app. I mean, you can try to do that here. SCVNGR did, somewhat, with a fair amount of traction, but it’s Priebatsch’s second company, the mobile payment app LevelUp, that’s turned out to be the real success story. Historically, Boston’s been an infrastructure and storage town, and those are still some of our strongest areas. Other areas experiencing some serious momentum: robotics, data analysis, mobile healthcare, online ed, and travel.

Characteristic 3:  You have some serious, bleedin’ edge technical chops. Some of our buzzier startups don’t have the most elevator-ready pitches. Take Hadapt’s, for example: “Hadapt unifies SQL and Hadoop, enabling customers to analyze all of their data (structured, unstructured, and multi-structured) in a single platform - no connectors, complexities, or rigid structure.” Pretty dry, and yet the data analytics startup, founded by a Stonebraker protégé, has already raised $16.2 million in funding. Big data is certainly big here, and its technologies like distributed computing, machine learning, and NLP are powering some of my favorite startups, including Recorded Future, Crimson Hexagon, and the perennially about-to-launch-out-of-stealth-mode travel engine Hopper.

Characteristic 4: You’re not looking for a celebrity investor.

Characteristic 5: You hold any/all if the following in high esteem:

• Walkability
• Alt-rock/classic rock/ Dropkick Murphys
• Front porches, backyards, and widows walks
• Pretty Things Jack D’Or
• Dollar oysters
• American art/Contemporary art/ Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Art/Bad art
• Scenic running paths
• Football games in coliseums
• Cannolis
• American Revolution reenactments
• Independent movie houses and theatres
• Sailing
• Meetups that are more about learning than about networking
• Feeling both fervently loyal to and perennially disappointed in your baseball team
• Wearing running sneakers with jeans, without judgment

Not convinced? What do you need in a city in order to start your startup there?

10 Apps We're Thankful For

["All in the Family" by Jeremy Miller]

Tomorrow, just before you nosedive into Great Aunt Muriel's famously belt-busting pecan pie, take a moment to think some warm and fuzzy thoughts about those special, non-needy, non-inquisitive, non-forever asking you when you're going to settle down and get married apps in your life.

Just kidding! That's what today is for. Below, the apps that make Riparian Data's team of Gander handlers happy. Feel free to add yours in the comments!

David Wihl, CEO: 

• Evernote
• iOS Maps. Gwen, a random chimpanzee in Botswana, and I are the only two living creatures who actually prefer Apple's iOS maps to Google Maps. [True--Ed]
• The Trello app has grown up and is now better than using Trello via a browser.
• The SephardiJews app, because it was written by a friend's son who is only 13 years old.
• The Loro Piana app so I can both drool and scoff at $18,000 men's coats, in an app that often crashes.

Paula Marciante, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager: 

• Evernote

Nicholas Martin, Software Engineer: 

• Evernote
• Mog
• (I don't really use many apps.)

Scott Dugas, Software Engineer:

• Mog

Michael Fargnoli, QA Engineer:

• Definitely Spotify. It's made me a complete human being.

Jim Stallings, Egg Chef:

• Productivity app: Evernote
• Content app: Netflix

Sean Kermes, Software Engineer:

• I don't really use apps - as far as I'm concerned my phone is out to get me and not to be trusted - but I do have a site that tella me thecurrent Mars weather pinned to my home screen.  I get worried about Curiosity, and it's nice to know that it'll get up to a balmy 8 degrees C today.

My own favorites:

• NPR app. Every show that's on NPR, available over livestream or regular stream. Sometimes I like to dip into streams in the High Plains and Boise, just to hear what's on their local news.
• The Super Times. A hand-culled assortment of the week's best podcasts, delivered to your iTunes. Since I don't use iTunes for music anymore, this is the only time that app gets opened.

Now, go forth and download. And have a lovely Turkey day!

How to Land Your Dream Startup Job in 3 Steps

[The old saw about no door closing without a window opening is true. Above, one company that would love to be your open window.]

It’s the morning after the lay-off. Where do you start your job search? Most likely, you sent out status updates to your networks and now your inbox is filling up with leads, recruiters and job searching tools. A moment of reflection sets in-- might it be best to work on that resume first? You quickly dismiss the thought and rush a resume over to everyone.

With a sense of great accomplishment, you sit back, relax, and think this isn’t so bad.  Before you know it, you are daydreaming best tactics and strategies to negotiate job offers. And then, someone knocks at the door of your new 5 BR penthouse overlooking the Charles. It’s Fedex, here to drop off your Reality Check.

