I’m sitting at Zoka early on a Saturday morning, doing some coding, drinking some coffee, and enjoying the moment.  It’s been a very odd week, lots of disruptions to my usual rhythms, and it’s nice to get back to a treasured marker, this early morning Zoka time, and reflect.

This week Winnie, my 8-year-old Bouvier, went in for an emergency splenectomy.  The veterinarian removed an 8.8-pound tumor.  Amazing.  She has a long, ugly, 40cm scar on her stomach.  She also has to wear a cone (the “cone of shame”) so she won’t pull out her stitches.  I won’t find out until early next week when the lab results get back whether or not the tumor was malignant or benign, and thus, whether or not my time left with her is measured in weeks or years.  I won’t tell you what the surgery cost to save you from choking.  It was a lot, however.

I’ve been super busy in other areas.  I’ve got a couple projects I’m working on, and truthfully, right now, it helps to be busy.  A new project involving Twilio’s state-of-the-art telephony API may be right around the corner.  And of course I’m always trying to figure out how to find time to push Crowdify forward.  I’ve had a lot of interest recently in Crowdify – a little odd, to maintain the theme of the post – but it’s nice.  My goals is to find and keep a little momentum going.

Terrible news from the Olympics, where the death of the Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili saddened the world even before the games begin.  At least he probably didn’t feel a thing.  The big news from last night’s opening ceremony was probably the pants worn by the small Azerbaijani contingent – spectacular and colorful.  Oh, and there was some sort of snafu with the cauldron.  No big deal IMHO.

This week I attended some of the 2010 Agile Open Northwest conference and forgot to mention one thing: Alan Shalloway, the CEO of Net Objectives, was super helpful and knowledgeable.  In a couple sessions, particularly one on Kanban, he chimed in and really helped me and the rest of the group understand some of the thorny, subtle details.  Thank you Alan.

Also odd is that I haven’t exercised since Monday.  Ye gods!  I’ve been feeling a lot more stressed than usual and, well, that negative streak ends today.  I’m going to the gym come hell or high water or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Hope you’re having a good day and hope you have a great weekend!

The deadline is approaching for NWEN’s upcoming First Look Forum, to be held on Tuesday, April 13th at the Arctic Club in Seattle.  I’m seriously wondering if now is the time to submit a plan for Crowdify and put myself in consideration to pitch.

First prize is not a new Cadillac Eldorado, but rather free office space for a year in Axios’ space downtown (thanks for sponsoring, Adam!).  But from everyone I’ve talked to, the real value is in the coaching and feedback you get as you progress through the stages of the forum competition process.

I’m looking at the list of screeners and have met only a handful of them, and had meaningful conversations with only a couple of them, but it’s a high-profile list of local entrepreneurs, execs, and VCs.

Thinking…thinking…are you planning on submitting a business plan?  Tell me why in the comments!

Today after work I ran around Discovery Park – just about 3 miles door-to-door, but the magic is all within a quarter-mile stretch along the bluff, where you can look out 180 degrees, from West Seattle to Indianola.  There must have been about a dozen people just standing and staring out to Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, watching the sun about to set and letting the beauty soak in.

A metaphor for my day?  I had a good Monday by any reckoning.  I guess I’m getting much better at compartmentalizing and/or taking conscious control over my perspective and thoughts, because I felt good today.  The great weekend was part of it – I had a really good weekend – but the day just seemed to slip in, all stealthy, and infect me with feel-good vibes.

This is even though I didn’t win the Super Bowl pool at work.  I ended up getting crappy numbers in the draw – twos and sixes and such.  Who can win with numbers like that???

For the second time in the last week, I’ve been approached out of the blue to have a meeting re: Crowdify.  Strange, but very welcome.  If I can find some time I’m going to release version 2 of the website any day now.  Then – sales.  Sell, sell, sell.   Position the service as something that will solve tangible problems that brand managers and marketers have.  Emphasize the uniqueness of the data, and back it up with case studies from representative brands.  I think 2010 is going to be a big year.

What else?  Looking forward to a couple meetups and tech/networking events.  Tomorrow and Wednesday is the Agile Open Northwest conference, this time held at the Seattle Center, and I’ll be able to attend about half the sessions.  I’m going to present – on what, I’m not sure, but I have until tomorrow morning to text one of my team with the topic so they can put it up on the board tomorrow.  Tomorrow night is Founder Dating, but I’m definitely sure I won’t be able to attend.  I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get away for soccer tomorrow night.

