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I was familiar with this simple truth when I worked as a data analyst a few years ago. I would go into the far reaches of Excel creating spreadsheets with thousands of lines of data. Maybe I would even create auto-refresh reports that pulled data from Access databases into Excel to suit my needs. It was awesome.
Though a data analyst no-longer, I still use Excel and data compilation for both of my jobs. As someone who appreciates the urgency of an impending deadline (a delicate way of saying a procrastinator by choice), I often find myself staring at an Excel database for hours on end. This causes what I like to think of as the “Excel Effect.” A little known medical phenomena where the cells of an Excel document have been burned onto the retina causing you to see the cells in the world around you. *Note: This is similar to the medical condition that occurs when playing too much WoW. Sitting in a meeting, frustrated with the outcome, and reaching for the hot-key to blast your colleague with your moonfire/wrath/firebolts/etc.
Anyway, I usually get to keep to my Excel-ness for work these days as no one really needs to see printed out reports. I mind a database. I don’t have to run queries off of it or furnish the higher-ups with reports, I am in charge of the data. That’s it. Last week, however, I needed to give some of the raw data I was compiling to a professor for whom I am working. I had a great idea (I thought): I’ll send him my database. Everything he could possibly want to know is in there. Each row contains all of the data to every question for each institution. I thought it was fabulous. He did not. The next day I got an email that he could not “print out the information I sent.” And, that is a very true statement.
I didn’t think he would want to print it. In fact, I think I mentioned in the email that it was best to use the spreadsheet as a quick reference. But, that was not what he wanted. He did not appreciate the simple beauty that was my master database. So, I spent 3 1/2 hours that evening printing out all of the individual responses for our data set. It was time consuming and boring, but it was what he needed.
At our meeting the next day, he flipped through all of the printed responses and was able to pull out all kinds of interesting things. He liked to see the data in front of him. To hold it. We had a very productive meeting when he was able to have the data in a form he understood. The Excel spreadsheet was not what he needed to be productive and make decisions. It might be all pretty and together to me, but to some folks it is just a bunch of lines and squares.
I had forgotten that.
This month’s Wired Magazine (yes, I read and subscribe) had this great article on a fella and a site I knew nothing about. As usual, thanks to the great writing, I closed my magazine learning something new, useful, and interesting.
The story details the mastermind behind TheFunded.com, a guy who, until the publishing of this months article, was anonymous. An entrepreneur for many years, this man, unveiled as NYC resident Adeo Ressi (see photo below), faced many difficulties with the Venture Capitalists (henceforth VC’s) who funded his businesses. Taking his frustration, the Christmas holiday last year, and probably some egg-nog Ressi created the website/forum/blog TheFunded.com.
Initially to provide a way for himself and his close entrepreneurial friends to vent their frustrations with VC’s, TheFunded soon began booming into the 4,000+ member strong internet force it is today. Note that those 4000 members are the ones who passed the application process whereby only seasoned, serious, and legitimate entrepreneurs are accepted.
I think Ressi’s site is a great idea. It provides an anonymous platform for entrepreneurs, who work with VC’s all of the time, to voice their frustrations or extol the virtues of various VC’s groups.
“TheFunded is (not) exactly beloved by the venture capital community, which is more accustomed to CEOs kissing its butt than kicking its ass. …It may seem odd that venture capitalists should care what a gaggle of lowly entrepreneurs have to say about them. After all, for the past couple of decades VCs have been the kingmakers of Silicon Valley, rendering judgment on an endless stream of CEOs who beg and scrape for their approval. But in recent years, that dynamic has begun to shift.”
Apparently, but not surprisingly, the VC community is very angry at this website and its creator, because, in my opinion, it keeps them honest. Some VC’s were angry because the contributors to TheFunded said they were conceited or hard to work with and that it was a way for the peasants to revolt because they had ax’s to grind. It’s actually these inane responses that inspired me to write this post.
