The Transition Area

I Learned About Markets By Playing Drugwars on My TI-84 in Economics Class - How Virtual Goods Will Change the World

A Farmville-like game could do a lot to alleviate ignorance regarding the food system. But this is not a new idea. Do you know how I learned about profit, loss, and cost of goods?  I used to play Drugwars on my TI-84 in my economics class.  :)

I was thinking about that this afternoon while I was out walking my dog around the Denver Country Club.  Then I had an epiphany about virtual goods.

From the time I received my first VG a few years ago (a roll of toilet paper from a friend on Facebook) until just a few short hours ago, I thought virtual goods were idiotic.  I have never played Farmville or Mafia Wars.  Even at the Girls in Tech Catalyst conference, I ducked out of the Social Gaming / Virtual Goods panel to take a restroom break and then tweet on my phone the lobby until the panel concluded.

Now I see that the real idiot is me, not the millions of people around the world forking over a few bucks each a month to Zynga.  

First off - here is a little background to frame the story: 

My two biggest passions in life are 1) Figuring out how to bridge the gap between meaningful online and offline experiences both in my personal and professional life and 2) cultivating a healthy and happy life for myself and teaching others how to do the same.

So I'm walking the dog and thinking about how kids don't know what vegetables are or how they grow and how sad that is.  I start to think - "what can I do about that?" - I'm no farmer.

But millions of people are farmers - facebook farmers that is.  According to Mashable, 11 millions users a day log on to tend their Farmville farms.  So I wondered - what would happen if all of these virtual farmers started to care about farms in real life?

My epiphany rests on two basic assumptions: 

1) Social games and virtual goods aren't going away.  These new commodities of the global web economy have a potential marketshare of billions of dollars.  Check out this Charlie Rose interview with guest Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga:

2) Learning about social issues is boring for most average adults and the issues are too complex for most average children.  

Epiphany: Fuck Farmville. Let's create a social game where kids and adults can learn about the food system and food related issues for real.  Let's have them sell their produce through virtual farmers markets and be rewarded for their hard work.  I know that Farmville already lets users harvest and sell with the click of the button, but what would happen if farmers had to mix the soil with the correct nitrogen content? Or what if they could earn bonus points for preparing a virtual farm to table meal during harvest season - users would learn how to cook the vegetables that they harvest.  There seems to be an enlightened class of people in the US who realize that paying more for organic is just something that we should do to support local farmers, while everyone else is chowing down on Whoppers and thinking that "organic" is a sham created by evil tax-happy elitists (I'm looking at you, Tea Party fanatics!).

The winners of the new web economy are going to be the companies who can leverage the financial power of virtual goods by giving them meaning and value.  Some companies are going to try to make money from VGs, period.  Some companies are going to try to raise awareness about social issues.  I want to see a social entrepreneur jump all over this shit and make a difference in a space that is clearly gonna be huge. I want to see non-profit fundraising with VGs! Zynga is already doing it. OMG, the sky is the limit!  Virtual goods have the power to change the world if social entrepreneurs would just step up and create something meaningful - don't let Zynga control the market. Quick, someone do this!

The Best "About Me" Ever Written

I just wrote this for the "About Me" section on my DailyBurn profile.  I think that most people would hesitate to put such a long-winded, non-SEO friendly post on their profile - especially people involved in curating a community of hundreds of thousands of users.  I mean, I talk about my mom for most of this post.  But I know I am not crazy for doing this.  I am real.  The users are real.  I even hate using the word "users" to describe people that I interact with on the web.  "Real-ness" wins out everytime.  The web is changing.  People don't respond to "bots" who pump out seo linkbait shit.  They want real.  So here you go:

"About Me"

Long Version: I'm a techie triathlete living the dream in Colorado. I split my time between Denver and Boulder. I was born and raised in Maine and grew up fishing, gardening, and riding my bike everyday to elementary school.

I love my mom because she never let me quit any after school sport - even when I was last in the 1600m race (every time), only scored 2 points in my 2 year basketball career, and stared up at the clouds in the outfield during softball games while the ball rolled right past me. I am not a natural athlete, I'm a nerd. But my mom taught me to appreciate an active lifestyle by making food and fitness fun. For example, she would have my sister and I picking rhubarb in our grandmother's yard and a few short hours later, we would be eating delicious strawberry rhubarb pie. Manual labor is fun when you know that pie is on the way. She also instilled in me my "never say die" attitude (although I really really really wanted to quit softball). Now my mom comes to most of my races.