Here is actually how this scenario plays out after your rushed updated resume reaches its destination:  1) Resume arrives with grammar and/or spelling errors; and my personal all-time favorite is 2) You receive a call from a now indignant company chastising you for not even bothering to research or even read the job description.

But don't despair--all is not lost. Now that you know exactly what you should not do to land your dream job, let's talk what you should do. 

1. Scrutinize your resume and all online profiles. 

Employers Google their candidates.  Feel free to comment on this topic--it’s not the focus of this post, it’s just a fact.  For quite some time, there are leading publications discussing how social media is replacing the traditional resume.  Not convinced on the power of your online profile? Sorry, game over. It’s that simple. It’s proven employers are looking for that personal branding message and your passion.

You will still need a traditional resume. Less is more and the recommended format is dependent on your audience. After you update your resume, have multiple friends or family help you to proofread and check for grammar and spelling mistakes.  Do this multiple times!  Never send out the document until you are absolutely confident it is perfect.  Fact: you only get one chance to make your first impression.

2. Research prospective companies and job descriptions.

A highly likely first question any interviewer will ask you is, “What does our company do?”  You would be amazed at the number of candidates who have no clue.  If you are not prepared to discuss the company, products, recent press, then most likely you will not hear about next steps in the interview process.

Take plenty of time to research the company on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and of course their website. You will find so many gems of information on all of these resources! The company culture is often described in detail, the blog will often feature employee contributions, and the job description tells you exactly what you need to know to fit for the job. This information will also tell you what the teams are working on, what they hope to work on in the future, long term goals for the products, and most importantly the passion of the team.

Do you fit after reading all of that? Did you check some of the employee’s LinkedIn profiles? Are you confident this is the right job for you? If you answered yes to all of those questions, now is the right time to apply. Pay attention to the instructions on the website on how to apply for the job! Some companies are very specific and disregarding those directions, no matter how great of a fit you are, can send your resume straight to the “no next steps” category.

3. Prepare for the interview.

All the work you did in the first two steps paid off! You have been contacted by the company to schedule first steps in their interview process. Most of the time this is done by phone or Skype with their internal recruiter or directly with the hiring manager. Either way, all the research you did in the previous step is not enough.  Now you need to prepare questions. Questions prepared in advance demonstrate your interest in the job and the company. Discount this as a knock-out factor and you will quickly find yourself in receipt of a very nice thank-you-but-no-thanks note.

When scheduling a phone interview, keep in mind that you will need to be in a place that allows for the best reception and low background noise.  If you are scheduled for a Skype call, I recommend practicing with a friend to check on background and placement of the computer screen.  If the company is skipping the phone interview and has you scheduled for an on-site, then it’s time to dress to impress!  I get this question all the time “What should I wear to the interview?”  That’s the easy part!  Show up well-groomed, and know that most of the time, business casual is your best option.  However, if you are interviewing for a company with a more traditional culture then opt for the dark suit.

Wait! Don’t think that just because you have the right outfit you are ready for the on-site visit. When you arrive at the company, keep in mind that everyone you meet is part of the interview process.  This includes the person that greeted you at the door! Don’t forget to turn off your phone and bring extra copies of your resume along with a small pad to write notes.  Even if you are just writing down the names of the interviewers, the pad is a small detail that reflects you came to the meeting prepared and ready to work!  Plus, I guarantee that if you are meeting teams and participating in panel interviews, you will forget the names of everyone after you leave.

The on-site interview is over.  Now it’s time for follow-up!  The best thank you note is short and simply thanks the company for their time.  This note is a reflection of your work and needs to be checked as carefully as your resume for grammar and spelling errors.  How many thank you notes have I received over the years with mistakes?  More than you think!

Lastly, don’t forget to check for companies that sponsor events or even open their doors for candidates to explore their culture on-site.  In fact, our team loves to meet new people and has recently started to open their board games and beer night to the public.  Stop by, say hello and bring a friend!

Best of luck on your job search!

How to Embed User Experience throughout a Small Company

[Image via Heritage of Japan]

I've always found it weird that so many companies consider "user experience" be solely the domain of UX engineers. Shouldn't everyone be pushing the experience further with their own strengths? Although Riparian Data is still constantly reworking its own culture in relation to user experience, here are a few things we've tried that have helped to embed UX throughout our organization:

1) Get everyone in the organization to see the value of UX-centered design

When people in an organization truly buy into the premise that building better experiences for users will increase the organization's chance for success, the UX work really can begin. Changing the culture to make it driven by people's experiences with your product tends to be diffcult, though luckily for me, some substantial work has already been done. The emphasis on design these days makes convincing those holding traditionally non-design-oriented positions of the user experience's importance a bit easier (also, previous generation of UX and IAers have made huge strides here). It seems like an easy premise to accept and pretty common-sensical, but what tends to be lost is allocating resources to user research and taking into account the findings.

