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Yeah, its freaking gorgeous in Atlanta today. Why is my entire team in the office you ask? Alpha. We’re here so that when you get to play with it, it’s amazing.

Maybe bowling and beers in a bit…depends on how much we get done.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

It’s the little things that keep me going…

Interested in testing our private alpha version of Event Seek? Yeah I thought so…

If you’d like to get a sneak peek at the product before everyone else, send an email to MakeMeATester [at] event-seek [dot] com.

The more the merrier!

(And yes, the funny email formatting is so that bots don’t find and spam us)

I think the West Wing was one of the best written shows on television during its heyday. Aaron Sorkin has thespecial ability to humanize his characters and make them easy to relate to. You understand both their strengths and their weaknesses, and just when a character is struggling with one of their key flaws, they have a moment of incredible strength that makes you love them even more. (See President Bartlet dealing with Conservative Christians in the pilot episode)

One thing I love about President Barlett’s character is that he walks a fine line between a character you like and a character you respect (it’s almost impossible to be both liked and respected as a president). He looks to his staff for opinions and support but once he has made a decision he is ready to move on. The sign that he is ready? “Next!” Some might see it as a bit brutal or dismissive, but I like to think of it as a sign of his incredible leadership. Know when it is time to make a decision and when it is time to move on.

Developing Event Seek has been no easy task. We’ve argued, debated, discussed, and downright fought over some really minor and some really major issues. Our development team is using Ruby on Rails (RoR) as the development platform and I can speak for everyone when I say that we’ve been pleased with our choice. Why RoR you ask? Simple. Agile Development.

Agile Development is the concept of using a language and platform that support rapid changeable development. Rather than spend weeks or months on one aspect of the product, you build it in smaller successive pieces. This way you can test the results, see what you like and don’t, see what the users like and don’t and make changes as necessary. I can’t speak to the value of this type of effort enough. No one should build a product in a vacuum. This is especially true for a web application, and agile development makes rapid development possible while still keeping everyone on a guided path.

Event Seek has aspects of the product that require messaging - the ability to send messages to users, event organizers, business owners and the like. We designed the messaging system a few months back and since then the site and product have gone through significant changes. While reviewing some of the updates today, we took a gander at our messaging platform and everyone agreed that thee new changes made our old structure confusing. What are messages? How are they different from questions? How do comments play into this? So, we did what we do best here at Digital Lodestone Group, jump back to 50,000 feet and think about how the user will use the system. What do they need? What do they want? How does the average joe think about this?

After 10 good minutes of debate, discussion, and dialogue we were done. In 10 minutes we restructured a major section of our product. No real new development required, just rebuilt how the system was organized and how a user would navigate the product. The user interface guy in me couldn’t be happier - we just increased usability ten-fold. Surely we’ll need to test the results, but I can say for certain what we have is better than what we started with.

Agile development? Nope. Agile Management? Yes sir!

Next!

I’d like to use this blog (and it’s many many readers) to throw out little ideas we’re working on in production and get a general feel for the potential users’ opinions.  So from time to time I’ll pose a question about something we’re working on and I’d love for you guys to comment with your thoughts.

Today’s question: We want to give people the option to have Event Seek notify them of new recommended events through email and txt message. What else should we be considering? Twitter? Customized RSS feed? Please give us your thoughts so we can make sure the product meets the demanding needs of web users.

The great Event Seek run at the final prize for the Georgia Business Launch competition has come to and end. Sadly, we were not selected as one of the four finalists. While I’m disappointed that we were not selected, I’m proud of our accomplishments thus far.  Just being selected as one of the 15 semi-finalists is quite an honor (and one you can bet I’ll be shamelessly promoting).

I had the pleasure of talking yesterday with Sid Elliot, Director of Business Strategy for the Georgia Research Alliance (one of the groups putting on the competition). He was kind enough to sit through all of the judging sessions, compile feedback, and provide this to us struggling entrepreneurs.

Overall our feedback was exactly what we expected, nothing new and nothing we can’t continue to work on. For those of you interested, here were a few key points:

• Tighten up your financial projects and assumptions (know every last detail of the model)
• Articulate the market pain in a way that individuals not in our target demographic can understand the gravity of it (help non-twenty something judges get why people want to find events)
• Strengthen your barriers to entry (figure out why no one can do this better than us)

“So, where is this silver lining?”

Late in the discussions, one of the judges was leaned back scratching his shin when he said to the group: “I’m not yet convinced I’d invest in this idea…but I would invest in these guys.” At which point almost everyone the room agreed.  Never been said about any group in the three years of the competition…

WHOA! Seriously, wow!  Did I mention we were the youngest group in the semi-finals? Not sure what this group saw in us, but awesome for Event Seek!  Now all we have to do is leverage that and tweak our business plan and pitch until they love the idea. [Insert me]

So, while it was sad not to win, there clearly was a silver lining for us at Event Seek. And, we’ve got a fair amount of upcoming opportunities to do some self-promotion. I’ll be attending a variety of startup related activities in the next coming weeks like StartupRiot, Capital Lounge, the Entrepreneur’s Showcase, and Run it by the pros. If you see me, stop by and say hi.  

