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So, I’m back in Front Royal, VA for a couple weeks to visit family. I missed them so I’m happy to be back here but I always have mixed feelings about being here. It’s where I grew up and I have a substantial amount of family here on my father’s side and some on my mother’s side. But it’s also a place I feel very uncomfortable about. My time here during my youth always made me feel less than great. There were many temptations to do wrong here because there was absolutely nothing to do here for young people except get in to drugs, play sports (which I didn’t) and generally get in to trouble. I was a high school drop out and didn’t find my true greatness until I left my hometown and struck out on my own. It was quite difficult in general to be anything coming from such a place. The environment of the town, my place on the socioeconomic ladder growing up and the people I hung out with all suggested I would grow up to be a loser. However, I was better in spite of growing up here.

I can’t deny where I’m from as that would be to deny who I am. Both my girlfriend and I are from here so we both have family here. However, I can’t help but feel okay about keeping a longer period of time between my visits here and making them as short as I can. But this time I haven’t been here in about 7 months and it would be selfish of me to stay away when my family hasn’t really seen my 2 year old son in that time. It’s disruptive to my business to be here as well as my temporary office is way less than ideal so I don’t focus nearly as well.

Many will think I’m being too hard on my home town or that everybody feels this way about their home town. Maybe so, I’m not cutting my home town any slack. The people in charge kept this town difficult to grow up in for a long time. They pushed away anything that could stimulate growth and fought progress to keep our town touristy which means they robbed the youth of my generation from any type of joy we would have had from things to actually do for young people in Front Royal. A special thanks to the town council and mayors of yesteryear for that bullshit.

I’ve always said I would invest in my home town when I became able to do so. I’m very close to being able to do so and I would love to invest in this town so maybe one less child will go through the mind numbing chaos of not being able to choose where your parents decide to raise you at. So, over the next 2-5 years it’s my goal to be able to invest in Front Royal and make it a better for people forced to grow up here and the people who have chosen to raise their children in this sleepy Civil War historic town that just recently got some balls and decided to grow.

This makes me very careful about where I choose to raise my son at long term. I’ve said that I would not raise my son in Nashville and I probably won’t no matter how much Nashville grows on me. I want to raise my son in a place where I would want to grow up. As any good father I want my son to have the things that I didn’t have as a child and I believe this is essential for a child.

So, for 2-3 weeks I will be grazing around Front Royal, talking to old friends and enjoying my family. I’m not thrilled about being here but I am happy to see my father, grandmother and some a couple close friends. Maybe one day I will be proud of this town or at least satisfied with what it becomes. But I am a bit salty about my youth here and that taste will be hard to get out of my mouth.

After writing the last article and some serious thought as well as some conversation about Nashville I decided to take on a new goal. While I still feel that Nashville is not my favorite place in the world I do feel that it would be smart of me to stay here and do what I could to make it better. At least for another couple years. I am working on building an organization that I feel will be a driving force behind the change I want to make in Nashville. Any goal I have set my true effort behind and have refused to let myself down on I have been successful at. So, I feel that I can put the energy behind this to make it something that seeds change in Nashville for the better.

My goals for this new organization are to:

• Attract outside investment in the local business and technology community.


• Foster cooperation between technology businesses in Nashville.


• Attract technology talent to Nashville.


• Create a more conducive environment for growth in the technology sector.


• Achieve diversity in the technology market in Nashville.


• Provide local technology entrepreneurs with tools and environment they need to innovate.


• Give local businesses an idea of what is possible through the application of technology.


• Foster the development of user groups, conferences and discussion around technology.

In the end to get more and attract more we have to be more and through cooperation we can make all of us more than what we were yesterday. The name of the organization I’m building is the "Lion Council". I picked the lion because it’s a majestic animal, but also social and protective of their claimed area. Further, Lion Council was easy to remember and the domain was available.

I still may not decide to stay here and raise my son here for other reasons. Nashville is more conservative than I would like and the climate is not my cup of tea. Those are two things I doubt that I can have any serious impact on.