2) Know that  product metrics are rooted in users

If a majority of users who played with our product wouldn't recommend the product to someone, we go back to the drawing board and iterate more fundamentally. If we do well on such user-centered metrics, we iterate on the other observations that we made (difficulties with the interface and other opportunities for growth). Then, once we have a large user base, we can do more quantitative analysis alongside the qualitative testing. By tying product direction directly into user research, people kept thinking and asking about what the user experience would be and what unmet needs we would meet.

3) Start a semi-parallel prototype upstream to determine strategy

Because of the makeup of our team, I am usually able to team up with a developer to make interactive prototypes ahead of the actual, scalable implementation. This works for us since we don't have a fully-developed product yet and are still defining a lot of functionality. Plus, some of our devs love the front-end work (especially as a respite from best programming practices, and the chance to hack on something really quickly to get to testers). Working with a developer means the prototyping goes fastter, and we're able to really collaborate to make something even better. Sometimes an idea was much better in wireframes than actually coded up, and we're able to change it right away. We can validate functionality and whether the design aligns with users' needs before we have to actually implement a more robust back-end for it.

These sort of quick prototypes also create a more direct, tangible connection to what's in the pipeline in the next few weeks. Coworkers feel more connected to people, and understand what's being tested because those are the only things that are coded up. It allows for iteration before production-level code and to give some breathing room for designs. This, however, does necessitate constant communication between the groups, and not becoming a silo of doing quick and dirty prototypes without feeding into the broader product. We're still working out the communication hurdles here a little, but with a bit more elbow grease from my end, we can make this work.

4) Develop an internal lexicon

Like how we develop a lexicon for users, it's super helpful to develop a lexicon internally. It builds a sense of community, as well as a common understanding of what you're talking about. We probably still need to work on this. This can (and should) be different from the lexicon that you use with users, because we're all different people. Usually, developers have different mental models from your user base. Maybe people won't like this, and I'll come under fire for it, but I feel comfortable with using Lorem Ipsum with internal mockups with the developers I'm working with, because we're also constantly talking and reworking the prototypes. It saves me time from finding and making content. Of course, this changes a bit when working with users, but we also develop a test account that's more aligned with most of our target users.

5) Use and update personas

On occasion, I'll find a user behavior trend that I didn't get from the more upfront user research, and will update the personas accordingly. When we started working on Gander, our personas were more general than they are today, as our problem space wasn't as well-defined. That being said, I could be better at embedding personas in our day-to-day conversation, and it's something to constantly work on.

But something cool that happened when our QA person, Mike, started: he had this great idea to walk through the product with each persona when trying to find problems. My findings and recommendations also get tied to personas.

6) Tie marketing lead generation with potential testers

Though I'm pretty sure Claire is sick of finding testers, the generation of leads from marketing helps with finding some testers. Since we don't have a launched product and are a bit lower budget on the user research, the outreach Claire has done has been super helpful. Mind you, it's a bit confusing between people who just want to beta test your product versus people who are willing to sit through a moderated session. And you certainly don't want to blast everyone who's interested in your product constantly about testing it. But, along with recruiting testers, mining the marketing leads and data also helps illuminate what appeals to people and what their current behavior is like.

7) Open sessions to remote observers

It's nice to have observers, both to build empathy with the testers and to see what you've built in use. Our awesome QA guy stops in often and it helps him to be able to put himself in the mindset of actual people. User testing sessions are open to the team as long as the participant knows and consents to the observation.

8) Make sure to test the biggest assumptions first

Especially in earlier stage designs, when strategy is informed strongly by user tests, it's easy to fall into task analysis of smaller things. The first thing that we tested was the basic assumption that it meets user needs. These require far more open-ended and exploratory sessions. The smaller interactions, of course, are noted and worked over in a more exploratory mode. I tend to do more structured tasks when our design is more firmly rooted. This strongly ties into Lean UX, and also informs what prototype to make (what to include, and what to exclude).

