Lessons from the first two weeks - October 3, 2008

Today marks the end of the second week since Jeff and I took over the Internet and Publishing areas of Rudius Media. Here are some thoughts from the first two weeks.

1. There's internet time and there's real time. I always sort of knew this, I think everyone knows this, but it becomes painfully real when you're trying to both run sites and plan for the future. I've had to start thinking on two entirely different timelines.

One is the world of instant publishing, entries on Rudius Media, editing, my own writing (which I've been neglecting). There's the day-to-day business of generating new content, finding new content, getting new content to those who want to consume it. And while people will gladly wait a year for a new book or a new movie, they won't waiting a week for a blog post.

The other is the world of planning for the future. Sitting down with a designer to roll out the next generation of features for our sites, sitting down with Donika to talk about our current authors and projects, working with new authors to see if they'd be a good fit within the Rudius universe. All of these things have a horizon of months. It takes time to rollout site redesigns, create a working relationship with new authors and figure out what's working and what isn't. And it takes time to synthesize everything I've heard from all of you and figure out how to make it work with where I want to go.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but when you spend your day living in internet time, it's sometimes hard to accept that you can't redesign the network, rollout six new authors and generate internet crushing traffic all before miller time.

2. If you don't love it, don't take the reins. There have been at least two days where I've seriously wanted to say "fuck it" and walk away. And it's only been two weeks. If you have any doubts in yourself or if you don't 100% love what you're doing, then there's no way you're going to hack it. You really have to have an almost naïve belief in your ability to take a project from nothing to success or the doubts alone will crush you, not to mention the fires that have to be put out every day.

3. If you get the chance to take the reins, do it. For all the moments that suck, there are moments that are awesome. I tend to focus on the negative, because I'm bitter and angry and fuck you. But for all that, most of the day, I'm excited about what I'm doing, I like what I'm doing and I believe in what I'm doing. I'm not sure how many people can say that about their jobs. I'm 30 years old and I'm running a startup. For how much I've bounced around, it's a pretty good landing. This is by far the coolest chance I've ever had, but that's probably not something I'd admit to if you asked me right out.

4. Being a digital nomad doesn't always work. This is probably the hardest lesson for me to learn. I have an irrational, blinding belief in technology as the ultimate problem solver, akin to how people probably believe in god. I love the idea that with my blackberry, laptop and a wireless connection, I can work from anywhere in the world. But the truth is that nothing is as effective as face to face meetings, especially early on in the lifecycle of a project or startup. Later, when everyone understands where the ship is headed, then there's a lot more freedom to work remotely. But as I'm getting comfortable with the new Rudius, it's invaluable to be able to sit down with someone and really work through issues and ideas. Of course, I'm not talking about recreating some sort of bullshit office culture, a lot of my meetings happen over drinks, but they still happen IRL.

Posted by Ben Corman at 6:46 PM

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Comments

Ben,
Love what you are trying to do with moving rudius media along and I think it's working. Just a suggestion for a line of thought regarding your post. It seams that there is a bit of a bottle neck of information that everything has to pass through you and Jeff(or maybe just one of you) for unrelated content. Have you considered putting more of a, for lack of better word, "open source" on the webpage. Letting readers post other blogs, articles, etc. they find interesting. I know that can become prey to others advertising and trying to drive traffic to a site that is worthless. I know they can suggest it to rudius, then I'm assuming that someone there needs to research, read, format, edit, etc. and that can be time consuming. I maybe off on the exact idea, but I think it would be beneficial for everyone all around if you find things that you leave semi-unsupervised and take some of the burden off of rudius so that you may focus on better things. Anyway, just a suggestion.

Posted by: bbbraun at October 3, 2008 09:09 PM

The fact that technology and cultural adapton is yet to find an appropriate analogue for the sort of valuable interaction that you're talking about isn't an endorsement of any inherent value or particular characteristic of RL meetings - it's just a reflection of where we are in the digital revolution.

I'm probably as much or more so then you, an evangelist of technology as the answer. I fundamentally believe that humanity, and human technology has the capability to solve every problem that we've ever thought to ask. At the moment, we don't have the answers to those questions or we're yet to reach a point culturally where we can put those answers into implementations.

It's inevitable that one day, before too long - we'll be able to go to the pub and talk to people from Sydney, San Francisco, New York and London - while those people are in Sydney, San Fran, NYC and London - and we won't be able to tell the difference between that experience and the one we have now. There's too much business value in those interactions - and the time cost of flying is too great for too many businesses for the technology not to develop.

The geek that finds a way to make an interaction analogue like will probably never need to write another line of code for money.

Posted by: Scootah at October 3, 2008 10:15 PM

I agree with Scootah, and when that happens it will be awesome. But for right now, Ben hit it on the head. I've learned it in my own personal experiences. My business partner is in DC (I am in NYC), and we accomplish about twice as much in the same time if we can get together face to face.

Posted by: Bryan Vale at October 4, 2008 07:29 AM

The other day I was trying to think about my life before the Internet.
It was almost as hard as imagining my life before my dog.
I don't know if that's a sad thing or not.

But, anyway, I realized afterward that no matter how strong the Internet will grow to be in twenty, thirty years, it can never take the place of real human face-to-face interactions.

Note: You wrote "take the reigns", but I think it's supposed to be "take the REINS".

Posted by: Mel at October 4, 2008 05:06 PM

Scootah: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/10/the_expansion_o.php

"Yet the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. More answers, more questions. Telescopes and microscopes expanded not only what we knew, but what we didn't know. They allowed us to spy into our ignorance. New and better tools permit us new and better questions. All our knowledge about subatomic particles derived from the new questions generated after we invented an atom smasher. "

Posted by: Tree Frog at October 6, 2008 09:49 PM

I am very excited about the new RM. From all that you've written and talked with me over the past... shit... YEAR about the sharing of online content, I think RM has a good chance of being reborn in style with the ideas you have.

You're taking a risk, that's what startups are. This is shit people only dream of doing, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Posted by: L at October 7, 2008 06:13 AM