Let me preface by saying that I love Nashville. I read this article about Luke Kanies leaving Nashville for Portland. I have considered moving back to Portland as well. The only reason I haven’t, is that my girlfriend is somewhat hesitant to it. We have a son together and live just outside of Nashville, in Hendersonville. The main reason I’ve wanted to leave is I feel socially estranged in Nashville. It’s been almost impossible to build any good group of friends with common interests. The parties I’ve thrown (with free alcohol, music and plenty of space) have had about a 30-50% rate of people actually showing up. That’s around 15-25 people, which is good but I keep inviting the same people (who seem to be friends) and they keep not showing up. If you are one of those people there are many of you that have valid excuses and that’s cool as I’m probably not mad at you or I would have told you. But a friendship has to go both ways. If I show up when you request my presence and I can never count on you to call me out of the blue and ask me what/how I’m doing or show up when requested then there is a problem. Maybe the problem is I’m not important enough )-: But people in Portland never made me feel like that. I would get calls from people out of the blue on a regular basis and I still have contact with people in Portland even though I haven’t lived there in 7 years. I visited last year and it was like I never left. Friends came together and welcomed me back.

I’m pretty sure it isn’t because people are assholes here in Nashville. Generally people feel (IMHO) self-absorbed, conservative and don’t go out of their way to contact you. But they are very friendly in person and talk up how much they enjoy your company. Then you never hear from them again. I’ve met people I really liked and there are couple people who I consider good acquaintances  who I hope will eventually become friends. It just seems like a lot more work that I even had to put in to the effort in Portland, Oregon.

The tech community here as I said on my comments on the other post is not very great. I have put some considerable effort to help but it has not been returned and I have been mostly ignored when I put in effort which is discouraging to say the least. The NASHDL group is okay… and I have people within there that I don’t want to offend but I have had a lot of people tell me they felt uncomfortable going there and it’s not very inviting. I understand what they mean to some degree.

Marcus Whitney went to great effort to create user groups and encourage the local development community. Others that have encouraged the community in one way or another are Nick Holland (as previously mentioned in another article), Jackson Miller, Ted & John Chapin and Dave Delaney. There are others but I’m not as well connected as some so these are the few I know of. Many others keep to themselves and I feel this is due to some of the resistance I have mentioned. I have invested financially once with meager but reasonable returns and invested with my time/effort twice only to be outright ignored and sidelined. I’m an entrepreneur and don’t have time to be bothered developing things and investing in things that are a waste of my talents and energy. As far as that goes it would be difficult to get me to start anything by myself. I want to but I’ve seen how that goes and the only way I will do anything is if I can help someone who already has "the wind underneath their wings".

My business has not survived or thrived due to Tennessee but generally in spite of location. The only thing good about this location for my business has been the cost of living and the outside perception by our clients in more expensive areas of the world. We have been able to give a perception of cost effective due our location in part. There have been some relationships I have built recently that have been helpful for my business and my knowledge of business but that has been a long time coming. The good news is it doesn’t just apply to the tech community in Nashville. I have dealt with other industries in Nashville for my research on a website we are building. Seems they are all about the same way. They are not very trusting, have a secluded and competitive mentality, conservative and even combative when it comes to business. There’s a strong mentality that there is only just enough to go around and we must fight for the scraps of opportunity. However, if we would all open up a bit, lighten up a bit and relax we would find a world of opportunity at our feet. I operate my business as if there is enough to go around and we can all build more opportunity for ourselves through the sharing of knowledge and general cooperation. I hope that we are a beacon for others who want to operate this way.

Let me be clear. I don’t want to complain and just be part of the problem but I do want to feel free to state my observations from 4 years in this city. I’m willing to be a part of any proposed solution that people may have that has any chance worth of working or adding to the solution. My memories here have been a good part of my life that I love. I really came in to my own here and my son was born here. I would like this to be a place I would be proud to raise him and be proud to operate my business as it grows but so far I’m not convinced. I see some awesome efforts on the part of my colleagues and I hope they snowball in to the community becoming super awesome.

