Really challenging day, huge range of emotions but perhaps necessary. Mostly I am:
Glad my routine is settling down and more that I am really enjoying it.
Glad I got feedback from my friend and ServiceChat early adopter on my landing page. It was awesome feedback and the mods really enhanced it.
Sad that I had a deep disappointment with a relationship that I thought was stronger than it actually is.
Glad that I was like a ninja on some tech challenges I got stuck on. I gave the solutions time to find me
I’m grateful for the ability to be irreverent.
I’m very In.
Today
The main goal today is to get the chat working again since I broke something! The tests need to go green before I move on to the other big elephant in the room – my explainer video.
I also will put together a mind map of options for funding from October (or sooner!) that I can discuss with my advisers.
What an intense day – but pleasantly so. Mostly I am:
Glad I successfully executed my new routine. I had a 17 hour fast, did 1.5 hours of language study (and it was huge fun) and 8 hours of work on the startup and over an hour of wellness throughout the day – YAY!
Glad I realised that my beta is not my MVP before I spent even more time on it.
Mad at how much time I had already spent on the beta vs the MVP
Sad that I don’t have a co-founder who was immediately accessible so we could decide what to do – keep doing the beta (it’s close) or stop and release the MVP now!
Glad I got over that and decided.
I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to experiment to take risks, fail and learn. I realise that many in the world of work do not readily claim this fundamental right.
I’m In.
Today
The decision about the beta vs MVP is to get the MVP out today and then get back to get the beta ready for next week. This is options gaming really – buying myself the option of more time on the beta whilst still having something out that folk can be using. Of course this means that once my MVP is out, I can also resume the validation of my marketing strategy, so maybe I won’t have all the time I thought I would have on the beta.
I need to get out of the building.
I want to have the idea validated ASAP not the app and the MVP should get me on that route.
So the big push is around the explainer video of some description and getting feedback on what I have in place for the landing the page (the wording mostly).
In lieu of a retro for yesterday (May 6th), which I did not write because it was late, I was tired and intended to do it this morning but unexpectedly had to make an airport run. That is my story and I shall be sticking with it.
The app is not in production yet, as I was walking through the MVP flow, I realised I had missed an important piece! People can sign up, but they can’t sign in.
They need to sign in to manage the authorised chat hosts. That single piece suddenly became both urgent and important!
I’m glad I have ‘sign in’ now in place and I can get back to what I was supposed to be doing. I’m in, all the same.
Today
I awoke feeling rather depressed. Whilst I had my Startup and Wellness working well , the third element of my focus – Learning Spanish – was being neglected.
This called for a revision of the bigger, bigger picture. I thought long and hard about what my focus elements I have and what outcomes I want. Planning is fun, the plan less important.
Voila! I have a revised plan that leverages what has been working for me over the last weeks and helps me do all the things I want to focus on. Namely, building Spanish into my iterations (which previously only hard startup work and then a 10 minute HIIT workout).
So…my main goal is to start this new routine, follow the plan and adapt.
The tasks for the startup are still the same – get the app into production, explore an early draft of my explainer video and talk to early beta users.
The Trello board…
Trello board for 8th May 2013
Another Change
On reflection, two blogs on the same day is proving a little cumbersome and the result is neither is done well nor timely. I have thought about this and will experiment with a single post again, this time in the morning.
I seem to do my main retro in the morning anyway and this impacts my planning too. So it makes sense that I just do the morning post with a concise retrospective (complete with the benefits of a night’s rest) and my daily plan. Let see how consistently that will happen. I’m excited!
I went rogue on Friday(3rd) and Sunday (5th). There was a plan but it wasn’t visible, so I apologise to my #happytohelpers.
The codebase is looking sweet and I have gotten a huge amount done in such a short time. I think I have enough to show early customers and get feedback for the next corner.
The main goal today is get what I have in development out to my production server and in readiness for some early adopters using it by the middle of this week.
Once I get the app in place today, I will work on the explainer video (at least the first draft). I have thought long and hard about the explainer video and I could probably do away with it for the MVP, but there is a huge amount of learning it can give for the blog content ideas I have – which are ongoing important tasks anyway.
I will also continue my marketing exploration (in my in-between time) of paid advertising on Linked (I have a voucher that expires tomorrow, I don’t want that option to expire!).
I’m sad I didn’t write my plan on friday (May 3rd and a retro for that day). Slow progress meant not much had changed at the level I was tracking on my board.
