Check out this ridiculous headline:
Diet soda helps weight loss, industry-funded study finds
Oh. My. Gosh.
The study was apparently funded by the American Beverage Association. Shame on University of Colorado for entertaining this study and taking that money.
There are plenty of articles about the horrid affects of the chemicals in diet sodas… is that worth losing a few pounds? By the way, here’s the logo for this study:
NOTE: There is limited space. Please register now to get your spot(s).
I have been a homeschool dad for the past 16 years. For the most part this has meant that I support my wife as well as I can as she homeschools the kids. Two things have caused me to get more involved: (1) my kids have gotten older (so I get to do more, especially as a math mentor), and (2) we’ve been involved in commonwealths and other organized groups where they have had a need for volunteers. My personal journey has led me to the point where I’m ready to offer a really cool class on video game design with an emphasis on making money (aka, entrepreneur).
This class is about math, science and money. Oh wait, only one of those three is going to get the attention of most kids (kids will be the bulk of students). This class has two purposes:
To introduce video game design, and learn how to create our own games that can be put on the market. This is not a conceptual, learn a piece of the puzzle, class. The goal is to get games done and put them on the market. We will use the GameSalad development platform. GameSalad provides a robust and functional development environment. You are not going to do hard-core programming with GameSalad but you will definitely learn programming concepts and logic. It’s amazing to see what people have create with GameSalad (more on that below).
To help you make money with your video games. I can’t promise any results, but I want students to get their games to market and have people buy them. I talked to someone earlier this year who said he has about 100 games published (aka, on the market), and he makes $2k – $3k per month in royalties. This is a non-programmer who has a day job. The games are just his hobby! I LOVE THIS because I want to empower people to make money! I want everyone to think about ways to earn financial freedom, or a few bucks in monthly recurring revenue. For some people, the goal is to make thousands of dollars each month. For some kids, earning $20 a month in recurring revenue is beyond their dreams. I want to show that this can happen. Can you imagine pushing out a bunch of games that pay for college? A car? Insurance? Gas? That’s pretty cool!
There should be byproducts of participating in this class. Students will see math and science at work. Let’s go from conceptual “when am I ever going to need to know this stuff!?” to appreciating, wanting to learn more, and maybe even loving math and science!
Did you know Angry Birds is a game of physics? Consider shooting a birdie from a slingshot… it has direction, speed and gravitational pull considerations. How far does the bird go (and what variables could change the length, speed, direction)? When does it start to go towards the ground? How money blocks, bricks, and sticks blown away, and in what direction do they go, and with what force? This can be overwhelmingly confusing in a high school physics class (for me it was), but it is is awesome stuff! If YOU are creating the game, you have to think about this stuff. We’re going to sneak math and science into our brains the way you can sneak black beans into brownies. See what we’re doing here?
This class if for anyone who is interested in (a) video game design or (b) being an entrepreneur. It is also for anyone who is looking for independent math, science, entrepreneur, or elective classes at the high school or college level. Registrants include:
As I mention below, I’m not putting a must-be-at-least age limit for registrants. I’m designing this class so the younger students learn enough tools to create their own games. Whether they finish a game is up to them and the environment at home (do they have enough time to work on it, are they driven and focused on the project, etc.). Why would adults take this class? Maybe they want to learn a new skill. Maybe they want to brush up on technical skills. Maybe they want to be the coolest adult on their block. Or maybe they *just* want to create another revenue stream (you know, for holidays, vacations, etc.).
Yes! The live webinar will be Monday morning at 9am MST, for about one hour. It will be recorded, and each student will have access to archived recording throughout the semester. Classes start on Monday, September 8, and end on Monday, December 8. This allows you to take this class as a self-directed student. Note: if I have problems on a live webinar, or have scheduling issues, I will record the class and put it in the library as soon as possible.
Every class will be virtual, so location really doesn’t matter. Within a week of opening registration we have students from Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Utah. I hope to have students from every state in the U.S., and outside of the U.S. Even my kids will listen to the classes remotely (one floor above me).