9) Advocate for and stick with a collaborative culture

Thankfully, there was already a strong collaborative culture at Riparian when I started. One thing that can help foster this is to share ownership of ideas and to try to exterminate "my idea" or "my design." Although it can be a little irksome when someone offers sketches at first, I take a breath, and try to dig at why-- much like understanding our users-- to incorporate feedback from these stakeholders as well. It might not be from a user perspective, but it comes from a relevant perspective to potentially pull a core concept out of. It's also super helpful as the only UXer to make sure I didn't miss something (which happens in one-week iterations). I'm a firm believer that the more you bounce and shape products with people, the better it gets.

These were some things that I've found helpful so far, and will continue to add to the list as I continue to try to improve how I do things. Let me know below if you have any suggestions!

Inbox Love Recap: Zombies, a Ghetto, a Love Story

Christina and I attended Inbox Love at Microsoft's Mountain View, CA campus on Oct 24, 2012. We were there to a) to demo Gander, and b) to get a better handle on some of the newer technologies and startups in the email ecosystem. On both accounts, I'd say we succeeded. Many thanks to Joshua Baer (OtherInbox), Jared Goralnick (AwayFind), and 500 Startups for putting together such a worthwhile conference.  

Before the session recaps, some notes:

The conference speakers furnished a lot of interesting stats; the following were particular thought-provoking to me.

• 58% of workers do not go more than an hour without checking email. Some people check email up to 36 times per hour.
• "You can build something for a million people and still not make an impact."
• "The platform players (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) each have > 100M users. Don't try to compete with them."
• Buzz word alert: monochronic, meaning single tasking. Sounds like a bad disease you get in your twenties.
• Women are generally better than men at multitasking.
• Email is like zombies: it keeps coming as we kill them!
• From Baydin / Boomerang who have done both add-ins and rich clients: "Without autocomplete, attachments, good rendering, and 80,000 other things, your email client is dead."
• Gmail users spread new tools virally. Corporate Outlook users don't, so more traditional marketing is needed.
• Switching email clients causes friction because people stick with learned behaviors that may not be feasible in the new client.
• From Rapportive: the five tenets of user credibility: trust, control, confidentiality, transparency and no spam.
• OtherInbox went from storing all email headers to just two weeks and now down to three days. They learned the hard way that the less you store, the better.
• An inbox from 1972 looks an awful lot like an inbox from 2012 - list of From, Subject, Date in chronological order. Sigh.
• "Inbox workflows suck because engineers are the only people who can build them and they think that the rest of the world is like them." (Ed: and engineers don't get a large volume of time critical email.)

Onto the session recaps!

But first: Josh and Jared kicked off the conference by sharing what had happened in the world of email since the last Inbox Love, in February 2011.

• AOL unveiled Project Phoenix
• Responsys went public
• Return Path acquires OtherInbox
• ExactTarget went public
• Facebook gives all its users easily guessable email addresses, makes them the only addresses listed on the site (without their permission, naturally)
• Yahoo hires Marissa Mayer as its new CEO
• Google buys Sparrow.
• Microsoft launches Outlook.com
• Fluent shuts down.
• ExactTarget buys Pardot for $95M. Baer predicts we'll see a lot more merging between email service providers and marketing companies.
• AOL launches Alto

Session 1: Email Devotion vs Addiction

Speaker: Kelly Goto, gotomedia, LLC

• Don't trust what people say--trust what they do. In one study, 60% of respondents reported attending church, but only 24% actually did.
• 58% of people don't go more than an hour without checking email.
• "Checking habit" is a habitual compulsive behavior.
• We should strive to build products that enable human interaction rather than looking at our phones.
• We need to create experiences that people love.
• "I love it" lies in the middle of "it works," "meets my needs," "comfortable," and "personalized."
• There are three states of being: Aware / conscious, Automatic / "inner conscious," and Meaningful / "I feel good, in control." It's the last state that we want our product to tap into. Doing so requires the presence of so-called "emotional connectors," which tie products to pleasurable rituals.
• Steps to becoming a meaningful product: be easy to use, be trustworthy, meet needs, connect to habits, trigger aspirations. First it has to work, and eventually it needs to make you dream and help you build a better life.
• Ringtones are an example of a a product with an emotional connector--they solve a purpose (alerting user to an incoming call)  while also creating identity, giving pleasure, and triggering nostalgia.
• A new email platform should: Reimagine, Relief, Control. Those are the emotional connectors that Alto is using to engage people.