The VC community seems to be upset that there is finally a checks and balances system in the entrepreneurial world. CEO’s of emerging companies used to beg at the feet of their investors, grappling for whatever they were given. TheFunded has allowed a place for these CEO’s to go and share their experiences working with various VC’s. I’m sure some of them are conceited and hard to work with, but I’m equally sure that some are great as well. TheFunded is not limited to negative criticism, in fact, many folks go there to give positive reviews. Often times CEO’s shop for investors. It is important that they find and work with groups that they know are honest. TheFunded provides a lens from which VC firms can be evaluated by those who have worked with them before. It’s like an online list of references and reviews.
As far as ax’s to grind, which is what many VC firms feel the members of TheFunded are doing, I have to respectfully disagree. If someone does indeed have an “ax to grind” perhaps there is a very good reason for it. Rather than chocking off their issues as the unimportant rantings of an angry co-worker, why not listen to their words, find truth where it exists, and make any according changes.
I think that every industry would benefit from a resource like TheFunded. We all should be held accountable for our actions. If we want people to work with us then we need to have honest intentions and follow through on our word. Reviews by those who worked with us would provide an excellent tool for examining how others perceive our work and the experiences they had. Like a good film, one bad review is not going to kill it in the box office if that lone reviewer was wrong. So to here. Plus, how are we ever going to improve ourselves and our work unless we get honest feedback?
On my drive downtown to school this morning I happened upon a car with a bumper sticker that contained so much awesomeness I had to snap a photo.
*This photo was taken with my new Palm One Treo. 
The less important sticker on the left made some grand statement about how we should not give up on New Orleans and build more levees. Sure, will do. It is the black one on the right that is superb.
MY GAMER JUST FRAGGED YOUR HONOR STUDENT.
Now that’s a proud mom! Not only does she accept and embrace the fact that her child is a gamer, she even took the time to learn some l33t speak to proclaim it to the world! For those of you who don’t know…
Frag – 1. Kill. E.g. “I fragged his face,” “I had like 30 frags.” 2. Fragmentation, as in “frag grenade.”
If I were her child I might have to say, “thx mom. it rawks that u let ppl no i pwn n00bs on mp pvp servers. rofl! ftw, mom, ftw.”
After a weekend of Greek Festival fun, a wedding in southe
rn Indiana, and coding until the end of time yesterday I am finally blessed with a smidge of what some call “free time.” It’s not exactly free. I still have oodles of homework to do, but I did just submit a HUGE portion of research for my consulting gig and don’t need to start on the next batch for a week or so. What does this mean? I get to play with my website of course!
First, I have to take a moment to sing the praises of GoDaddy.com. In spite of their hideous homepage (think of the worst myspace page you’ve seen and then think of it as a homepage for a business) they are a great company to work with. Yesterday I got a call from Scott at GoDaddy who just wanted to make sure all was well with my account. We got me set-up with some anti-spam privacy goodness, he gave me tips of good resources for n00b web-development, and he sent me a personal email just in case I ever had any issues. If I have not said it enough, let me say it again: IT people rawk.
Today I had a chance to sit down and read through some of the ‘how to set-up your web-page stuff’ GoDaddy sent me and I was fairly successful. I used TextEdit to create an index page in html. I then learned what FTP was and used the free one that came with my domain-name to upload my newly created index.html file. In spite of my doubt it sort of worked. I say sort of because instead of displaying the text I wrote in html it just displays the html…but it’s a step in the right direction.
After reading through the code a handful of times, comparing it to the pdf document I got it from, and scratching my head I am quite happy to say, “I just don’t know what happened.” And, then move on.
Next I went back to that tricky WordPress.org site and started reading all of their information on how to install WP in 5 easy steps. Easy? Eh, maybe for some. I did what they told me and now have a very groovy MySQL database and a wp_config.php file that links said file to my database. Cool!
**WARNING***ROAD BLOCK AHEAD***
Apparently my new File Transfer Protocol (look at me using the lingo) is not designed to handle the large data transfer required by WP set-up. That’s okay. I have lots of resources now (thank you Scott) that list a few good FREE FTP clients. ….Well, okay so only one of them is for a Mac, but still. **Smaller Roadblock** FileZilla and I are going to work together sometime soon. You know, once they get their Mac client back online!