I am looking at doing at least one hackathon each semester. This will be in the Salt Lake area, and is 100% optional.
Good question. First, this class is about creating, not consumption. We’re not learning how to play video games. I’m really using video game design as a vehicle to teach other stuff (math, science, logic, project management, creative design, computer skills, marketing, etc.). Recently I was asked to reconcile the idea of teaching people to create video games with not supporting addiction to video games. This is like asking anyone who loves photography, or teaches photography, to reconcile their photography skills with those other addiction problems.
I don’t really care for video games. If I have free time, I’m likely not going to be found playing games. Ironic, isn’t it? But I am passionate about self-empowerment, and learning. Interestingly, I’m noodling on the idea of an extra optional assignment to research what makes certain popular games so addicting. As I studied this out in some articles (search for “Candy Crush addiction,” for example), I found some great stuff. I’m not interested in training people to think “how can I get people addicted, and then pay me more money?,” but I am interested in personal empowerment. Video game design, for me, is just a vehicle to get there.
Currently the price is $50/semester. Yes, this is ridiculously low. You can’t get piano for $50 for a semester, nor much of anything. There is a local big-name university that has a week-long boot camp for about $300. The risk of pricing this at $50 is that it makes it look cheap, and “you get what you pay for,” right? As a dad who has paid for stuff for my kids, I wanted to make this affordable for families. It’s hard for homeschool families to pay for so much out-of-pocket. I would rather have a lot of students, and siblings from the same family, sign up, and have it be really affordable, than to have just a handful do it for $100+. So, sorry it’s priced so low… I don’t mean to give you the feeling that this is a cheap class. Hopefully this pricing will help a lot of families (or the students themselves) be able to afford it.
Family pricing, per semester, is $50 each for the first two people, then $25 for each person after that. For example, from one family, price per person:
I hope there aren’t refunds, but life happens… you can get a refund through the second class (before the third class starts).
If you have other questions, ask in the comments below.
From when I was in Businessweek
I have mentored in various assignments over the last few years. I’ve been involved in the Knights of Freedom Summit for x years (I don’t know how many), and am taking on a bigger role this year (Guardian Mentor – it’s a new assignment). I’ve been a mentor for Simulations Week twice and am preparing for my third time (in June!!). Yes, I did indeed shave half of my head and half of my beard, and I squirted BBQ sauce on as many kids as I could. Of course, it all had a good learning purpose!) This last year I finished mentoring Shakespeare for our Commonwealth and was honored and amazed to watch those kids grow and mature. I am passionate about entrepreneurship (my third book is called “51 Alternatives to a Real Job“), and very passionate about helping people of all ages become empowered in many things, especially financially.
I have a degree in Computer Information Systems and an MBA from Idaho State University. During my junior year I was a web development intern at Simplot (in Idaho) and fell in love with the power of web apps. After a few years in “industry,” I was laid off and eventually started my own business: JibberJobber. JibberJobber is a relationship management tool specializing in helping job seekers manage and organize the complexities of a job search. Anyone who is trying to manage and nurture relationships, from Grandma managing birthday cards to a mom organizing community (or school) events, where there are multiple people communicating and things to follow-up on, can get value out of JibberJobber.
My first book launched a speaking career, and has led to various interesting opportunities. I also create learning courses for Pluralsight, which has a high-tech audience. My courses are career oriented.
I have five kids, one wife, and live in the Salt Lake valley. You can expect to see my family at Family Forum, Simulations Week, Shakespeare Showdown, Knights of Freedom Summit, Virtue Summit… and I’m sure I’m forgetting other events.
We started developing JibberJobber in March of 2006.
That wasn’t too long ago, but a LOT has changed in the world of the internet since then. Our first design (UI/UX) was fine, although we had a list a mile long of improvements and enhancements. We focused a lot more on processes and features than on making it look pretty.