Ok so that’s actually something that serious bloggers (who have real audiences) say.  But it felt cool to act like people might seek me out.

 

Things have been pretty exciting around the office lately with development picking up speed, preparing for the business launch semi-finals, and the general mood that comes with hitting milestones.  The thing that I’m most excited about right now however, is the addition of the air-mattress.

I brought it in a week or two ago because it was just taking up space in my house and we’re certainly not hurting for storage in the office (tends to happen when you work in a Uhaul).  I’ve taken a few cat naps on it thus far, usually about 10-15 minutes in length, but generally just enough to close my eyes and get back to work.  As I’m writing this post, I’m basically counting the words until I can go crash on that plush gray pillow and sleep for the next hour.

As many of you know we’ve been preparing for the semi-final round of the Georgia Business Launch Competition.  This week has been hectic as I’ve worked to make sure we were bringing the right set of materials, knew what we wanted to say, and were going to be showing off our A game.  As a result, I haven’t spent much time outside of the office or slept any normal person’s sleeping patterns.

At 8:00AM this morning we presented to a panel of distinguished judges.  Seriously, this group was full of powerful, thoughtful, entrepreneurial, I-eat-pieces-of-shit-like-you-for-breakfast investors.  Tristan and I were bright-eyed and busy-tailed and put together what I thought was actually a solid presentation.  The judges asked excellent and difficult questions and we tacked each one to the best of our ability.  I’m thrilled to say that the presentation and Q&A went off without a hitch and I think we have a real shot at making the final 4 groups.  

Are the odds against us?  Sure.  Is our idea better than everyone elses?  Of course.  will the judges agree with me?  Who knows.  I can say this for sure though: I’m off to take what I believe is a well deserved nap.

Somebody set an alarm…

 

So, after all of this hoopla about me “stepping back” and getting out of the way of production, it has been a fairly smooth transition. Thanks go to both Event Seek’s and Hashrocket’s teams, but mostly to the respective production managers, Tristan and Rein.

To give it bit of background, we’re now in our third week of full-scale production and we’ve had a few hiccups in the first two weeks, but are settling in. After two weeks, it was clear to both Tristan and I that we weren’t building at a speed which would allow us to hit expected milestones and goals. Obviously this was incredibly disappointing to us and something we had to remedy right away (we’re not made of funding). As a young CEO, I really had a few options:

• Get on the phone with Rein and hoot and holler that they need to work faster
• Get on the phone with Rein’s boss and hoot and holler that they need to work faster
• Threaten to stop the project, not pay my bills, etc.
• Give my production manager (Tristan) a few days to create a plan to get us back on schedule

In keeping with the “stepped back” Connor, we chose the fourth option.  You know what happened?  Exactly what needed to. 

I came to work Monday morning to a full status assessment - a complete an honest review of our progress so far, identification of the major issues that had plagued us, and simple next steps to remedy the situation.  I should comment this wasn’t halfway done either.  This was exhaustive and brutally honest.  Tristan had spent a significant amount of time talking with Rein (their production manager) about the progress, the issues, and how to get back on track.  Together they were able to identify the issues and develop a plan to overcome them.

The really cool thing about working with talented motivated individuals is that even though you know they are good and you have high expectations from them - they can exceed those high expectations.  

Obviously we’ll continue to track our progress and have honest reviews of where we are, but we’re already getting back on track.  Who’s ready for Event Seek Private Alpha testing?  Counting the weeks…

Today, we received our first award. Well its not like a real award, and its not a huge deal, but hey we’ll take whatever we can get right?

This afternoon Event Seek was selected as a semi-finalist for the Georgia Business Launch Competition. Of the 90 or so companies that applied to the competition, we were chosen as one of the top 15. To those of you who voted for our video, my most sincere thanks! Amazingly, we weren’t one of the top two videos receiving votes for the competition, so as it turns out, our application stood on its own *ahem* merits.

We’ll be presenting our plan to a team of distinguished Atlanta judges next Friday at 7:45 am. Many of you know that I’m not a morning person so I have a feeling I’ll have to get up early and drink a red bull or two, but you can bet I’ll be there pretty psyched to present. Neither Tristan or I are veterans at this, so just being invited to present is pretty exciting. Did I mention that the judges are definitely connected to money and influence around Atlanta? I guess I’ll have to get my suit pressed and wear my power tie…

We’ve slimmed the presentation down to just a few slides that really hit our critical points, so hopefully our passion and excitement can shine through. If anyone wants to see the slides, feel free to shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to share.

Keep your eyes open for future updates on our progress. I’d love nothing more than for Event Seek to make it to the finals, but really I just want to put together a good showing for our small company, investors, and all the friends supporting us along the way.

Oh and if today wasn’t good enough already, we’ve managed to bring in another investor to the team. You know who you are (I don’t think its good to name drop in a blog), and I couldn’t be happier that you’re with us.

Back to making pretty slides…