Session 2: Hotlook, G365, and Email's Merging Roles

Speakers: David Dennis (Microsoft), Roger Neel (Mavenlink), and Joshua Baer

David: Outlook 's new features include Quick Views of  documents, flagged items, photos, shipping updates, shopping, and new categories. You can also delete all and unsubscribe in one action and schedule cleanup for sets of messages. Outlook does auto identify/ classify, and provides social connections (Twitter and Facebook) for context. It has a better compose experience that completely changes screen. Documents can be sent via skydive attachment to recipients on any platform, in any browser. Recipients can edit or view with Skydrive without Office being installed. Note: As consumption experience moves away from web to devices, it's harder to make a good cross platform experience.

Josh: OtherInbox has 3 million users signed up within Yahoo Mail (Vast majority of users at the conference room use Gmail, though.) OtherInbox allows you to automatically sort email with the Automatic Organizer, and attach large files with UsendIt. Joshua thinks the Google Apps Marketplace isn't working well for consumer. Yahoo's add-in integration is more contextual, displayed right in the inbox. The big challenge is how to integrate add-ins not only with the platform, but with the experience of using the platform. Note: Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook all support OAuth. This is the future platform.

 Roger: Mavenlink is a SaaS platform for consults and professional service orgs.It's the top-downloaded app in the Google Apps marketplace, and provides deep integration with all Google products (email, calendar, docs, contacts). Webmail is a big platform, like Outlook on desktop. Full PIM, not just email. It looks kinda like Facebook. It leverages Google task lists, Calendar to avoid duplication of functionality. MavenLink used the GMail platform to build their app, but they are now moving to support Microsoft webmail platform.  

Session 3 [Keynote]: Life without Email?

Speaker: Gloria Mark Our big problem is that we are caught between the pre-email and post-email eras. While there has been a widespread adoption of IT,  people cannot maintain a continuity of task and information flow, across contexts. This is because most people are monochronic (single taskers) in a polychronic world. Our average task length is 3mins before we move on or are interrupted. People work in 12 "working spheres," with an average or 10 min per sphere before switching. Every 12 minutes a person typically experiences an interruption lasting 2 min (broad average). 44% of these are self-interruptions, begging the question: Are we conditioned to self-interrupt? Maybe not, as it turns out high external interruptions create high internal interruptions. The worst thing about interruptions, from a company's standpoint: post-interruption, employees take an average of 23 minutes to resume working on the interrupted task--this even though they work significantly faster on the new task. The worst things about interruptions, from the interrupted employee's standpoint: significantly higher stress, mental workload, and frustration. Interruptions aren't always negative, but they are when they force people to switch topics. Gloria does a lot of research on multitasking. One of her findings: women are significantly better at multitasking. In her study, she found females worked in more spheres, experienced fewer interruptions (external and self), and were more likely to resume interrupted work. Moving from the general to the specific (email as interruption), Gloria says the line about email being like zombies. Great analogy. 70% of emails are attended to within 6 seconds, email can be checked up to 36 times an hour, and people spend 23% of their work day on email. Many audience members seemed to think 36 times an hour was low. Gloria's email cut-off study, "A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons," tracked the effects of an email-less life.  Participants went 6 days without email. They wore biometric sensors and their colleagues wore sociometric badges, in the first case to measure internal effects (heart rate, relaxation), and in the latter to see what the email-less peoples' colleagues did instead of emailing.

The results, in brief: Participants spent more time out of the office meeting people face-to-face, engaged in more metawork, and spent significantly longer amounts of time on their desktop (about double the amount of time). Participants' frequency of switching windows declined by half. Their heart rates were more varied, indicating higher relaxation. Communication-wise, the participants' colleagues said they could get the info they needed without email. However, while participants reported feeling much less stressed and more focused, they also felt cut off. Gloria says this illustrates the need for technology to rewrite social norms, eg make an email platform  that enables task continuity and somehow lets people off the hook for not constantly checking.  

Session 4: Platforms vs. Clients

Speakers:  David Claux (Microsoft), Alex Moore (Baydin), Sherman Dickman (Postbox)

David: Outlook Web App: OWA and Outlook converged. OWA has much better contextual support via Agaves, e.g. maps, meetings (pre-populated). Quick views in OWA include "all," "unread," "to me," and "flagged." Since users hate opening a new window with a new experience, there's also inline reply right in the reading pane.

Exchange APIs Gmail implemented Exchange Active Sync for existing devices. Outlook 2013 has native EAS connectivity (not MAPI). EAS is recommended for devices. Exchange Web Services is more server to server. Mac Outlook and Mac mail client use EWS only. Outlook uses EAS to connect to Gmail, which is real news. That connection includes offline, calendars, etc. The EWS managed API is written very well. THe EWS Java API is now available from MSFT, and will catch up with the EWS managed API 1.2. This will allow companies to recompile and change without submitting back to MSFT. They could be submitted back to MSFT in a legal way.