Here in Nashville on the last Thursday of every month the interactive development firm Centresource throws a mixer with good beer and better company. We always see the best and brightest new media professionals and entrepreneurs at these mixers. I’ve been to most of them. They started throwing them at the beginning of this year. During which they give out some schwag (Sivery Beans and Golden Kraut). I, uh… should know what these are because I’ve been so many times but it always escapes me. There’s always some type of interactive contest or drawing to get the much sought after items. Basically, they are two cans of food with some very symbolic meaning but it adds some fun and humor to the event and usually just about the time you have a buzz. Nick (Nicholas Holland) could tell it better than I could. The free beer and wine is definately an awesome touch.

The group of people at Centresource are really good. I consider Nick a friend and have had several conversations with them about their development work. They seem a very qualified group of developers. They primarily develop in PHP but put together awesome designs and other media as well. The best thing about them is they foster the development of interactive media Nashville and bring the community together. They have sponsored many of the tech/new media events in Nashville and we should all be grateful for that. I have mentioned before that sponsoring tech events doesn’t get you a whole lot of new work (IMHO) but does increase your position within the community, beneifts the local community, can attract talent and is very good for the image of a company. So, they should be praised for what I would consider an investment in the development community in Nashville.

Lastly, to anyone considering on coming out to the Centresource mixer I would say it’s a good idea. There are a lot of good contacts to be met out there and consider your presence your own small investment in the Nashville Tech Community. The address is 1313 4th Avenue North in Nashville and it usually starts at about 5pm. If you come out this Thursday, I’ll be there.

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The Challenge

We started our company, Cogwise Software, the same month the market started crashing last year (September, 2008). We lost a huge deal we were working on that month because of the crash. After that all we had was the clients I had from our prior company and a couple clients from my partner’s company. So, things seemed impossible. It seemed like many times we were fighting to swim upstream and many times we would hit some kind of barrier. Every marketing method we tried was expensive and we seemed to keep missing the mark. Our competition was willing to tell customers whatever they wanted to hear and give them whatever price they wanted to get a few bucks in their pocket and we weren’t willing to match bids that were too low or lie to potential clients in order to get work. So, we suffered through barely getting enough work to eat. We also had no loans or capital so we were working off of what we could get in as quickly as we could get it in. Many times we would be late paying contractors or other bills. Starting a business in one of the worst recessions in American history was not easy nor fun but it did make us stronger and smarter because we were willing to bet it all.

 

Dragging Knuckles

Initially, we tried many of the ways we knew to get leads and most of them didn’t work in this economy. Around the same time I had a partnership with another company, who was feeding us leads, dry up. They no longer could feed us leads because they didn’t have any. The comments of many devs at this time were, "if you had clients with active projects you are good but if you don’t then you are in trouble". We had active projects but it was not enough to sustain both my partner and my self. I went in the direction of stopping adwords because it wasn’t working and working on elaborate SEO and content creation. My partner was doing some cross-promotion of niche brands. We were also doing a ton of cold calling to design firms and trying to establish partnerships so we could piggy back their marketing efforts. Lastly we were both working locally to increase our social activities around promoting our brand.

 

What Worked & What Didn’t

Our SEO efforts paid off. It took months for it to work but content creation to link to our brand and social networking was essential to our visibility and brand strength. We now get organic leads in a much higher request rate. Adwords effectiveness was terrible during this time and we were right to cut it off. Seems many of the larger dev firms were spending money hand over fist to knock us off and in the end we couldn’t spend as much for a lead as they could. We did a couple projects that were low profit but they had good ideas so we could get a residual cut of their profits. I don’t recommend that to everyone as many times those kinds of partnerships don’t pay off but they do increase your network and your visibility. Also, working locally to go to networking events and increase our local visibility also seemed to work. Being willing to talk to whoever was willing to listen and not be intimidated by anyone’s success was essential as well. Many people who are successful don’t mind helping you get there if you treat them equally.