Ah, well. I expected road blocks, setbacks, and a high lvl of confusination (my new word for my state of mind while developing for the web). Plus, it’s kind of funny that my webpage displays random html text…
Well I now have space and I have a name (pending my server authentication which will take 24 hours). This is good.
My excitement has now turned into fear. Once I moved my domain over to my server they said I could begin uploading files? Oh, dear. What have I gotten myself into? What files? I haven’t written them yet. Do I need a program to write them? EEEK!
This is where I take a deep breath and say that I don’t have to figure it out today. Sounds easy enough, but to someone like me (who becomes consumed with projects in the fun category) it is torture. I know nothing. I am standing alone in the woods without a compass or canteen. This is the fear I was talking about.
To make myself feel better I thought I would download and install WordPress.org. Bad idea. Turns out there is not even an application for it. The install.php file did not work. I have all of these files that are just sitting on my computer. Fear again.
No worries though. As with most things in my life I will just walk right in, have a seat, and ask my neighbor what I’ve missed. After I read my case file for moot court of course…and do my homework. I reckon that it is pretty difficult to actually crash the internet. I just need to read some books on Web Development 101. I’ll figure it out.
I have recently become very excited about creating my own website. A few independent consulting jobs, lots of photos, a blog, and a desire to learn how to do some web developing have me really excited about building my own site. Unlike working for actual clients, since this site is by me and for me I don’t suppose I’ll care too much when I can’t get the code right or I crash my computer five times in a row because CSS and I just don’t get along. I want to learn how to do it on my own (with the help of some friends and online forums of course).
Last week I began this adventure by testing out one of Google Labs adventures, Google Page Creator. It was fantastic. I created this semi-groovy little site for myself which you can see here if you want. I felt limited though. Suddenly in my life I have outgrown pre-made website “looks” and style sheets developed by others. I need more. I want more. Granted, Google’s selection of cookie-cutter web page designs were much better than say WordPress’ (no offense, I love WP and will be moving over to WP.org as soon as I get this all figured out), but they still did not give me the freedom I want when creating a site. This is when I decided to jump right on off the cliff and made the commitment to build my own site.
Naturally the next step is to buy some storage space and get a domain name. Storage space seemed easy. I consulted one of my former co-workers, trusty advisor in all things technology and gaming related, and found godaddy.com. Six dollars a month for crazy amounts of space! Nice…If you use PC’s apparently. I still need to contact their support people, but from the looks of it godaddy only goes if you run Microsoft or Lunix. Bummer.
Domain names would seem easy too, wouldn’t they? I was going to be super creative and go with emileepreble.com. I know it’s not terribly inventive, but it works. After being disappointed that godaddy did not support Mac’s I did take advantage of their “search for domain availability” option. Key in emileepreble and its ALL READY TAKEN!! And who do you think the fool is that registered the name??? Uh, that would be me.
A little history…
When I worked as a data analyst my co-conspirators and I were always beta testing one thing or another. It was usually great. We used GoogleEarth while it was still in the labs, had IE7 long before it was out…I even beta tested Office 2007. It was all good fun. And somewhere in that fun I also gave Microsoft Office Live a spin. I didn’t use it very long. It was an okay product that I could only work on in the office because it will not run on an Apple. The one thing it did do was require me to choose a domain name. Again, in my vast creativity I created emileepreble.com. (*shoots self it foot)
Today I walk myself up to the computer lab in the law library where I can use a PC (b/c I can’t use Office Live on my computer…grr) to try and close my Office Live account. As usually happens with Microsoft this song and dance goes on forever. In the end do I find a way to close my account? No. I tried to close the account in general but could not do that b/c there is an email account attached which I am supposed to close separately. Try to close the email but this fails b/c it is part of a larger site. In order to close said site you have to “contact the domain administrator” who’s contact info is, naturally, not listed anywhere. I want to scream.
In summation, I remain super excited about trying to build my own site. It’s not starting off too well, but sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Annoying things happen, domain names are taken (sometimes by your own self), not all programs run on a Mac, but at the end of the day it is an adventure…and that is exactly what I like about it.
How do we feel about emilee-preble.com?
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