I’m glad that on Sunday , May 5th I worked deeply and intelligently and achieved a huge amount.
Glad that I should be able to get early adopters using ServiceChat around the middle (Wednesday/Thursday) this week
Excited to be trying Intermittent Fasting as part of my wellness focus.
Glad to be have created my startup storymaps, felt I was losing sight of the big picture!
Glad that this last weekend was one of the best we have had as a family – sheer bliss.
I’m excited. I’m In.
Achievements Since Last Retro
Approved hosts working lovely
Autoresponder for non-signed up usage and non-active usage in place.
Email on signup complete – need to work on the text of emails – will test with early adopters
Updated my Startup Storymaps – this, with my marketing maps and business model canvas gives a great overview of what I intend to do, when and towards what outcomes. (might blog about it)
Yesterday was surgery, I took the codebase around the chat room requesting apart and cut out a lot of crappy code. In the last week I have replaced lots of old tech and upgraded many of the gems that are the foundation of ServiceChat (especially mongoid, Rails and Tweetstream) and refactored all the supporting apps (Tron and Blabby).
That is a lot to happen to a codebase and now it is time to heal and get some feedback. Healing for me is about taking out spurious code, some minor refactoring etc. With tests passing and all good functionally, I need to tidy up, remove debug comments and the like.
The main goal today is to get the end to end with pre-approved hosts being able to request chats. All the pieces are there and the tie up should not be too cumbersome.
Looking forward to releasing this beast into the wild.
I will also continue my marketing exploration (in my in-between time) of paid advertising on Linked (I have a voucher that expires tomorrow, I don’t want that option to expire!).
I’m sad I got mad with Katharine, it was a silly trivial thing that didn’t need to happen.
Glad that we talked about it and made good.
Glad that the surge of effort (I worked pretty late) to crack the twitter request functions of ServiceChat was successful
Glad I decided to use sferik’s twitter gem as readymade classes, saved me a whole lot of hair pulling!
I’m tired but content. I’m In.
Achievements Since Last Retro
Completed major refactor of chat provisioning from twitter
How The Trello Board Now Looks
I Learned…
My plan for was hugely over-ambitious.
Capistrano can be a muthafucka!
I Loved…
Riding the wave of options that emerged by using the Twitter gem, working with (rather than against) the design that emerged was a total delight.
I’m Grateful For…
The open source community – I’m hugely proud of this community that I am a small part of, the sharing of ideas and the acceptance of each other’s abilities (or lack thereof).
The main push today is to get ServiceChat hosts being able to request from Twitter. This is currently the biggest differentiator from other products out there. It is the simplest, fastest and most unobtrusive mechanism I have seen. it just works (well at least it did in ChittyChat!).
I’m going to start by running all the tests and making them pass, then comes the tricky bit.
ServiceChat has a modified model (based on billable customers and approved hosts) and this needs to be injected into the design. So I’ll have to write tests for them too.
But!! Today is the first day in a 3-day fiesta in Pinos del Valle and I’m taking an extended lunch to participate in the diversiónes!
I’m glad that my cold and fatigue are conquered for now.
Glad that I stuck to my schedule and worked sustainably
Glad I did 80 pushups across all 4 of my ten-minute breaks!
I’m mad that I am still discovering more things to be done.
Glad that there are more things to be done
Afraid/Excited to learn new things
I’m in.
Achievements Since Last Retro
Closed ChittyChat for revamp. This was non-trivial – had to write some new tech to do it graceful (and another product idea emerged!)
Sent off invitations to prospective ServiceChat customers to a chat to validate my pricing (what would they pay for a service that delivered the outcomes that ServiceChat tries to deliver?)
Drafted my network outreach email.
How The Trello Board Now Looks
Trello at close of 30/April/2013
I Learned…
I can’t do it all, but I should at least be able, and prepared, to do anything required in my business.
Help can come from the unlikeliest of sources.
I may not be the best coder, but I ain’t so bad at finding solutions to stuff.
I Loved…
Chatting with my friend Amit (who is doing some awesome writing for ServiceChat) and is also an amazing SEO , internet marketing guy. We came up with some interesting experiments to amplify the value of any content we produce. Very excited.
I’m Grateful For…
My first daughter, Brianna , celebrating her 16th birthday. She is such a beautiful person who is overcoming so much. I feel deeply inspired by her.