Had a nice lunch today with an old friend and savored some delicious sushi.  I tried some fatty amberjack that was OMG-melt-in-your-mouth wonderful.  Catching up is always nice, and I always come away from a good lunch like that thinking I need to do a better job of keeping up with people.

Not sure if I’ll be able to attend this weeks’ Seattle Tech Startups meeting.  The topic – TechStars – is one that is probably going to draw a big crowd, and I’m sure the conversations at the Big Time after the meeting will continue late.  I’m meeting a friend in Bellevue earlier that evening and am not sure if I’ll be back in time.

Here’s to good friends; old, new, and yet-to-be.

Hope you’re having a good evening.

I had a good weekend on the fitness front – I ran 6 miles Friday night and followed that up with an intense weight workout today – and am hoping to get a couple more runs in before next weekend’s Jingle Bell Run.  Since I stopped working out every day, my weight has hit a plateau, but I continue to lose a little fat and gain a little muscle mass.  People continue to comment occasionally on how fit I’m getting, which keeps the virtuous cycle going.  I’m thinking seriously about doing another 100-day challenge, but with this frosty weather my determination quails a little.  It’s COLD out there.  Can I exercise every day when some days I’ll be forced to be indoors?  I don’t know.  I’ll continue to think about it.

Spent some time on Craigslist today, randomly, which I haven’t done in a while.  It continues to surprise me how popular Craigslist is despite (or because of?) their funky interface.  Posting is dead-simple.  Searching?  Eh, not so great.  It’s still a great service.

Went with the kids to church this morning, where we lit a candle on the Advent wreath in front of a few hundred parishioners.  St. Nicholas made an appearance at the end, giving away cookies and simple Christmas ornaments to the kids.  I’m really looking forward to Will’s baptism in January.  He’s jealous that Audrey gets the bread during communion, as she was baptized last month while Will was home with the flu.

Did a bit of work this weekend, but not too much – I’m still sleeping a TON and getting sort of frustrated at my inability to get out of bed in the mornings.  Have to wait it out, as I’m fighting off something or just need extra sleep for whatever reason.

Looking ahead to 2010 and unsure what the future holds.  Need to do some planning for Crowdify, as I really want to get some momentum behind that service, but I also have some other projects that may pan out as well.  It’s a Black Angus buffet of opportunity, but which ring(s) will I be able to grab as they swing by?  Preparation, plus opportunity, plus luck, makes the circumstance.

“All I want for Christmas is….” Fill in the blank.  What would you write there?

Downloading and installing the Java SE Development Kit Update 17, which is quite a mouthful.  It turns out that one of the projects I’m working on – a .NET project, nominally – requires Java for some of the deployment tasks.  Yes, that sound you hear is me scratching my head.  But it’s all good.  About to wrap up a phase and feel a bit like Julie Moss in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman – crawling to the finish line.

The good news is I’ve learned a ton about the environment, the configuration, the setup, etc. etc.  So I’m on much better ground to recommend and implement future fixes, should they be necessary.

What else?  Had (or rather was presented with) the opportunity to go back and read a bunch of old blog posts last night.  It’s strange to read myself after the fact – it’s something I rarely do – and it reinforced for me the temporal nature of my posting.  I’m not consistent, thematically or in tone.  I suppose the voice is authentic – it’s actually ME writing, and not some third-party “author” whose guise I adopt while blogging.  But boy, do I wear my heart on my sleeve some days.

Went to the dentist yesterday, for the first time in a while – new X-rays, cleaning, polishing – and my teeth still are a little sore today.  They recommend a salt-water rinse and ibuprofen, neither of which I’ve done.  Oh well.  Spent most of the remainder of the day working, and capped it off with a meeting re: Crowdify with an interested party, so my motivation to continue moving ahead with that project is doubled.  I have a two- to three-month plan in my head, which I *really* need to lay out on (digital) paper, then start knocking off deliverables.

