I’m very honored to be presenting the keynote address at this Spring’s Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Conference, on April 10 at Hendrix College.
My keynote topic is Stranger in a Strange Land: An Entrepreneur’s Sojourn in the Academy, and will be a recounting of “lessons learned” during my personal and professional journey – from entrepreneurship to the academy, and back again.
Information on registration for the conference may be found here.
If you’ve enjoyed attending the Conway edition of Geek Breakfast for the past three years, but dreaded driving from Little Rock to Conway, well, the wait is over – you’re getting your very own Geek Breakfast!
The inaugural Little Rock Geek Breakfast is happening Thursday, April 9, at 7 am at Mugs Cafe in North Little Rock!
For those unfamiliar with Geek Breakfasts, they are monthly gatherings where attendees congregate over bacon, eggs and plenty of coffee to discuss topics like social media, digital marketing, design, programming, and ways to better their communities.
And, if you want to block out the second Thursday of each month, that’s when we plan on holding the Little Rock Geek Breakfast going forward!
You can follow the happenings of the Little Rock Geek Breakfast on Twitter, by following @LittleRockGeek.
Please tell all the Little Rock creatives, developers, designers, and “tech curious” you know – and we’ll see you on the 9th!
I really shouldn’t call Arkansas an entrepreneurial desert – though it did get you to read this.
Arkansas is, after all, the home of Walmart, arguably the world’s most successful family business in the history of mankind. And, it is home to 18 publicly traded companies, in a state with only two million souls.
Arkansas is also a state with a long and storied entrepreneurial history, that seems to have forgotten what it is that entrepreneurs actually need to succeed. Namely: what do neophyte entrepreneurs actually need to know in order to run a going concern?
What we do have is a burgeoning and growing ecosystem, giving a great deal of lip service to supporting entrepreneurs: new technology centers, innovation hubs, and startup funds are announced weekly. For every new startup pitch competition created, a dozen other pitch competitions already exist. Enough, already.
We have created a wobbly ecosystem designed to launch a thousand Powerpoint decks, and game gone-in-sixty-second contests for bragging rights and cash; a startup food chain, with lots of empty calories, but with little to no nutritional value.
And as a result – we are failing to launch healthy and sustainable new companies.
How do we fix this?
Well, we don’t need another startup fund. And we sure as hell don’t need another pitch competition.
We need businesses, and business people, who know how to keep enterprises between the ditches, making profits, paying salaries, giving back to their communities, and ultimately, fulfilling dreams.
People willing to sweat, and teach, the details of what businesses actually do.
Details like: Should my business be a C Corporation, an S Corporation, or an LLC? Should I incorporate as a native corporation, or as a foreign corporation? Should I operate on an accrual basis, or a cash basis? Will we be subject to state sales taxes? Are we charging (at all / enough) for our services in order to cover our run rate? What are the statutory reporting requirements for my type of business?
Details as seemingly obvious as: How do I close a sale?
These details aren’t simply questions to be answered after you “growth hack” an audience, or announce your break-out app at South By. They are foundational issues vital to the success of any – and every – Business with a capital B. The Arkansas Venture Center does a great job of dealing with such issues, through their Pre-Flight course, and through their network of mentors and business advisors.
If you find yourself in a “startup” group, and you’re the only one in the group who has ever created a business charter or filed a 941 form, congratulations – you’re the de facto subject matter expert.
And it’s well past time that those of us who have this knowledge continue to allow the narrative of the emerging Arkansas startup ecosystem to be controlled by entities interested solely in selling shovels to the miners, rather than teaching the basics of actually digging for gold.
There are solid business mentors around. And, there are plenty of people – accountants, lawyers, educators, and, dare I say it, “lifestyle” business owners – that actually know how to take in more money than you spend.
Seek them out. Use them. Invite them into the startup conversation.
For, if you want to successfully cross the entrepreneurial desert, you’ll need guides who have been there before, crossed it, and lived to tell the tale.
Conway Geek Breakfast is Thursday, March 26, starting at 7 am at Bob’s Grill in Conway, AR. We’ll see you there!
Parenthetically, Conway Geek Breakfast turned THREE YEARS OLD in February! Thanks to the creatives, developers, and all around interesting people who have (and continue to) supported the local Central Arkansas tech community!
We just completed an amazing event at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub – the Raspberry Pi Bake Off. Though I’m ecstatic over how successful everything turned out, I’m also now wading through the debris of everything left undone on my other projects, in the wake of this past weekend.
Plus, there’s this whole “job” situation I’m working on. So, there’s that.
This was our third year for the Bake Off. While I would like to say that every year gets easier, that wouldn’t be entirely true. Every year is different is probably the most accurate description of the process.
That said – how does one go about putting together such a large event?
There’s really no silver bullet answer – unless lots of hard work and dedicated people working their tails off is that. But, in truest listicle fashion, I’ll present my “must haves” to pull off a successful event, and live to tell the tale.
That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell. If there is a recurring theme, it is to remain persistently vigilant in overseeing the details leading up to your event.
