Choice, fear, life and act

Frederick Giasson

Why some people act, and other don’t? Why some people succeed and other don’t? Why some people sometime take risks and other don’t?

  1. Fear
  2. Lack of self-confidence
  3. Lack of knowledge
  4. Trying to do too much alone
  5. Trying to do too much
  6. Loss of self
  7. Lack of energy
  8. Lack of reward
  9. It can’t be done

I urge you to read the explanation of these 9 points on Dave Pollard’s article. It is all about life and understanding. It is to understand your reactions and the reactions of others in certain situations.

The most important point is the number one. Dave resumes it by writing:

Fear: We are legitimately afraid we will fail, or that we don’t have the needed skill, or that others will criticize us. We are afraid, most of all, of the consequences of failure — humiliation, ridicule, loss of financial or employment or social status. It isn’t risk we dislike, it’s failure.

I would add something to that description: the fear of passing by something that could bring you more joy, better life, more wealth. This situation arise when you have a choice to do in you life, any choice, professional or personal. You can gather all the knowledge you can put the hands on, you can make all the scenarios you want, spend years to analyze the situation and take your decision, and pass by anyway. The thing here is that you can’t choose the optimal choice each time you have a choice to make. The life is like this and only one certainty exist: we born to die. All the things between these two boundaries are totally uncertain and unpredictable.

You are on the principal road. Eventually you have an opportunity to turn right. What will you do? How to know if it is better to continue on the current road, safe but not necessarily optimal, and the new road, one that you have no knowledge on. You need to act, you need to make a choice, but which will you choose? The know or the new one? The first point of Dave will force, most of the time, people to continue on the main know road instead of choosing the new unknown path, in fear of failure: the failure of having make a non-optimal, less rewarding, choice. Sometime it could be the right thing to do, but have in mind that other time you also take that decision to do that instead of something you should do.

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Everybody has something to say: now we need to connect them

Frederick Giasson

Rich or poor, male or female, Muslim or Christian, in health or not: everybody has something to say. We are social creatures and our deepest desire is to share our thoughts and learn about people we meet. Over centuries, communication evolved. From growl to talk, from voice language to body language, we communicate what we think about some things to others. We developed tools to survive, and we also developed tool to communicate: from smoke signals to the Internet.

Internet has growth exponentially in the last decade. Now everybody can have access to his personal web space for free. Everybody that has access to the Internet, and the knowledge, can share his thoughts with the rest of the World. This is where we are now.

The next problem we will need to solve is: how to connect these people? Many technologies have been tested and implemented to try to resolve this problem. Some works, others don’t, but all have some drawbacks. There is a list of some of these technologies:

  1. General search engines
  2. Specialized search engines
  3. Contact networks supported by some type of search engines based on people’s location, sex, interests, etc.
  4. Trackbacks systems in blog engines
  5. Tags
  6. Networks like 43things.com
  7. Web 2.0 ceoncepts like FOAF (Friend Of A Friend)
  8. Talk Digger: check who is talking about someone or something, then enter the conversion and get connected with them

However, no one of these techniques work effectively. They are all time consuming for anyone who tries to connect to somebody else that shares the same goal, interest, etc. They all try to resolve the problem, but they all have their drawbacks. The next step is to try to connect all the current information in such a way that connections will emerge from the mass.

The next step is proposed by Adina Alevin: conversion clouds. What is a conversion cloud?

The cloud would be a picture of a conversation surrounding a person or a topic. The picture would show the relationships between the participants in a conversation. The densest areas would represent people who frequently cross-reference each other over time.

It is a way to dynamically create relation links between conversations and a new way to browse them. The idea is really attractive and it makes sense. What I personally like in the above idea is the concept of time: conversation over time. The oldest the conversation, the richest in information it is and the greater his value.

She also add:

p.s. Zawodny talks about the need for content discovery. I don’t know about you, but a lot of the content that I discover comes from browsing through a conversation and finding voices that I want to keep hearing.

A way new way to discover new content… it is exactly what I discovered the first time I checked at blogs. I came across a whole lot of information that I would never be able to discover by another way. However, things change and now I do not have all the time I would need to discover all the content hided into my subscribed feeds, so we need a new way to discover it, and that conversion cloud could be a partial answer to the current problem.

I will throw that idea without thinking about it: what if these conversion clouds replace web feeds? What if such a technology would make web feeds useless? I mean, I would search for conversation I like, and not people. That way, I would always spend my time to read things useful for me, and not browse content in search of that usefulness. If a person I like write about something useful to me, than I will read it with pleasure, otherwise, I will not. Do you see the same thing I see?

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One idea; one vision; one method; some work; and many unexpected results

Frederick Giasson

I had one idea: a kind a meta-search engine that people would use to know who is talked about a story or a web site; a way to easily follow discussions that erupt in the Blogsphere.

I had a vision: discovering, following and participate to online discussions that go around some specific “root” online stories or web site.

I used one method: Ajax, an amalgam of already existing web technologies that enable developer to create web sites that act like real, standalone, applications. I had an idea of how I would like to see that system works and I used that method to make the idea a reality.

I worked: I spent near a month, full time, 7/7 to make the idea a reality. I had the time, I took it, and I used it to create something I think would be useful to me and the online community.

I had unexpected results: around 30 000 unique visitors in the last 2 weeks. Some people talk about a buzz around that “Talk Digger” system. I communicated with people that I had never thought to talk with; I had unexpected opportunities; I learn a bunch of new things unrelated to software development: the IT business world, the communication world, the public relation world, etc. Right now, if someone looks at me while I work, I would look like a jack-of-all-trades, someone that does a little bit of everything: definitely the more pleasant professional time I had in my carrier so far.

This summer I read three really interesting article by Paul Graham:

  1. How to start a startup
  2. Hiring is obsolete
  3. Why smart people have bad ideas

A month ago, my life’s situation permitted me to take some time to work on a personal project. Then I remembered what I read in these three articles, and then asked me that question: Why not me? Why I could not try to start something of my own, for my own? Then I take one of my ideas, I developed a vision, I used a method, I took my time and I developed Talk Digger.

Least than one month after, I have understood many things I read in these three little articles. I experimented it and the conclusion is fantastic: I learned so many things. This is not a question of software development, this is a question of process: the whole process involved in such a project. What I learned in the last month, and what I enjoyed, is all the new things I learned by talking with people from many different backgrounds; the discussions of 30minutes, 1 or 2 hours with someone that want to know more about what I am working on, on what he is working on, the sharing of ideas, etc.

This entire buzz in the last month has been only possible by the work I put into developing my ideas, evolving my vision and talking with people, many people.

Why I write this post? To tell you that if I have been able to do it, any body can do it; it is just a question of will. Do not fool yourself, the only way to learn, the only way to succeed is by trying; how do you think that you can succeed in something if you do not try to do that thing? Physically, logically and semantically impossible.

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”


— Pablo Picasso

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