Yesterday morning was my son Will’s first-ever parent-teacher conference, and his teacher Mrs. Anderson is very happy with his progress.  He’s doing well in all the academic subjects; he’s polite and gets along well with the other kids in class.  Seeing examples of his work was both fun and sad – fun to see what’s he’s doing, and how far he’s come – but sad in that he’s growing up so quickly.

Trying hard to fight off the glums today.  Going to focus on work all day and see if I can type my way out of it.  Tap, tap, tap goes the keyboard: tick, tick, tick goes the clock; beat, beat, beat goes the heart.

I went home early from work today; my stomach started acting up again, unsurprisingly.  Some people take on stress in their head (migraines); some get jittery and anxious; some get lethargic; I feel like spewing.  It’s been a familiar pattern for me at a few points this year.  If the pattern holds, I’ll have nausea for a few more days, maybe a week; then – what? I’m not quite sure.  Part of me feels like the walking dead – which has a specific meaning.  These are the people that have been hit by land mines, and the shrapnel sits in their body, slowly working its way closer and closer to key heart valves, waiting, biding its time to deliver the final blow when one least expects it.

Impending doom.

It’s not a great way to spend one’s day.  But again, I come back to the knowledge that I bear full responsibility.  I created the land mine out of thin air, an ephemeral, intangible, impossible hope, and so should I be surprised when it explodes in my face?  No.  I feel the shrapnel moving, slowly and painfully, and it feels like – truth.  Yes, truth can hurt.

I’ve gotten advice to “keep busy”, as if distraction alone were enough to bring me happiness, to turn the river back upstream, to cause apples to jump from the ground back up to the branch.  So I’ve been trying to keep busy.  It’s only partially working, but then again, had I not been keeping busy I may have been even worse off.

I had an excellent meetup about Crowdify with a friend and mentor tonight.  I have some plans in mind for taking some new steps down that path – keeping myself busy.  In the meantime, before that happens, I have some other project work to finish, and so we’ll have to see about timing.  But I’ve seen a glimpse of where I can go in the medium term with that project that makes sense.

Then I spent a couple hours with a public relations group here in town and talked marketing and PR and branding with some people I knew, and some new acquaintances as well.  Keeping busy.  (Note to self: the veggie burgers at Cyclops are top-notch).  However, I seem to have lost most of my appetite.  Maybe I’ll go on a hunger strike.  Both Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela went on hunger strikes to protest their life circumstances, so I would be in good company.  I kid, I kid.  I’d probably lose weight, however.

Up early tomorrow – unless my stomach won’t cooperate – to do a little project work wrap-up and then a full day of training.  We’ll see.

Well, I made my goal of launching Crowdify by the end of May. At 11:57 PM last night, I threw open the doors to http://crowdify.com and sent a tweet to my close friends and acquaintances.

I feel pretty good. The release is obviously an alpha, but the whole point was to get SOMETHING launched. I’ve been talking a good game recently about releasing early and often, about failing fast and iterating quickly, but the little doubt-gnome that lives deep inside each of us always wants to do “just that one more thing” before sending something out for critique. When I was writing fiction, it was the same deal – you always felt like you could do more revision before you let someone else read your work.

Let me pull up a favorite quote, from Scottish mountaineer W. H. Murray:

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plan: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would have come his way, I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it..

Well, I’ve committed myself. Let the magic begin!

Venture Hacks has a post up right now about so-called “High-Concept Pitches”, a device apparently originated and perfected in the movie business.  Think “Jaws in Space” = “Alien” and you’ve got the idea.

The author implies that it’s a good idea to develop a pitch you can write on the back of a business card (hopefully legibly).

So, let’s see: my startup is Crowdify, a tool for brand and reputation managers to discover new insights into consumers’ attitudes about their subjects and make better decisions about marketing and public relations strategy.  We do this through semantic analysis applied to consumer-generated correlations among and between brands and reference data.  Further, we utilize social-networking metaphors to keep interesting information flowing back and forth between branding people and the consuming public.

That’s a little wordy, especially for a business card, so let’s try a little high-concept pitch development.  Hmm…relations that people will understand.  “A for B”, where A is a known brand in my space, and B is the target audience…how about:

• Facebook for Brands

I think I like it!  Not least of which is the rumor floating around today that Facebook is about to be acquired by Microsoft for something like 15 to 20 billion dollars.