Alex: Boomerang now works on top of Outlook and Yahoo. Its bread and butter is message scheduling, but there's also a smart plugin for Google calendars, and a light, gamified email client, The Email Game. Since Baydin started in 2010, Boomerang for Gmail has been downloaded 1.5 MM times. The company is now profitable. Interestingly, Baydin started with Outlook first, then went to Gmail. Doing a client requires autocomplete, attachments, rendering and 80,000 other things, whereas a plugin allows you to just add the stuff you want to build on top of it, and users don't have to worry about switching. Because GMail doesn't have a supported API for front-end integration, Baydin ended up using Chrome and FF extensions by walking the DOM. Maintain or die. Things are shifting under your feet. Same for Chrome store. Shifting sands. #1 obstacle for them to overcome. Everything had to be written in Native JavaScript. Now the browser plugin environment is better. Two common complaints: speed, workflow / actionable email. People aren't going out and searching for Boomerang--it's spreading by word of mouth. Gmail has been biggest source of leads. Outlook supplies 10%, and needed paid marketing channels. Yahoo has been really hard.

Sherman: Clients are an all or nothing experience. Everyone has email. Switching is friction. Disruptive to workflow. Setup and config issues. They'd rather stick with what they know. For all that, Postbox still converts a high percentage of free to paid users. They're great for Gmail, but don't work with Exchange, because Microsoft can't bundle. Problems: Postbox can categorize using IMAP labels, but lots of servers do not use it consistently. Its conversation view was done using ReferenceHeader ID, which was stripped away by some servers, so they had to redo threading. IMAP partial word searches doesn't work on Gmail. Each new version of MacOS tightens up servers - iCal scripting no longer working.  

Session 5: Email & Data

Speakers: Joshua Baer, Eric Botto (Slice), Greg Gould (Return Path), Rahul Vohra (Rapportive / now part of LinkedIn)

Rahul: Rapportive brought in social data like FB, Twitter, LinkedIn to Gmail. Its goal: "make you brilliant with people," showing you everything you need to know about somebody within your inbox. Essentially, by providing you with a rich view of person within your mail service, Rapportive is the simplest relationship management tool. Rapportive has two audiences: 1) A smaller subset are people-centric professionals. Interactions are a key part of job. 2) Larger subject is consumer oriented. Want people's faces! Needs utility and emotional connection. Three big changes in email: 1) Rise of webmail, which is still easier to use than a rich client like Outlook 2) chrome and FF add-ins, with > 50% market share 3) lot more indexable information. Wasn't possible 5 years ago. 5 tenets of an email product:

1. Trust - the most valuable thing
2. Control
3. Confidentiality
4. Transparent
5. Spam - we won't any won't let anyone else

Josh: OtherInbox is now trying to keep as little as possible from as much as possible. This gives them less liability and and makes data easier to keep track of. They went from storing all message headers to just three days of headers While Return Path owns OtherInbox, there is a wall between the two, but Return Path uses OtherInbox's data to certify/rate allowed emails. They have an Anonymous panel to help marketers understand emails. It's B2B inbox insight, kind of like ComScore. Answers questions like: "Are people reading your mail?," "Are they forwarding it?" Users vote with clicks, opens, in order to help mail marketers tune their message. Forwarded is even better than a FB like button. Note: OtherInbox let users keep their email addresses. Changing addresses is hard.

Eric: Slice is a spinout from Stanford. It tracks all your receipts, so you know what you are buying. Slice users can link their inboxes, track and get updates on purchases. Slice extracts item level info out of electronic receipts. opt in only. The "link inbox" option looks exactly like the iPhone signup by design. It works mostly via IMAP, Yahoo Cascade, and even POP3 for MSFT. Slice saves its users money through its price drop alert. It tracks the price of an item 30, 60, 90 days after purchase. The company started in 2010 and spent 18 mnths developing info-extraction procedure and machine learning algorithms. They now have 40M items in their database.  

