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David Cohen has a good observation about shaking hands:

The handshake is thought to have developed as a gesture of peace, to show that neither side was carrying a weapon in their right hand. Since I’m not really afraid that anyone I meet at a conference will be carrying a spear, you’d think we could just move past this tradition.

I’ve tried pre-empting friends and folks I’ve met before with a fist-bump to avoid the germy, awkward palm-to-plam interaction. It’s less-often received as ‘inappropriate’ or a cultural “faux pas” and I can’t help but think President Obama is mostly to thank for that. But new encounters don’t feel right with a bump… for now.

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Here’s a great article on the shift in technology popularity and values from Francisco Dao at PandoDaily:

In San Francisco, one need only look at conference speaker line-ups that often consists of people who haven’t accomplished anything except raising an angel round and amassing Twitter followers to see that we’re doing the same thing [as Hollywood]. The result is we’ve created a culture of tech celebs who, like Paris Hilton, are famous for little or nothing.

Reminds me a bit of what I was talking about with Charlie back in 2010 about those attempting to find success in celebrity.

As Mike Davidson elegantly put it:

If you want to be influential, lead by doing, not by talking, and certainly not by duping. If what you create is really good, other people will talk about it for you.

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DecodeDC is my favorite new podcast and, appropriately enough, its all about politics. Self described as “deciphering Washington’s language and procedure so you can focus on what matters”, Andrea Seabrook has done a great job with the first four episodes diving in and pulling back the curtain on a lot of the status quo in Washington that the mainstream may not address (and fringe groups wouldn’t have access to, Seabrook was previously with NPR). If the last few months (or last night) sparked your interest in politics, I’d recommend checking out DecodeDC.

Is a consultancy also a startup?

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In honor of Denver Startup Week, I’d like to try to answer a question we’ve thought about at Crowd Favorite: are we a startup?

In the most traditional sense: no. Startups, as they’ve come to be known, can typically be seen as small technology-centric companies founded by a handful of individuals to build a produce or service, sometimes for businesses, other times for consumers. Most startups grow quickly, add employees, take on investments, and have some sort of exit planned.

On the other hand, design and development firms (or consultancies) like Crowd Favorite share a lot of traits with startups:

Talent

We hire from the same pool of smart individuals: designers, developers, and even managers. These people typically sit at a computer, work on the web and solve interesting problems.

When hiring a designer, we’re all looking for someone who can create user experiences, solve business problems, and communicate visually. Developers are folks who see technology as a series of moving parts that need to work together to achieve the designed solutions. Managers can take various requirements and goals, turn them into milestones and deliverables, and see the process through.

Technology

We work on the web or, at the least, in the technology space. Designers use the same applications and share the same skills: Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML and CSS, etc. Developers speak many programming languages and often have worked with a handful and can move into others: PHP, Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, Objective C.

Culture

We work hard and like what we do: solving interesting problems with technology. We value freedom to get the job done, we understand the value of research, we appreciate resourcefulness. But we also feel that anything worth doing is worth doing well, and our work reflects that. What we put out into the world is a big reflection of who we are. We provide valuable services and we get paid for it.

Lifestyle

We come to the office to maximize the time we spend with our colleagues or we work remotely in a way that suits everyone, but we don’t clock in. We wear shorts, jeans, slacks, ties, polos, hoodies, t-shirts, sandals, sneakers, slippers. We have ice cream in the freezer and beer in the fridge. A team lunch together to talk about technology is a regular occurrence. We work until we’ve put in a good day’s work and never consider working an 80 hour week.

While startups and design and development consultancies are often working on the same kinds of problems in the same space with the same kinds of people, we’re different in at least a couple of ways:

We don’t typically work all day, every day, including weekends. We have families and outside interests and those are more important than “hustling” to get to launch or investor day. While we love helping a client launch a product, or website, or campaign: we manage reasonable expectations, timelines, and budgets and stick to them without sacrificing our lives.

We also don’t aim for a huge exit, we tend to grow at a steady pace, learn more as technologies and companies evolve, and plan to continue doing the work that looks most interesting to us at any given time.

Was Apple ever a startup? I don’t think so. Is a large agency like Crispin Porter + Bogusky? I wouldn’t say so. Is Crowd Favorite? No. But we’re all working together in an ecosystem that’s no longer an isolated community of designers and developers. This is the new “industry” and the lines between “being” a startup and working “amongst” startups are becoming blurry. The community in Denver know this which is why you see a lot of participants you might not expect: MapQuest, EffectiveUI, SpireMedia, just to name a few.

I look forward to visiting some of our neighbors at the startup crawl later this week.

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Rachel and I have been living in our house for almost two years now. Last year I found a neat little online startup (out of Denver, I later learned) called BrightNest that helps us take care of all the chores and things we never quite knew we should do (plus the ones we did) around here.

Throughout the year it has a great set of “must do” reminders for things like cleaning your oven, testing your smoke detectors, disconnecting your hose bib from any outdoor water spigots. Plus, it starts to ask questions about your house and give specific suggestions tailored to you, for example: we have tips on how to fix scratches in our hardwood floors and a reminder check our sump pump in the basement every spring. Every todo has an estimated time for completion and describes the benefit to you and the house (cost savings, for example).

BrightNest also asks you to tell it about your various appliances and provide make and model number information to not only keep track of this information in your “Homefolio” (I had no idea what kind of fridge water filter we had) but also directly link to online resources like PDF manuals and guides that it can find.

I’d highly recommend BrightNest as it’s another tool that allows both Rachel and I to offload some of the worry and “to do list” that comes with a house. In fact, it allows multiple accounts to share a “house” to help split up the work. Sign up for free at brightnest.com*.

* This is a referral tracking link, as far as I can tell I get no benefit from this

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Squashed takes a quick look at the math around paying income taxes:

Because one spouse isn’t working, there is no child care tax credit. There could be up to $2,500 in education credits per child—but let’s say the kids are younger and go with the lower $1,000 child tax credit for both of them. So that’s a $2,000 credit. To owe taxes at this point, you’d need $19,000 in taxable income—or $45,400 in total income.

It looks like its not too hard to not have to pay federal income (note: different from payroll) tax. I won’t ruin the ending where he answers how many hours, at minimum wage, one would need to work to have to pay in.

This isn’t a partisan issue. This is a tax code (largely dictated by interest groups, corporations) so why don’t we all agree we should fix this? Lets stop letting politicians turn us against each other and create a sideshow…

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Kudos to the team at Lift for launching their iOS app today:

Lift is a simple way to achieve any goal, track your progress, and get the support of your friends.

Rachel and I used to have a website many years ago where we tracked our goals and would encourage each other (“Nice work on yoga, you get an exercise check today”) and Lift is now the well-designed, simple app that I’ve been looking for as a replacement. Here’s my concise review:

This app has become a part of my daily routine. It’s helped me become more regular at the stuff I know I should do but “forget to” (looking at you, flossing…). It’s also a fun way to track habits and activities and then visualize it (I thought I ran more than I did). I’d recommend this app to anyone.

Download Lift in the app store.

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Ben Bleikamp, a designer with a very respectable and enviable design career:

I respect founders immensely—I’ve worked for them my entire career. But me not founding a company is not a question of risk, a lack of ideas, or that I don’t want to change the world. I simply value other parts of my career more.

If you find the right group that’s well established and a fun place to be (culture, again) then why isn’t that seen as a success? Why must everyone be entrepreneurs to be successful?