I spent a few years after high school living in the East Village of Manhattan. I started smoking because I was going to school to be a journalist and I thought all hardcore journalists smoked. Although the farmers market in Union Square was top notch, I missed the quit times and hiking trails of New England. I quit smoking. I moved home.

In Portland, ME I began working in the specialty food and beverage industry - first at a specialty coffee roaster/retailer and then in the wine industry. I got to meet some of the best chefs/brewers/bakers/organic farmers in the US. I would spend my entire paycheck on vintage cookbooks, local produce, imported specialty ingredients, prime cuts of meat and lobster fresh off the boat at the Portland docks. I taught myself to cook and I went out to the best restaurants in the city regularly just to taste the work of the chefs that I admired so greatly. I spent my days off reading Michael Pollan's work and Alice Waters' cookbooks. I obsessively did that for an entire year, and it was an investment in time/$ that I will never regret. That year informed my personal stance on food public policy and sustainable food systems.

In the middle of all that, I met a crazy guy from Wisconsin with the nickname "Waz" who was training for a triathlon called Ironman Wisconsin while his wife was an intern at Maine Medical Center. She was never at home, so he figured, as he told me, "Why not, I need something to do to pass the time". So I got a bike and started riding with him. I signed up for a sprint triathlon just to see if I could do it before I could even swim a full lap in a pool. I trained for 8 months while working 70 hr weeks and then I raced in my first triathlon. I was hooked and I haven't looked back. I will be completing my first half-Ironman this summer, and I hope to get my Level 1 USA Triathlon Coach Cert. next year. My current training interests include core workouts, weight training for endurance athletes, and low impact / recovery training.

I'm telling you all of this because I am a real person who believes that anyone can get in shape, get healthy, be happy, and have fun while doing it. Big, little, short, young, big, old, it doesn't matter. We all need to take care of both ourselves and each other. I would love to be your motivator while you are on this site.

My biggest motivator remains my mom - the person in my life who wouldn't let me quit.

Short Version: Tech, triathlon, gardening, don't quit, NYC is stupid, It's Waz's World, lobster = yum, mom is awesome.

What do you think - should a Community Manager be completely real and open, or just zip it and make people happy?

I'm Gonna Out-care Gary-Vee

Nice Girls Don't Want the Damn Corner Office

Women in business face unique challenges - one of the most discussed is the idea that femininity is a hindrance in the business world.  I think it's actually a secret weapon, and I'm going to tell you a story to illustrate why:

As a young woman with a soft voice and an easy laugh, I've always found it quite funny to merge my both my business and personal lives. In my professional life, I'm startup junkie, online community manager, managing director of Girls in Tech 303, and a fitness consultant. In my personal life, I am training for a half-ironman triathon, and I recently packed up my entire life on the other side of the US and landed in the lap of the wild west.  I'm generally excited and usually smiling. The package on the outside does not match the tenacity on the inside.

But let's be honest, Cat Stevens sang it best - "Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild world / It's hard to get by just upon a smile . . ."

I've had middle-aged salesmen drop their jaws in front of me when they learned that I was in charge of purchasing for the retail stores that I managed out of college.  It was quite funny to see them look over my shoulder, hoping to get a glance of "the person in charge" only to realize that it was me.  It happened so often that I made a rule about setting up accounts with potential vendors: if the sales guy can't wrap it around his head that he's going to be negotiating prices and terms with a 22 year old freckled chick - we're not buying from them, period.  It was a good rule. 

The guys that I ended up doing business with were good guys, and they taught me a lot about the specialty food and wine industry (the industry I was in at the time). Some of them even became good friends and mentors.

In 2007, a peer manager at one of my companies was promoted above me. I remember having a fight with that guy just after his promotion.  It was about marketing - he wanted to dump a bunch of cash into radio spots and I wanted to get Facebook fans.  

RADIO SPOTS!!!!!! In 2007!!!!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!!!

Facebook = Free, Radio = $$$$ 

Facebook = Millions of users, Radio = your grandma, sometimes, if she feels like turning on the dial. 

I was jaded from this experience, for sure.  I had better business ideas and report with customers and vendors, and yet jack-ass radio marketing guy got promoted above me.

