Fire and Knowledge

According to a 2006 report by the Federation of American Scientists, students recall just 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear. If visuals accompany an oral presentation, retention rises to 30%. But “if they do the job themselves, even if only as a simulation,” students can remember 90%.

—Adam L. Penenberg, How Video Games Are Infiltrating–and Improving–Every Part of Our Lives

Yesterday I was proud to announce the launch of Twin Cities Top 5. Today we launched the Denver Top 5.

We went from idea to launch in 4 days, and two of the days were on the weekend.

In this post you’ll learn how we did it, and how you can do it, too.

We pulled this off due to 3 main reasons:

1. We based it on WordPress, which let us use templates and plugins to accelerate implementation.
2. We had the right people with talent and experience.
3. We had the momentum of excitement.

Like any project, this could have dragged on for weeks or months. We could have:

1. Created a completely custom site design. But that would have set us back weeks and a couple thousand dollars.
2. Waited until we had enough money to promote it big. Yeah, right.
3. Built it custom on Ruby on Rails or something “sexier” than WordPress.
4. Lined up giveaways and guest posts before launch.

But doing any of those things would add time and money to a project that needed to just get out the door.

Honestly there is a list longer than my arm of things I want to change or improve on the sites. For instance, I’m a bit of a design nerd, and it feels cluttered to me. We’ll definitely be addressing that when we do that awesome redesign in the coming months.

My point is: Just make it happen. There’s always more to do. Figure out how to get it out the door, and then start improving it.

How You Can Do It

1. Remember: Minimally Viable Product

Write out all the features you want, then strike out all the ones you don’t need. The goal is a minimally viable product — something that has all the functionality you need to launch, but not a single thing more. The day after you launch you can get started on Phase 2.

2. Use the Right Platform

The right platform will:

1. Be popular and actively developed
2. Let you build a site quickly
3. Be easy to install and maintain
4. Have design templates and plugins/extensions available

Depending on the type of site you’re wanting to launch, I recommend WordPress (blog or cms), Expression Engine (cms), Drupal (cms), Shopify (e-commerce), and the like.

3. Use a Template

Forget about doing a custom design for the launch unless it’s something you’re sure you need. It will set you back thousands of dollars (if you want it done right) and will add weeks or months to your timeline (depending on scope). Spend $50 on a nice template and be done. I do recommend customizing the header and colors, though.

4. Get the Right People Onboard

If you’ve got the time and talent to do it all yourself, congratulations. Even though I know how, I don’t have the time to do it all myself, and I need people who are talented and excited to help. Figure out how to get people involved. If you don’t have money, use commission, equity , ad revenue sharing, experience… be creative.

5. Find a Good and Reliable Designer and Developer

I’m lucky that I can do both design and development. If you don’t have those skills, you’ll need to find people who do (you can learn, but that will delay things and it’s probably a waste of time). Of course I recommend Rainsong Media but I’m biased since it’s one of my companies. But you can also use friends or outsource with services like Elance and Odesk (just be prepared for frustration in the communication department).

6. Register Your Domain & Get Shared Hosting Setup ASAP

You won’t need anything more than shared hosting at first. My favorite host is Site5 — they’re cheap and the performance and uptime is great. If you need something that scales more, VPS.NET is worth looking at but it will require Linux command-line skills.

7. Write Out Your Action Steps

Take 15 minutes and write out each action step to complete the project. Things like: Brainstorm and decide on name; register domain(s); setup hosting; install WordPress; have Hannah design header; etc. Then you can run down your list and get stuff done. This is far more effective than always re-thinking action steps.

8. Focus

Focus is a powerful technique. Distraction wastes too much time. Isolate yourself for a couple hours at a time and get as much done as possible. Turn off IM and email. Just get stuff done.

9. Don’t Neglect Fun

Even though I was very focused on getting these projects launched, I made time to go out to lunch, play racquetball, watch a movie, attend a party and play a long game of poker. Your brain needs a break. Work hard, play hard.

This is less important if you don’t launch things often, but when you’re in a continual state of launching things like myself, it’s a necessity to stay focused and excited.

10. Enjoy the Hard Work

If you’re excited about the project it shouldn’t be hard to enjoy the work involved in launching it. (If you’re not excited, STOP RIGHT NOW and do something else!) For me, launching and starting a new venture is one of the most fun parts. Make sure to enjoy it.

Timeline

For those interested, here was our basic sequence of events:

Thu, Oct 21

• I tell Abraham Piper about our idea for city communities and ask if he wants to be involved.
• Abraham comes up with the Top 5 angle.
• Founders meet, discuss, and approve it.

Fri, Oct 22

• I purchase domain names.
• I setup a WordPress multi-site install to have one platform for the cities.
• I use a theme (Mystique) to get a jumpstart on implementation.
• I setup facebook groups.
• Abraham sets up twitter accounts.
• Abraham begins writing posts.