Later, I got a message from someone that said the design was outdated (read: not keeping up with popular websites), and although he liked the functionality, he couldn’t “trust” us with his credit card for an upgrade because the design didn’t instill trust.
Isn’t that interesting?
So, we began to look much more seriously at the UI with the idea that we wanted people to TRUST us. They needed to feel confident that we were still around, and still making improvements. Changes (and keeping up) with UI would, I guess, help that.
In 2012 we did a big new redesign (I blogged about it here). Within days someone completely new to JibberJobber wrote and complained that the design looked too old, perhaps something from the 1990s.
You seriously can’t please everyone.
I’ve had graphics artists and layout people sign up, while in job search, and within 20 minutes delete their account saying they didn’t like the design. I hated that. I wished they would have said “man! Change this! Change the color! Change something!” instead of just “don’t like UI.” I know, I know, it’s not their responsibility to say what to do, but if one of them emailed and said:
“I love the tool, but the design could use a lot of work. I have a lot of suggestions… here are five of them. Feel free to incorporate those, and if you are interested in a consultation, let me know. I do this professionally and would love to help JibberJobber’s look match it’s awesome functionality.”
See what I did there? First, the person didn’t whine and stomp off like a little kid who didn’t get what they wanted, second, they offered specific solutions, and third, let me know that they were bought in and wanted to be a part of the team (even if just a contractor).
I would have absolutely had that conversation, and would have most likely hired them for the next step, to see if they could really walk the talk.
But I got never got that email. Not once.
Design is hard. I feel like we’ve been focusing on it a lot this year, and it’s frustrating to watch other sites with design crews go crazy and essentially define what great design is supposed to look like. But this article by Greg Story really helped ease that frustration: And They All Look Just the Same. At the very end he says ” It does nobody any good to have a web that all looks the same. Be mindful of the user’s needs and business requirements, but for the sake of success, go a different route. ” Read the whole article, it is excellent.
I’m not saying we don’t want to have a better visual experience. We do, and are working on it, and will continue to work on it. But I don’t think I’m going to fret about not keeping up with Twitter’s, LinkedIn’s and Facebook’s UI, when really what my best users and customers need and want is better UX – the experience, the functionality, the tools, the reports, etc. Yes, UI will be a part of that, and we’re aware of doing better there, but no longer can I waste time worrying about “keeping up.”
What do you think?
I have read this once or twice and wanted to close the page…. and move on. But I can’t. I keep re-reading certain lines. Thinking about how this applies to the JibberJobber user experience.
Godin is a genius. And this article needs to be reread regularly: Seth Godin on What Marketers Are Getting Wrong
Last week I had a call from my U.S. office to a Germany phone. At the scheduled time I pasted the number in and hit call… and it didn’t work! Nothing! Error!
I did a search and found that I needed to put 011 before the number.. this time it worked like a charm.
While I like this safeguard (so my kids can’t accidentally dial internationally and rack up long distance charges), it would be nice to figure out how to do this easier. Here’s the post I found the info from. Note the first answer was not what I was looking for 🙂
Four minutes is usually too long for me to look at a funny video, but I kept seeing reference to this Youtube video and it was flat out brilliant (and worth the time to watch it):
One thing they under-showed was “multi-tasking.” I’ve been in the room with people on conference calls where they were there but they weren’t there… know what I mean?
This article is a keeper… awesome and inspiring and thought-provoking: Meet the Growth Hacking Wizard behind Facebook, Twitter and Quora’s Astonishing Success
This talks about a role within a company that I hadn’t heard about before, which is to get massive growth in signups and/or users. It’s worth the read… 🙂
I’ve wondered for years why Twitter could not stop all the spam and crap. This is a DM I got in my email today:
I don’t understand how they continue to be relevant if they continue to allow massive amounts of spam to go out as direct messages (DMs). I get too many of these every single day.