Session 7:  Email Workflows, Today & Tomorrow

Speaker: Dave Troy (Mailstrom) Dave shows us an inbox from 1972. So much has changed! Just kidding. Breaking down the big guys:

• Outlook: 800M users (kind of confusing, since Outlook is just a client)
• Hotmail/Outlook.com: 360M
• Yahoo: 300M
• Gmail: 425M
• iCloud: 150M
• Other: 1.4B

Gmail's users are very diverse in their behaviorial/technological preferences. (web vs imap, inbox zero, public/private,…). There are 12 key traits, which works about to about 100,000 users per archetype. You could break these into maybe 64 personae, but 16 personae (27M users each) is more manageable. The personae identification is Myers-Briggs-inspired. Most email products don't appeal to more than 1-2 of 16 personae, because engineers make them, and engineers a) tend to fall into these personae, and b) few other people do. Likewise, inbox workflows suck because engineers are the only people who can build them and they think that the rest of the world is like them. "You are not f$cking normal," Dave tells the audience. Sorry, audience. Luckily, you can compensate for your abnormality through use intensive research and customer development. Which is what Dave did with Mailstrom. He surveyed 352 people and figured out that more than 100 emails received/day is a problem. Hence, Mailstrom lets you bang through a large number of emails at once. Mailstrom also sorts messages by sender, subject, lists, time, social, size. Geeks can sort by msgs at midnight, messages received today, messages removed today, messages news, 0 active tasks, and can color-code by volume.  It doesn't use algorithms--more like a machine gun that amplifies brain power. It will appeal to quantified selfies, for sure. Also, Esther Dyson is advisor. Tips: Beware "false consensus effect or bias." Otherwise known as leading the witness, lemming syndrome etc. Get live in-person testing. Most engineers are too obtuse to listen to users. Don't build on broken tools - make it better.  

Next up, the big announcement: ReturnPath Acquires Context.io

Context.io is a REST email API. It grabs contacts, files, messages, threads, web hooks (post back). Return Path acquired them to advance their vision of email as a platform.  

Demos

• Us!
• nveloped : a way of sending secure email, layering authentication on top of email content
• Notfymenot - sort who is allowed to send or not send
• PowerInbox - makes email more active - ordering, play games, etc.
• File Squirrel: Mobile app that lets you browse your email attachments (won hackathon of 50 users). Attachments do not need to downloaded to phone. It was built in less than 7 hours.

Aaaand that's all, folks. If you've made it this far in one go, you deserve a treat. Go buy yourself an icecream cone before the snow falls.

Bootstrapped, Ultra-Light, and Other Startup Euphemisms

A few weeks ago, I touched on some of the differences between the Boston and New York tech startup scenes. Here's another: jargon. For whatever reason--more historically complex/serious/enterprise-focused industries, more of an "every man is his own island" attitude--in Boston, tech entrepreneurs tend to use everyday language.  Not so in New York, and from the scant time I've spent there, not so in Silicon Valley either. In these two tech towns, euphemisms rule. Cracking the code took me a little while, but thanks to a handful of tech blogs and Eric Ries' The Lean Startup, I think I've got it down. Disagree with any of my definitions/want to add a few of your own? Get @ me or leave 'em in the comments! Product: 

• Stealth: Startup isn't exactly sure what it's doing yet
• Beta: not ready for purchase
• Private beta: really not ready for purchase
• Closed alpha: Just past the napkin phase
• Pivot: Founder's first idea didn't really pan out, so s/he's trying something else
• Disruptive: 1) Startup is going to bat against the dinosaurs and steal their disgruntled customers 2) Fun word! Sounds impactful!
• Leveraging ___: "using"
• Solution: Hard-to-define software product
• Viral growth model: No growth model
• Viable marketplace: precedence for product's success

Company:

• Ultra-light startup: NYC: 2 people in a living room. SV: 3 people in a coworking space
• Lean startup: 1) Product will change, frequently. 2) Founder wants some SV cred 3) see Ultra Light Startup
• Agile: Development team plans two weeks out
• Hacker-culture: lots of developers; lots of toe sneakers; lots of standing desks
• Flexible hours: 8am-7pm, 10am-12am, 3pm-2am
• Collaborative: Employees work on the same project
• Flat organization: 1) not big enough to need managers 2) "flat" is just another word for "hierarchical," but offices either have glass walls or there are no offices, only beanbags
• Serial entrepreneur: 1) Short attention span (to put it euphemistically) 2) Acquisition is ultimate goal
• Data-driven: Someone on the team knows how to use Google Analytics
• Distributed: spread out

Finances: 

• Bootstrapped: Startup is kept in rent and Sugar Smacks by founder's savings from previous job at Foursquare, Google, or McKinsey
• Angel-backed: Startup is kept in rent and Sugar Smacks by founder's father's retired iBanker friend
• Still in the Seed Stage: Startup hasn't raised any money yet
• Stock Options: Thing startup founders offer to new employees in place of actual compensation

11 Mystifying and Irritating Twitter Habits

I spend a lot of time on Twitter. Like, at least two hours a day, give or take.  To quote myriad social media experts: It’s so great for networking! Great, but also: head-bang-inducing.  Because, in Twitter as on Facebook as in life, there are seven shameless narcissists for every insightful/witty/delightful person.