For the next few years, I thought that being the bitchy boss was the way to go.  I managed a team that ended up hating me for a year because I tried to "manage like a man"  - I didn't get involved in the personal lives of my staff, I only cared about the bottom line, I was direct, and I tried hard to stop smiling.  Seriously.  How dumb.  But I was reading books like "Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office" - books that advise women in business to check their femininity at the office building door.  

As I look back on these two failures in my career, it is easy for me to see how I have become so successful so fast in the last few months.

Here's my secret: I decided that I don't want the fucking corner office. 

I decided to do business as Kate Brown, on my own terms.  Turns out, there are a lot of women out there just like me who are kicking ass and smiling all the way to the bank.

Here I am in SF with Adriana Gascoigne, founder of Girls in Tech, Ivo Lucas, CEO and founder of 24 Notion and Managing Director of Girls in Tech Portland, and Laurel Kaufman, Co-founder of AK Consulting Group (specializing in startup law), and Managing Director of Girls in Tech LA.

Look at how lovely and smiley we all are.  These women aren't striving to get the corner office - they metaphorically own the whole fucking office building AND the company inside. 

This January when I flew out to the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to meet up with these wonderful ladies, I got to meet the top players in the tech industry, including the following kick-ass folks:

   Leah Culver; Product Manager, Six Apart

   Eileen Gittins; Founder & CEO, Blurb, Inc.

   Sandy Jen; Co-Founder and CTO, Meebo

   Lynn Langit; Developer Evangelist, Microsoft

   Aaron Lee; Co-Founder, RedBeacon

   Dave McClure; Partner, Founders Fund 

I think that's why I like startups so much.  Startup folks are too busy raising money, growing a company, and  building something amazing. No one in the startup community wants the corner office - there are no corner offices to be had.*

*Unless you count the corner seat at a coffeeshop, the bar, or a flight to SF to meet with a VC. All of these count as offices in the startup world, but that's a different post, lol!

What I Learned From Kelly Cutrone, Founder of People's Revolution PR

Kelly Cutrone, founder of People's Revolution PR and star of the reality show "Kell on Earth",is my business hero.  She's a single mom (the father of her daughter is a drop-dead gorgeous european, btw), a savvy business woman with a no-nonsense policy, and she hired a helicopter to whisk her away to a client event. Oh yeah, and her ghostwriter sat next to her on the heli as she dictated her first book. Insane?  No, not really. Feminist icon? For sure.  Here are the things I have learned from Kelly Cutrone:

1) Get things done.Kelly takes on a lot, and she knows that it comes with sacrifice.  In her case, I'm assuming she sacrifices sleep. "Not a minute goes by in my life without something major happening that related to my work", said Kelly on her show "Kell on Earth".  Too many people dream big, but they don't have what it takes to get things done.

2) Get what you deserve. Kelly has a daughter with Ilario Calvo - google this man, please.  He is super sexy. I'm so sick of women thinking that they have to give up pieces of themselves (look a certain way or act a certain way) to be with an amzing man.  Be yourself, skip the makeup,  (or not), pull your hair back, and do your thing. Never settle.  Get married a few times if you have to.  Get what you deserve.

3) Surround yourself with successful people. Carry no dead weight.  Make the people around you perform to your standards.  Fire people if you have to.  Keep your inner circle tight. Basically, when in doubt, this is the rule of thumb: Go where successful people go.  Do what successful people do.  People do business with companies and people that they view as already successful, even with a thin track record - this is especially important when inserting yourself into a new industry, city, or social circle. NO HANGING OUT AT THE 7-11!

4) Work hard / play hard.Take the amount of work that you put into your last successful project, and upon completion, put exactly that amount of work into doing something super-fun. Buy a home in the country and go ride horses or something.  Not my thing, but hey, do what makes you feel good. I'd rather go for a long hike and then grab mexican food and microbrews with a bunch of rowdy startup fankids in Boulder, CO. 

In short: Live fast, always carry a designer wrap (preferably in black) and wear your shades indoors - because your eyes are puffy from working too hard. 

Kelly Cutrone. She's got it going on. She's my hero.