 

Evolution

A lot of what we did to survive had to do with being vocal. We put our name out there as much as possible. We spoke as loud as we could about our philosophy to anyone who would hear. We made close friends with our developers and treated them like real people with ambitions and desires and helped stoked the fires that kept them interested in what they did. We always provide as much value to our customers as we can afford to. Many times I didn’t bill for tech or business advisory time. Instead we would make a margin off of our developer’s work. We would always spend a certain amount of time discussing our client’s businesses and how to make them better. We ended up being good business consultants, good marketing consultants and good software developers. Our business turned in to an end to end solution for many of our customers. We evolved to learn the productivity methods like "Getting Things Done" and read books like "Think and Grow Rich". My partner and I compared notes, we talked frequently and we were honest with one another. We didn’t harp on our failures but noted them and strived to be better by advising each other. We were and are grateful for each other. During the hard times we were careful not to blame each other or quit.

 

Now

Work has picked up and I think we are caught in an upswing in the economy along with the fruit of our successful promotional efforts. We have adapted our internal processes and picked the right people to be successful. We have shrugged off negativity and reached high. We set tangible goals for ourselves and our company. There are a ton of qualified people out there who need work and we have sucked up a lot of them recently. Lastly, it sounds corny, but we never gave in and we pressed forward no matter the hardship. We were reflective, honest with ourselves and learned from our failures. This was our roadmap to this point and I feel our future is bright. I hope to write about our company’s awesome progress in the next few months.

I haven’t done any posts about Twitter. But, I really like twitter because I think it encapsulates what the new movement in software development is really about. People always bitch about them not adding new features or being slow to add new features but that’s not what Twitter is about. When you are thinking about what features you would add to Twitter think about what features you would add to a piece of notebook paper to make it better at being paper. The answer is you can do very little to a piece of paper to make it more useful than it is for it’s purpose. Twitter has an open API which anything can be built on just like I can fold a piece of paper and make this amazing origami bird.

But this article is about what Twitter says about Humans and not about what Twitter is so let me get back on track. What do we do with a piece of paper to make the writing on it more understandable? Well, there are social conventions created over time that in Western culture writing goes from left to right in a straight line across the paper until you get near the edge and then the next words go to the next. There are also other social conventions for writing of all kind… such as signature at the bottom of a letter, address at top left, greeting on first line, indention on each paragraph, so on and so forth. These social conventions came about so things would be easier to read. There aren’t laws about how to do it as much as it’s just a commonly accepted convention that makes things easier to read.

In Twitter you have hash marks # to identify a tag such as #news would be related to the news or #eventname would be related to an event. This is not functionality that came about because of a feature but it came about from the community using it. Same goes for @twitter_username which was born out of use. The use of small website addresses in place of large ones was the same as well. They came out of necessity and were born of the community to represent a function. So, if you give a sufficiently large enough group a canvas they will agree on the method that makes the most sense in order to use that canvas. It seems many times these rules will be born without saying but they will be born of use. That use will then reach a tipping point where the masses will identify the use as the most efficient method to get the idea across. The networks inherent to the internet drive this much, much faster than other mediums in the past but the result is the same. Left to our own devices and given a blank medium we will generate the most efficient conventions at the given time. I added that part ‘at the given time’ because many times we create conventions which are not overturned in a timely fashion when the ability for better conventions come along. The speed at which a convention is overturned is slower than which a convention was created but is still much faster with a network like the internet.

As many successful people I believe that you are the creator of your own luck. If you pray for good luck or wish for good luck it means that there is an external force that is out of your control bestowing luck on you. I have told others "good luck" but I believe what I really mean is "I hope you create great opportunities for yourself". I find it amusing when people sit around and do nothing but hope that their luck changes or even worse, they keep doing the same negative behavior and hope that it changes. The successful know that you are the one who creates opportunity for yourself and gives yourself the luck you require.

So, what is luck? Is it a heavenly force bestowed by a more powerful being? Is it a mathematical chance where the odds are in your favor more than even if you have good luck? I would argue that it’s none of the above. Luck is the opportunity you create for yourself by doing positive things combined with the way you feel about yourself. A confident person will usually appear to have good luck. Are they confident because they have good luck or do they have good luck because they are confident? I think more than likely they have good luck because they are confident. When you are positive, confident and have faith in your abilities the universe will surround you with good "luck". So, if you are sitting around moping and wondering when good luck will come your way the answer is probably "never", at least while you are sitting around moping and not creating opportunity for yourself. Self pity and introvertedness are the antithesis of luck. Luck is opportunity and you can’t create opportunity all by yourself or while you feel like shit about who you are. Opportunity is born through a strong and confident mind in the presence of other strong and confident minds.