Way harsh, Ty, you say. You’re right—they’re not all shameless narcissists: some of them are just clueless. (zing!) Some of this cluelessness is fairly straightforward: the publishing of debit card photos,  the rants about employers, the “In Tahiti for the next month—hope I remembered to lock the door” updates. But some of it is utterly perplexing. Below, 8 habits I don’t understand, and three that I do, but find highly off-putting.

1. Symbols in bios. I know 160 characters ain’t much, but what exactly is that spade supposed to signify?
2. Hashtags in bios. Especially generic hashtags, like “ #running.” These words show up in search results regardless—no need to pound ‘em!
3. Accolade-only bios. Next.
4. Bios that are just vaguely aspirational/inspirational aphorisms. Why yes, I too am reaching for the stars whilst keeping my sneaks on the pavement. We should be besties!
5. Bios that contain any of the following: “visionary,” “guru,” “pro,” “ninja,” “innovator,” “all-around good guy,” “Christ-lover,” “devoted father/mother/husband”
6. Insanely high following counts. You can’t possibly read, let alone respond to, 40,000 tweet streams.
7. Tweets that start with “This,” followed by a link. This what?
8. Hashtags that are just long, boring sentences #imboredandhungrycanigonow
9. People who retweet tweets that mention them.
10.  People who use TrueTwit
11.  People who reward your reduced follower:following count with an automated DM asking you to “like” them on Facebook. No, but I will unfollow you!

Disagree with any/many of the above? Get @ me or let me know in the comments!

Groupme, Etsy, and Stamped Talk Design and the Mobile Startup

[Image via Studio Akko]

Maybe the most useful session at Internet Week for me was a panel about incorporating design into your lean/agile/scantly populated startup. The panel was moderated by Ron Goldin, the Founding Principal & Creative Director of Studio Akko, and the panelists were Steve Martocci, the Co-Founder of GroupMe, Leland Rechis, the Director of Product at Etsy, and Bart Stein, the Co-founder of Stamped. In about thirty minutes, they covered everything from creating your founding team (no project managers!) to eating your dogfood (do it. Whenever you can).

As an employee at a nascent, communication-focused mobile startup, I could not have asked for a better group of speakers. A few tips that really resonated:

1) Use the product away from work. The Groupme guys used their app to meet up with each other outside work, and when they were coordinating meetings with VCs, they got some of the to use it too, which was huge, because then these VCs used it during a Vegas trip and found it so handy that they ended up investing in the company.

2) Make your product work for both sides of the equation. Etsy's app was designed to work for sellers and buyers, because their analytics revealed that some of the most-visited pages from mobile devices were seller pages. (This also speaks to the importance of looking at your analytics.)

3) Leverage your local communities. Stamped, which is a really quick approval app for physical services, decided to target the restaurant industry when they were getting started, because restaurants are one of NYC's main industries, and, since the ascendence of Yelp, they've been very aware of the power of user reviews. This is also why there are so many fashion-tech startups in New York, and so many life-sciences ones in Boston. (And why there should be more hospitality-tech startups in Miami--get on it, Miami!)

4) Spend--and keep spending--a long time making your onboarding process really efficient and idiot-proof. Groupme still spends a significant amount of dev work on onboarding, because in the mobile world, that's where a lot of potential users will leave if the experience isn't pleasing. I would say this applies in the desktop world as well, though my patience does seem to increase in proportion with my screen size.

5) Sometimes, figuring out your brand and identity before you nail down your product can be a strategic advantage. Mobile is crowded, and nailing who you are first can set you apart from companies doing similar things. Stamped had a name and a working self-portrait before they started prototyping.

6) Early investors usually care more about your team and team's network than your product. Bart said that during Stamped's first meetings with Bain Capital, (their eventual investors) no one even mentioned a product--instead, Bain cared (I know, how often do you get to see that SV pairing?!) about what the team had done before, and how they worked together, and who they knew.

Are you working at a mobile or web-tech startup? Do any of these tips resonate with you? If you have more, pile'em on in the comments!