Hiring 2.0 - How a Youtube Video Scored One of My Star Employees a Job (and a Second Chance)

When I was managing a team, I obviously did a lot of hiring. Because I worked in the specialty food industry, I dreaded both May and September.  Those were the months that the college kids either moved to town in droves (all coveting the same 3 available coffeeshop jobs), or cut down from full-time to part-time (and occasionally I had one that would realize, as if it were a surprise to themselves as well, that "oh yeah, my classes actually start tomorrow). 

I hate interviewing people.  I'm not good at reading body language.  I just want to know a) will you work hard? and b) do I like you enough to see you at least 40 hours a week and maybe get an occasionally phone call from you? 

I don't like bullshit.  I don't have time to talk about your high school lacrosse coach and why he made you respect authority figures.  You clearly do not, because you are texting under the table as you talk to me, your potential boss. 

That's why I love the role of social media in the hiring process.  One of my favorite Seth Godin lines is this: "I think if you're remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn't have a resume at all."

There was a guy that I interviewed for a position last summer.  After the interview, I just wasn't sure if I was feeling him or not.  Was he being sarcastic when he was laughing about the potential of estrogen in soy products to cause "health issues" in men, or did he really believe it, and what did it matter anyway?  If I went with my gut feeling after the interview, I probably would not have hired him.  But on his way out the door, he said, "Hey, did ya look at my youtube video?" 

"No," I said.

"I put it at the bottom of my resume, maybe you missed it."

"Oh, yeah, here it is.  Thanks, I'll check it out, see ya later."   And I thought that would be the last time I saw him.  But it wasn't.

I went to my desk and sat down with a latte and watched his youtube video.  Halfway through, I shut it off, and gave him a call.  He was hired.

I was managing a coffeeshop.  His video is right here: The Perfect Latte. (It was made as a school project - remember that.)

Would you hire someone with that much enthusiasm and understanding of the culture that they are striving to become a part of?  Yes, you'de be an idiot not to.  I hate all of these "career gurus" who tell young people to scrub their social media profiles clean of anything semi-offensive (like - gosh - drinking beer).  The jobs that are being created right now demand to be filled by people who have original ideas. So stop erasing your controversial blog posts and youtube shenanigans when you are going after your dream job - that youtube video or blog post might just get you the job.  And for fucks sake, who cares if you swear on your blog - not me!

Exactly a week after his interview, I put the guy that I almost didn't hire behind the coffeebar.  He had never made a real latte before in his life. And he became my best employee.

Model vs. Photographer - Why I Walked Away From Agency Life

Two types of businesses dominate the tech scene right now - agencies and startups.  Agencies are pretty, polished, and beguiling.  Agencies sell a lifestyle.  Startups on the other hand are gritty.  Unlike agencies though, startups solve problems.  (And if they don't solve problems, they try to solve the wrong problems, and they fail).

A good way to imagine the differences between agencies and startups is to imagine the difference between a model and a photographer.  One sells an intangible image (the model), and one creates a product (the photographer).  But they both need each other to make the business of fashion work.  Very few models take interesting photographs, and I've heard of even less photographers that look good in front of the camera.  It's the same deal in tech.  If you rock out at a startup, chances are you'll feel like a zombie at an agency.

When I first moved to Colorado from New England this past October, I started working at an interactive marketing agency.  I thought that the stability would be good for me, and for a few months it was.  But as Crush It author Gary Vaynerchuk said in almost every interview and keynote he has given over the past 2 years - "You can't ignore your DNA".  I'm a renegade.  I don't like rules.  I have to make customers happy and I have to make real things.  I am also not very polished.  I'm awkward.  But I have a lot of heart and I get people excited about things.  I don't belong out on a client date and I don't care about status.  I'm not the model.  I'm the photographer.

This blog is going to be all about transitions, both personal and professional.  I've learned the importance of transitioning gracefully from one project to the next from my experience in triathlon.  It's a sport where precious minutes are lost if you stop to think too much about your next move.  You just have to change clothes and go with it. 

The transition from New England the West was easy for me.  I'm not comfortable being, well, comfortable.  I'm the girl that skipped school to hang out with the gutter punks when my classes got too easy.  Boredom kills. But that's just my DNA.  And yours is different than mine.  Diversity is important.  We need it to be like that. 

Agencies need startups and startups need agencies.  Models need someone to take their picture, and photographers must have on object upon which to focus the gaze of their lens. 

Goodbye agency, goodbye to all that.  This pioneer must go out to stake her claim in more wild and uncharted pastures.