When you are feeling sorry for yourself due to some temporary failure pick your ass up and do something about it. The quicker you realize how to brush your shoulders off, learn from your experiences and get back in the game the less you will draw the experience of bad luck in your life. You do attract things in your life by your feelings and views about the world around you so put good bait out so you can attract all the magnificent things you desire and need in your life.

There is a lot of worry in the developer community about losing work to India and other areas with cheap foreign labor. As the owner of a development firm we have outsourced work to Asia and other places across the globe. We don’t just do it because of price. There are some very smart people globally and we don’t like limiting ourselves by the borders. In fact we are considering building several Asian teams. But at CogWise Software we don’t just hire foreign developers. We have developers all over the world and have a tendency to mix our teams. Our teams end up being very multi-cultural. Part of the reason is we get a more competitive price across to our clients by developing with teams in Asia and South/Central America. But by mixing cultures in our teams we get a varied perspective on the work we do.

As a side note, we have lost projects to foreign firms a few times because of cheaper rates. We generally check in on those projects we lose because they are not satisfied with what they get about 70% of the time. Just because someone is cheaper doesn’t mean they do the same quality of work we do. There is a lot of work that goes in to a software development project that usually isn’t known at the onset. A firm like CogWise (my firm) will fill in the blanks and help build a product that is magnitudes better than it’s original concept. I’m not saying that foreign firms don’t do this but there are far few I have ran across that offer that type of service.

There is a clear edge that Westernized developers have over their non-western counterparts but that edge is eroding slowly. The edge is cultural. Most of the demand is still from Western businesses which is very different from the Eastern cultures. A good book to understand the Indian cultural differences is "Speaking of India" by Craig Storti.

There is a rugged individualism and self-reliance that is very much a core part of Western culture (some countries more than others). Secondly, American culture and many other Western cultures are more forthright and direct in communication. Communication is more subtle in Indian culture and other Asian cultures. Lastly, some non-western cultures see it as offensive to do more than what is specified. In other words if you didn’t ask for it then it’s not assumed. There are many other differences but these are the core ones that cause problems.

I have a strong belief that the more the cultures mix in business and personal dealings the more you can expect these differences to go away. Global capitalism will always look for the cheapest labor and when the cost of living and quality of life rise in countries like India and China there will be other countries to continue the drive for cheap labor. The drive for cheaper labor, the highly educated technical labor pool outside of the United States and the cultural problems which are resolving over time will conclude in a lot of technical labor moving to cheaper markets over the next few years at a much higher pace each year. Further there are companies like my own that help bridge the gap between the cultures.

As I see it anyone who wants to continue a long career in a technical capacity cannot stay stagnant in the development of their skills. You must continue your dedication to learning. Any good programmer knows that you must continue to learn throughout your career to keep your abilities up and your options for employment current. The programmers who do not do this end up not staying programmers for very long ie… a CS Degree is not enough. Be globally competitive and stay on the cutting edge of technology.

The first thought for most people and the easy way out is to insist the government push companies to use native labor and not use foreign workers. The result is we get complacent developers who can’t compete in a world market which is not good for us. You can only keep your job as long as your company is competitive and makes a profit.

A lot of my personal and business decisions are based on a gut feeling and a watchful eye. A great programmer continues to build great things both for themselves and for whoever they work for. A great programmer also loves what he/she does. A great programmer will not be affected by the global dispersion of the profession. A lot of people don’t understand that programming is a creative profession. It’s not really like the exodus of industrial jobs. An afraid complacent programmer who does it for the cash will not survive very long in this market and should choose a different path. I made a personal decision to move toward the business side of things because I love the programming market but don’t always enjoy writing code any more. I guess I’m just bored with writing code. I also made a decision to work with foreigners in order to be able to have a diverse talent pool, become talented in bridging the cultural divide and offer my clients a more competitive price. There’s money in bridging the cultural divide right now and if you enjoy it then I would suggest you learn it.