(that isn’t their only problem, but it’s one that they should be able to fix RIGHT AWAY (like, years ago))
Last night we did a release on JibberJobber with a lot of things. I share some on the JibberJobber blog but usually not all of them (some are UI tweaks that no one really cares about, but they are good changes to make). I’m going to try to document all of last night’s upgrades here.
Google Contacts sync. I’m not talking about this yet because I don’t think it is working 100% the right way… but it’s there in beta mode if anyone wants to try it. I have done it a number of times and it won’t break anything or mess up your data, but I’m not getting the results I think I should get. This has been a HUGE project, but it isn’t over yet.
Recurring Action Items. Another HUGE project. Documented, with pictures, here.
Interesting menu change: Network –> Contacts. After years of having the first menu item read “Network” we changed it to “Contacts”. Both make sense to me but the more we thought about it, Contacts makes way more sense. Some people were confused at what they would get under Network… but Contacts is more intuitive. Crazy little change.
Another menu change: adding LOGS to the menu. I’ve said that JibberJobber is a tool to manage contacts, companies and jobs, and the interactions between them. You can now see this reflected on the menu with the fourth menu item: Logs (which shows the interaction between any of those three things).
Log Entries and Action Items on the Quickview Stats box: this makes a ton of sense… not only are we looking at the number of contacts, etc. you have in JibberJobber, how about your activities for the last week? We show you how many Log Entries you enter in the last 7 days, as well as how many Action Items you’ve closed in the last 7 days (we’ll make that a ratio in the future, to show you how many were due, and how many you closed).
Cleaned up notice box. If another user sends you contact information, or requests to be your coach, or anything like that, you get a notice in a white box in the Action Items panel on the homepage. We cleaned this up… it is easier to read now. And, the action links are more intuitive (I don’t remember what the old words were but they were not as intuitive as they are now). Seems like it isn’t a big deal but it really is. This takes away friction from the user experience… and we need to take away as much friction as possible.
Finally cleaned up the Add Contact issue that no one reported. But it bugged me a lot. A few years ago we introduced the ability to track prefix, suffix and middle name… but there was a glitch where the middle name always showed up, even if you clicked the link to hide it. This made the form see a little more clunky… the box is now gone and the link works fine now. Whew. Isn’t it amazing how little things can bug you so much?
Fixed and enhanced the Quick Add on Contacts. First, we fixed the Twitter quick add (1). Using APIs from other companies is a double edged sword. On the one hand it allows us to do great things. On the other hand, some companies change their APIs in a way that breaks everything. We’ve experienced this with other APIs (like Google)… but we finally fixed the Twitter quick add.
We also, at the last minute, added the Quick Add from Facebook (2). I tried this last night where I went to a Facebook contact, copied the URL, and then pasted into the box (after you click on the Quick Add link). It worked charmingly!! Try it (go to the Add Contact page, this is towards the top-right of the page):
Cobranded users get an alternate username and password. If you get a JibberJobber account through another company (outplacement company, university, etc.), with a single click to create your account, you probably don’t know what your username/password is. That model makes you go into that system and then get to JibberJobber. By popular demand we allow you to create your own JibberJobber username and password. This means that you don’t have to go through that system anymore, and if you ever lose access to that other system you can always come back to JibberJobber through your alternate login. This is critical because the data and work is YOURS, and you should always have access to it. Simply click on Account and you’ll see the option to create another username/password. This is what it looks like after you have created it (note, the password tab is where you will change your new password, if you ever want to change it):
Interview Prep without limits on text. For some reason we capped the answers in Interview Prep to 250 characters. I have no idea why, maybe to keep it under 30 seconds… or something like that. Anyway, this limit is gone. Just try and keep your responses concise 🙂
Ability to add documents from the Detail Page. When you click on Associate Documents from a Detail Page you will see a new button to Add a new Document. Before you had to go to the Doc Manager and add the document, which was a round-about way to do it… now it is a lot easier to easily add a document at the right time.
