Yesterday I experienced a disappointment when my life line: the landline went down. It’s due to multiple factors among which a consequence of my lack of success in my business in Kneaver. The cut is temporary and I have to rely on my mobile line for a few days. In fact I was looking forward being interrupted as I will explain below. I worked non-stop for 8 months, 14 hours a day, on my computer from wake up to lights off, 7 days a week. I didn’t break, the landline did :(

Time to take some distance with social media, with the everyday treadmill and think strategically.

The fact is that I worked a lot, tried several ideas, build a network, learned a lot, but I never made a dime from it. When I stopped my other activity in Computer Aid Design in 2014 I knew I had only a limited time to succeed, and I failed. I have to admit it. I did several iterations of Kneaver but no one gets it and to be very honest I don’t use everything of it. Time to change my views, my plans. Luckily I re-read the lean startup recently and attended the 7 days startup. So I’m equipped to change, and fast. 7 days can be too fast so I renamed my plan “the 24 days startup”, it’s a bit ironic.

Yet I had several successes in the last 12 months

• I completely changed my technology stack. A very important stage that implied completely relearning most of my work. Yet I didn’t cut the cordon with older ideas, which tends to be expensive and have little traction.
• I started #PKMChat end 2014. We had some ups and downs. As is the average turnout is around 20 participants and 300 tweets. As such it qualifies as a small chat, but it’s friendly, and conversations are intelligent. #PKMChat helped each of us to become more mature in our use of Knowledge. We don’t talk inside a box of convened principles but anywhere our explorations take us. I can it reaching PKM Maturity. The process, the preparation of topics is also getting better and better. I’m not the only one to prepare topics, that’s a great success for me to be able to let go and delegate.
• I started Open Twitter Chat directory as an exercise when I learned new tools in 2014. It was my first project on NodeJS, Bootstrap, jquery etc. I added the announce system, the stats, etc … recently I added a “donate” button. I cost me a lot to add this button but the truth is that servers have a price, every month. I spent time answering questions, monitoring the system. We live in a time where everything software is considered free.

What did I do wrong?

• I didn’t arrange that what I do ends up in payable. I’m more use to deal with companies. Selling to individuals is like selling to friends, it’s a move I have a hard time taking. I tend to be willing to help and give without over-thinking it.
• I did help several people at some occasions. Small teams and large ones. It’s almost likely they wouldn’t have paid for the same service anyway, especially from me. I’m not interested to make a business of selling consulting or services. Still it’s better than nothing. So from now on I will refrain from helping others.
• I tried too many things in too many different directions. Being unsure of what I was looking for I gave an image of a non existing product or project. I’ll refocus on a single feature for a while and market every feature as if it was a new product, even if I know they shared most of the code.
• I learned too much and didn’t take the time to put in use everything I learned. So the proportion of time learning was unbalanced with results. Being continuously connected, with abundance of webinars, blogs, presentation is a temptation to be continuously consuming content instead of producing software.
• I lack discipline. This has always been true since my young age. Working every day, at the maximum extends push too loose the consciousness of the time that pass. Days are extensible; one hour lost can always be recovered by working later. I stopped having monthly plans, evaluating the tasks, and prioritizing. The last weeks I worked 19 hours a day / 7 days a week. When the sun rose yesterday morning and I was still at work I realized it was going too far, it had to stop. The first thing I did today is to print a monthly plan and start filling it.
• I think my idea was not completely wrong but I tend to be a visionary. I’m in advance of something that will become common in 10 years. It’s not easy to be in advance especially when you are not funded. To be funded you shouldn’t not be too old and too visionary. This is why I tried on my own.

Let’s pivot

So I decided to give another try. I change the rules, completely. I start from nothing, based on an idea I had for a few weeks. But I can’t restart again for a year or two. I’m limited in my capacity. I gave myself 24 days, until April 30 to try something different. I will blog everyday on what I do and how.

What did I do today?

Besides reconnecting to out of work activities (cooking cakes, planting seeds) I set at my table without Internet. A quietness of mind I didn’t have for months. I sat to write my idea, make a plan, check a few technical assumptions. People use Twitter for learning, and increase their visibility. It’s fun, addictive but it’s not end by itself. Most of us have other duties and we can’t buy bread with tweets. Twitter decided to change the rules, why not doing it ourselves too, in our favor? Let’s have the weapons to preserve our time Twitter and Facebook are so inclined to sell  This is my problem statement: People need to organize their network on social media to save attention time and be more efficient with the time they dedicate to it. On Twitter this goes by analyzing our network and placing people in lists. Beyond it will be about arranging around the same lines our memberships to groups, the blog we read etc. So it will start as a pure Twitter. Connecting on a site, listing who we converse with (followers or not), copying lists around. Beyond it will be about with whom we speak, about what and creating stream based on the attention we want to dedicate at given moment. A kind of relation manager at individual level with smart features included. A first level to design one list will be free, further use will imply micro payments or monthly and yearly plans. My promise is that I can save you several hours of time online without loss of quality in relationship and opportunities. I’m well placed to provide this solution because I have a great experience of how people use Twitter across different type of users, I have the experience of a Twitter based application with Open Twitter Chat Directory. I’m also well placed to do this because I have all the semantic, network analysis and artificial intelligence technology I made for Kneaver. It could be considered as an application on top of Kneaver. I say “it could”because It’s a new stack, distinct from Kneaver, built anew from the ground up, ready to become an app later.

Let’s do this!

Are you in? Follow this blog as I will post my progress every day. It will be WOL, Working out Loud, show your work  Take the time to write a comment to let me know you views.