Sat, Oct 23

• Hannah, Rainsong’s designer, creates headers for the blogs.
• I setup the sidebar and customize the theme slightly.
• I setup feedburner for rss and email subscriptions.
• I update the DNS records.

Sun, Oct 24

• Abraham finishes 2 posts for both blogs.
• DNS starts resolving.
• We launch Twin Cities Top 5.
• We tweet about it and submit social media links.

Mon, Oct 25

• We launch Denver Top 5.
• We do more tweeting and begging for fb likes.
• I write this post.

I’m curious how other people track the projects they are working on. I usually have about 50 or so projects I’m tracking at any one time, and I use a combination of a paper daily task list, spreadsheets, basecamp, and a task management application (Things).

How ’bout you?

W. Clement Stone, who built an insurance empire worth hundreds of millions dollars, would make all his employees recite the phrase, “Do it now!” again and again at the start of each workday. Whenever you feel the tendency towards laziness taking over and you remember something you should be doing, stop and say out loud, “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” I often set this text as my screen saver. There is a tremendous cost in putting things off because you will mentally revisit them again and again, which can add up to an enormous amount of wasted time. Thinking and planning are important, but action is far more important. You don’t get paid for your thoughts and plans — you only get paid for your results. When in doubt, act boldly, as if it were impossible to fail. In essence, it is.

—Steve Pavlina

If you choose to manage a project, it’s pretty safe. As the manager, you report. You report on what’s happening, you chronicle the results, you are the middleman.

If you choose to run a project, on the other hand, you’re on the hook. It’s an active engagement, bending the status quo to your will, ensuring that you ship.

Running a project requires a level of commitment that’s absent from someone who is managing one. Who would you rather hire, a manager or a runner?

—Seth Godin

Here are Alexandra Samuel’s tips on how to “mitigate the personal and social impact of multitasking, and amplify the benefits”:

1. Ration your e-mail: E-mail is one of the chief sources of distraction since so many of us feel compelled to check for new messages throughout the day. Different friends have shared their strategies for keeping e-mail at bay, like scheduling a specific two-hour period to process e-mail each day, or checking for new messages only after emptying the inbox. I rely on Gmail filters to support my own system for maintaining an empty inbox and I find that the practice of processing my inbox to zero also helps me focus my e-mail checkins on the moments when I actually have time to respond.
2. Structure your monotasking: I’m used to working with a dozen programs and fifty windows open on my computer, and as per the practice reported by the Times, I’m switching windows constantly to follow links or check e-mail. So when I’m trying to write a report or do any kind of focused work, I break my multitasking habit by working on a computer that has very limited memory (so I can only have a couple of applications open at a time), or I restart my main computer and launch only a couple of applications. You could even create another account on your computer that has access to only Word or Excel, and no Internet connectivity, so you can force yourself to monotask.
3. Take a tech sabbath: The National Day of Unplugging married the Jewish practice of observing the sabbath with the growing need to get some distance from technology. Try taking one day with no screen time. That means no TV, no Blackberry, no Internet. If you find it creates a useful pause in your wired-up life, consider making it a weekly practice.
4. Find hope outside your inbox: Last year I started experimenting with ways to break my constant email and Twitter check-ins. I realized I was looking for that jolt of excitement, the possibility that some sort of good news would come my way with each check-in. When I started exploring other ways to get a little unexpected delight in my day — by talking to a stranger, or visiting a new part of town — I was able to reduce my reliance on the net as the bearer of good news.
5. Use your right brain/use your left brain: If you spend your computer time geeking out in Excel or checking Google Analytics, it’s time to give your right brain a workout with a browse through Flickr or a film editing project in Final Cut. If you spend your computer time writing poetry or creating collages in Photoshop, it’s time to give your left brain a workout with a game of Scrabble or some financial management with Mint.com. The more you vary your online diet with activities that draw on both hemispheres, the more you’ll be tapping into the net’s potential to grow your brain’s circuitry.

There’s some good advice in this profile of Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist. Here’s a summary of his management philosophy:

• Listen to what users want. Try to make the site faster and better.
• Hire good people. “We work hard trying to get the right kind of folks.” It pays off: they hardly ever leave.
• No meetings, ever. “I find them stupefying and useless.”
• No management programmes and no MBAs. “I’ve always thought that sort of thing was baloney.”
• Forget the figures. “We are consistently in the black, so if we do better or worse in any given quarter it is absolutely irrelevant.”
• Occasionally, give people “a very gentle nudge”. This can be done over lunch or on the instant messaging boards.
• He doesn’t reply to any of his 100 daily messages, most of which beg Craigslist to do a deal. “I’m not real chatty on e-mail.”
• Put speed over perfection: “Get something out there. Do it, even if it isn’t perfect.”
• “Don’t screw it up by doing things that make people feel worse about their work.”