Cleaned up the Video Library. Our UI designer had us put these big image icon things in two columns. That was great, but it really restricted how long a title of a clip could be, and it quickly became a problem. So we changed it so that only one video would show on each “row,” which gave us as much room as we needed for clip titles.
Another popular request is to only show OPEN jobs on the Jobs List Panel. In the past you were able to order by open jobs, or do a search (status:open), but those were kind of temporary and required a lot of hard work (okay, well, maybe about 10 or 15 characters). Now, the default view is to show only the open jobs, but you can change that, as you can see in this new drop down.
You can change the Primary Contact from the Detail page. Before you had to go to the Company Edit page, then scroll to the bottom and then choose a new primary. Now you simply double click on the gray box over Primary Contact and then choose from any Contacts you’ve associated. You can see by (1) the Primary is Jason, by (2) you can see Barbara is a second (or other) contact, and in the drop down I can easily change from Jason to Barbara. Note, this is how most of the Detail Page can be edited, but this was one of the few things we didn’t do when we introduced the double-click edit feature.
You can now associate an existing Contact when you add a Job. We need to do more work on this (allow you to add a new Contact and associate more than one Contact per Job), but this is an important start.
From the Events box it is easier to add a new “event” date. Before, it said “n/a” and it wasn’t clear how to get a date in the box… now you simply click the “Add” link and it will bring up a Log Entry box with the Event already chosen from the drop down box. This is 1000 times more intuitive than before.
The List Panel search now works with quotes. If you search for Jason Alba you would get results, but if you searched for “Jason Alba” you wouldn’t… now “Jason Alba” is basically the same search as Jason Alba (which is Jason OR Alba). We need to do the same thing on the general search but it didn’t make it into last night’s release.
When you get an Action Item via email (which is a premium feature), you can customize the email you get. Before you would get the title of the Log Entry and the whatever you put into the Comments for the Log Entry… now your email is either that OR you can override it and put whatever you want to best remind you of what you need to do.
We now have the duplicate checker on non-advanced imports. If you unchecked the Advanced checkbox when importing Contacts (a premium feature), it would do a “quick import” and simply import and then tell you how many records it imported. But, it wouldn’t check for duplicates. Now we are checking for dups so you can have a cleaner database. For the record, I always do the Advanced Import 🙂 I like to see my data and how it is mapped before I pull the trigger.
Speaking of the import, if you choose a non-CSV file we’ll now tell you. Before it just kicked back an error, even though you are supposed to only upload a CSV file, but now it will say something about that (some people try to upload an xls file).
The autosave (3) was a great enhancement we introduced a few months ago. The problem we found is this: if someone called me and I started taking notes in the Comments box (2), I typically didn’t put a title in before I started to write in the comment area. JibberJobber didn’t like that. So, we simply made a title for you, until you make your own: Untitled (1). Simple, I know, but now the autosave will kick in even if you ignore the title field, which is one of two required fields on that form.
There were dozens of minor word changes throughout the system to make things more intuitive, and other minor changes I’m not documenting here. I’m sure we have a long ways to go but this was a great and significant upgrade. Thanks to my team for their hard work and diligence and to the users who gave us suggestions for improvements!
I found a good blog post about branding, even personal branding, for entrepreneurs, on the Adhere Creative blog: Entrepreneurs: Crafting Your Personal Brand
If I were coaching you I would say to focus on what the author talks about in #3 and #4, which is to become the teacher/instructor. When you do that you are THE EXPERT. Unless you do a really bad job. Otherwise, you will be seen and known as the expert, guru, etc.
Everyone can do this… you should have enough expertise in your field to teach or mentor someone else.
If you can get gigs to speak at conferences, it is as if the conference is endorsing your expertise.
One other thing that I would strongly recommend is to write a book. I had NO idea that I writing the first (well, second) book on LinkedIn would propel my brand, and my business and my career, like it did. I thought it would be a one-time thing with a week or month of hoopla, but here we are, seven years later, and I still get value because of that book I wrote.