As some of you know or some of you may not know I just moved to Hendersonville (across Old Hickory lake). If there were a bridge I could get to my old house in about 5-10 minutes. So far I’m pretty impressed. I ended up using Chris & Katie Bradds as Realtors/Property managers. We found the most beautiful ranch style home and immediately fell in love with it. However, I was concerned that with my poor credit and my girlfriend’s nonexistent credit we wouldn’t be able to get the place. Chris & Katie worked with us and we made our case about the situation we were in with our prior landlord. Eventually we got approved and moved over here. The house has an attached apartment that has its own entrance, bathroom and kitchen. My mom was able to move in there and share rent with us bringing my bills much further down and giving us a babysitter right next door. Further my mom works for the cable company so we were able to get free cable, internet and much cheaper phone service. Overall my bills are now lower than they were at the other place and I have 3 times the space here. Though I make decent money I’m a sucker for a good deal and always trying to lower my living expenses.

I have to say that Chris & Katie at Bradds Realtors & Property Management made the experience very pleasant and they have a number of homes that are beautiful on their website. Secondly I have to negatively point to my old landlord. Do not rent from Old Hickory Property Management or Rick McClintock. I rented from him for over 3 years and most of my experience has been mediocre or unpleasant. I watched him take many people to court and he has a terrible reputation for getting people for their deposit. He nickeled and dimed me on everything including charging me $25/month to put in a dishwasher (For my entire lease! If I had the time to install it and the money to buy one I would have put it in myself. At the time I didn’t even have the money to get a dishwasher.) . Lastly, the breaking point for him and I (and the reason I decided to move out early) is that I had a friend in dire need of my help move down here until he could get on his feet. He stayed at my mother’s residence (we both rented from him, she was only a couple houses down from me and she had two extra bedrooms) for 4 months. He filled out the rental application that Rick asked for and paid the application fee. After 4 months Rick decided he didn’t want my friend living there any more and hiked my mother’s rent up by $125/month. He then harassed my mother and my friend until finally he came to me and told me he would evict my mother that day if I didn’t give him $125. So, I had to pull the money out of my wallet and give it to him. I know he couldn’t evict her that day but he’s a sneaky one and there’s no telling what tricks he has up his sleeve. I also supported Rick when he ran for council, which I regret a whole lot. I had many problems with Rick (him not fixing things on time, him making promises that he never upheld and then getting far more involved in me and my family’s life than any landlord should be). Rick makes elaborate contracts that can tie you down in any way he wants when he wants and then he only enforces things when he wants to (ie… he has a clause that says if any person says in the house more than 4 days per calendar year you must pay him $125/month for every month that person is there). I know it looks like I let him get away with a lot while I was there and if you are thinking that you are right. I let him get away with too much because I didn’t want to move because of the time and difficulty involved. When I first moved to Nashville I had terrible credit and very little money so I was just happy to get in a half way decent place. Do not rent from Old Hickory Property Management as it’s likely you will enjoy the same experience.

I will miss my old neighborhood. Old Hickory Village had a certain charm to it which I loved. I felt close with most of my neighbors and enjoyed the area very much. I will always remember my time in the Village and how I raised my first son there and enjoyed the first three years of my time in Nashville there. I would recomend it to anyone looking for a close knit, peaceful neighborhood that isn’t a bad transit to downtown Nashville. The negatives about Old Hickory is the bedrooms and bathrooms in many of the older houses are small. So, looking around for the right house is a must if you move there.

Looking forward, I’m really excited about Hendersonville. There are a lot of interesting restaurants over here to try and the neighborhood I’m in seems really laid back. The transit to downtown Nashville isn’t much worse than Old Hickory. We went exploring the other day and there are a ton of beautiful homes in this area. Within a year I aim to own a boat that I can dock here at the Marina. Also, there is a Geek Breakfast in Hendersonville now! Geek Breakfast Listings . There is a lot of charm in our new house and I’m looking forward to throwing our house warming party over here in May. This time I’m going to invite a lot more people as there will be much more space to party and I’m much more proud of our setup over here.