Good luck with your event, and please feel free to give your feedback in the comments.
The Third Annual Raspberry Pi Bake-Off will be held Saturday, March 14 from 9 a.m. until noon at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub.
The annual event (held each Pi Day, March 14th) is designed to showcase amazing projects created using the the affordable and versatile Raspberry Pi, a small $35 credit card-size teaching computer designed for students and hobbyists.
Students, makers, and creatives are invited to bring their Raspberry Pi creations to compete for prizes, prestige, and – most importantly – bragging rights! In addition to the project competition, workshops and labs will be held for people just getting started with the Raspberry Pi, and for those interested in learning how to get the most out of their Raspberry Pi creations.
The event is free and open to the public.
“When Sis or Junior trash the family computer, it’s a big deal”, said David J. Hinson, who along with Tony Bates of Arkansas Geek Central (http://arkansasgeekcentral.com/), has organized the first two Bake-Offs. “The designers of the Raspberry Pi wanted to create an inexpensive teaching computer, meant to be handled and tinkered with… if you break it, the consequences are minimal. They succeeded wildly – millions of Raspberry Pi units have been sold worldwide since their release three years ago. When Tony and I saw the impact of the Pi, we felt compelled to help spread the word about the potential for these $35 computers.” To learn more about the Raspberry Pi, please visit http://www.raspberrypi.org.
For questions and additional information regarding the Raspberry Pi Bake-Off, please contact David J. Hinson at davidjhinson@gmail.com, call the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub at 501-907-6570, or visit the website at http://pi.arkgeeks.com/bakeoff.
The Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub is located at 201 East Broadway, North Little Rock, AR 72114. Please visit http://www.arhub.org for information on the Hub, and its upcoming events and programs.
This was originally posted in 2008, therefore many personal references mentioned here are dated; however, this topic has been on my mind a great deal recently, and so I am reposting on a cold wintry Arkansas morning. I do hope that you’ll find at least a few good take-aways from my thoughts of seven years ago (!!!). – Ed.
Pigeonholing is, according to Wikipedia, a term used to describe processes that attempt to classify disparate entities into a small number of categories (usually, mutually exclusive ones).
It is almost always pejorative in the sense that the pigeonhole-ee – the person or object being pigeonholed – is relegated to a tightly restricted role or position. Most people would say that they hate being pigeonholed, because the act of pigeonholing by definition is to limit for ease of classification – at the expense of getting the entire picture.
The most recognizable form of pigeonholing is typecasting in the movies. Some actors have roles that are so tightly identified with them that they can never find acting work doing anything else; William Shatner as James T. Kirk, Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, and Bela Lugosi as Dracula (note to readers: this phenomena is definitely not limited to vampire roles – Ed).
But pigeonholing is a danger that “high performers” in business are prone to as well. Dan Bricklin will forever be known as the Visicalc Guy, Mitch Kapor will always be the Lotus 1-2-3 guy, Ed Esber will always be known as the Ashton-Tate guy who was at the helm during the Dbase IV tanking. Even though all of these guys have been successful afterwards, they are cast into a certain world view because of a need to simplify the world by putting people into neat little compartments.
Some business people have definitely broken the pigeonholing cycle.
Had Steve Jobs fallen off the map following the failure of the NeXT , he more or less would have been pegged as simply being lucky with his first stint at Apple Computer . Instead, he has gone on to be one of the most successful second acts in personal computing history.
I would suggest that Marc Andreesen is looking for his pigeonhole-escaping second act, though he has had quite a few successes following his days at Netscape. (2015 Ed – and has found it as a leading VC).
But even for the “little guy” pigeonholing is a constant danger to be guarded against.
For example, you do an outstanding job on a project, and all of a sudden you’re the SME (subject matter expert) on that particular project – forever. Unless it’s being project manager on a deep space probe or being Chairman of the Fed, or being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, this is probably not what you had in mind.
Stick around long enough, and one gathers quite a few skills and life experiences that don’t fit on a one page resume or condense down to a single 140 character tweet.
I would hate to think that my professional life can be condensed down to a five minute elevator pitch, or even shorter escalator pitch. Yet I recognize the need to help others get to know what I can do for them in as short a period of time as possible. The key question is – how to summarize the complexity and richness that you have to offer in the ADD business world that we exist in?
From my perspective, you have to have several answers at the ready, tailored to the audience at hand.
“I’m a developer.” “I’m a Marketer.” “I’m a Salesman.”
But beyond that, you have to figure out how to pull out those layers of complexity in your career that make up who you are today. It’s a tough nut to crack.
From my personal history, I have done the following:
Among all of these things, most people know me professionally for only a handful of these – usually, only one or two, tops. Yet they constitute the fabric of who I am as a professional.
My daily challenge developing business for my corporate brand, and increasingly my personal brand, is simplifying my pitch while losing as little detail as possible in the experiences that have made me what I am.
I’m still a work in progress.
Just realize that if you limit me to only five minutes to describe myself, the really good stuff is probably outside the time limit allowed.
Logorrhea 