Minimum Viable Personality: Lessons from a Giant Robot Dinosaur

The greatest post ever on voice and personality as defining characteristics of online success is Minimum Viable Personality, an instant classic by FakeGrimlock on Fred Wilson's AVC blog.

Written in the voice of a giant robot dinosaur, the post proves its own points in every paragraph of all caps wisdom.

Here are the two greatest #grimlockquotes:

"PERSONALITY IS API FOR LOYALTY"

"INTERESTING PRODUCT THAT GIVE FRIENDS MEANING = MOST WIN OF ALL"

When you set out to make personality part of your project, you can be OmniGraffle or Visio, Shake Shack or McDonald's, Target or Walmart -- but make sure that what you choose is real.

"UNCANNY VALLEY APPLY TO MARKETING TOO. TRY TO BE HUMAN AND FAIL WORSE THAN NOT HUMAN AT ALL."

PointCast, Pets.com, Kozmo, Urban Fetch ...

PointCast, Pets.com, Kozmo, Urban Fetch ... are to the current tech boom as ... ?

There are so many smart startups happening; and so many, well -- here are some pieces of 20th century history for comparison:

Pointcast: When they turned down $450 million for a push-driven screensaver, the consensus around the lunch table at Yoyodyne was, dude, they had the hubris to spurn that much money for something sysadmins routinely blocked as a broken bandwidth hog?

Pets.com: Despite being an early "It doesn't matter if we're losing money: look how many customers we have" startup, not even its mascot could save it. "Because pets can't drive" is still one of the best taglines ever, and the commercials were awesome. But it wasn't just the free shipping on the 50-lb bags of dry dog food that killed them; it was pretty much everything they did. 

Kozmo.com and Urbanfetch were the two failed dot.com startups I loved most and still miss. They would gladly bring CDs (this was before MP3s) and ice cream to the office, really quickly; they also threw in insane amounts of swag with your order, from t-shirts to mugs, key chains, pens, etc. I still have some. Today, FreshDirect is a smarter, more focused, more solely urban -- and successful -- reinterpretation.

Interfaces are songs: Mobile is a beat you can dance to

 An interface has a beat, just like a song. It can be slow, fast, syncopated or straight time.

And mobile is a beat you can dance to. The taps on iOS leave so much room for animation and delight: layers and levels become successive opportunities for folding enchantment into experiences.

I have been thinking about this for a while. It came into focus on seeing Elvis Costello tonight. (I saw him the first time in college, again with Bob Dylan, and now with The Imposters.)

The blazing talent was always there, but the whole package is so much more awesome this century than the previous one.

The parts were all there before, just not as tightly polished and integrated.

Interfaces, too. Mobile interfaces are for dancing.

So Much Awesome ... But Space and Time Can Be Bent

Speakers, Sessions and Slots: It’s Not Over ‘Til It’s Over > You Can Still Have Your Say at BarCamp Nashville 


Here’s a math problem: If 84 outstanding speaker topics are submitted to BarCamp Nashville, and the random draw has only 35 slots, what percentage of speakers get a place on the schedule? 


It’s a total good news/bad news situation: Nashville has so much awesome, that only 42% of the people who pitched could be accommodated this year. 


But bending the laws of space and time is what the tech crowd does all day, so here are the three other paths for participating: 


1. Sign up, attend, hang out: Being there is being part of it. Seriously. The event is as good as the community; no more and no less. 


2. Grab an Impromptu Session: In the pure, original spirit of the one true BarCamp, these 10 prime slots (5 rooms, 10:30 am and 1:45pm) are first-come, first-served, Darwinian social engineering. 


During the 35-minute Impromptu blocks, the main stages will be dark. 


To get one, find the Impromptu Board (early!) and be one of the first 10 people to claim a session by writing your name, title, format,  (Case Study, Hands-On, In-Depth, Introductory, or Panel/Discussion) and session description.

3. Claim a Discussion Table, or set yourself up around the main bar.


---


Here’s the tally of awesome that went into the random drawing, held Sept. 20, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm at ESpaces, streamed online, and Facebooked: 


BCN11 Session Count by Category and Format
as of 8:00p 2011-09-19


CATEGORY
Code: 35 (42%)
Content: 31 (37%)
Design: 11 (13%)
Gear: 7 (8%)
Total: 84


FORMAT
Case Study: 13
Hands-On: 8
In-Depth: 26
Introductory: 25
Panel/Discussion: 12

Total: 84

Netflix: You Are Testing My Love for You

So, this happened:

"... streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently. It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. -- Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

The reaction was instantaneous and huge: 21,234 comments at last count.

I didn't mind the recent price increase; Netflix is still a piece of the future.

But the streaming/DVD split breaks the UX for people who do both, by requiring separate sites and separate searches-- that's the opposite of an improvement.

Until as much content is available through streaming as the US Postal Service delivers to my door in the familiar red envelope, this change makes the UX worse, not better.

"Software is media," says Fred Wilson, and media that is smooth will beat media that is clumsy. Netflix just made itself more clumsy.

360° of Awesome: BarCamp Nashville, You, and Digital Nashville

BarCamp Nashville is a big and growing part of the 360° of digital awesome here. Every year's sessions bring people you can learn from, and people who can learn from you. This year's festivities: Oct. 15, Cadillac Ranch, dawn til late.

• All of y'all, A-Z  -- angels, bizdev, coders, designers, marketers, mentors, sysadmins, PMs, QAs, UX, VCs -- who have signed up to speak: Thank you, and congratulations for stepping up, whether you won a slot in the random draw or not. (Want to shape next year's selection process? Join the crew.)

• If you didn't pitch, think about it for next year? The community needs your talent, your skills, your passion and your vision. Sharing makes us all smarter.

Another homegrown tech community, Digital Nashville, is also built by people who code, design, fund, manage, and sell things to be clicked or tapped.

For those who want to attend/speak at knowledge sharing events throughout the year, the DN education committee hosts three kinds: evening sessions, half-day and multi-day events.

• If you want to speak, let's talk about your topic/date (I'm the chair), and I'll put it in front of the team. Right now, we're looking out into 2012.
  
  
• If you want to attend, here's Digital Nashville's calendar, which aggregates tech things around town, acting as a clearinghouse for one-stop updates.

See you at BarCamp Nashville, and at Digital Nashville. Together, we know everything.

BarCamp Nashville is set for Saturday, Oct. 15, at Cadillac Ranch. BarCamp is a free, new-media focused "unconference" that's equal parts networking, knowledge-building and fun.

Digital Nashville is here to enable you. Stay informed with our newsletter and twitter feeds. Get advice through our mentorship program. Save money. Find a worker.  Explore, make yourself at home, and make it yours.

Next up on the blog tour: John Ellis

Storytelling, Narratives, Scenarios and Use Cases for Sites and Mobile

What can a user do on your site? On your iPhone app?

• When you say it in a paragraph, you have a use case.
  
  
• When you say it with conditions (if/then), you have a scenario.
  
  
• When you say it sequentially (this happens, then that happens), you have a narrative.
  
  
• When you say it across repeat visits today, and next week, integrated with social, and across all your conditions, you are telling a story.

Overly simplified? Not at all. Add wireframes and storyboards for key interactions and transitions, develop the personas: fast, lean; build; launch.

Some of the oldest stories are the simplest.