RED Lounge is a meet-up style forum for industry professionals such as developers, designers, CTO’s, students and everything in between. The next RED Lounge will focus on the evolution of mobile technology and the impact of consumerization on interface design and mobile architecture. RED Lounge members will also be discussing how their expertise in the technology industry can benefit members of their community.

Speakers for the next RED Lounge include Robin Thurston, Co-Founder of MapMyFitness; Matt Walton, President and CEO as well as Josh Wingstrom, CTO of RED Method, Inc. RSVP today to participate in insightful conversation and enjoy the many beers Flying Saucer has to offer!

About RED Lounge

The goal of RED Lounge is to encourage interaction among local professionals and discover ways to improve the local community. Each RED Lounge focuses on a different topic of the shifting landscape of technology with guest speakers from some of the most innovative and successful companies in Central Texas.

The next RED Lounge will be hosted at the Flying Saucer (815 West 47th Street, Austin, TX 78751) from 6PM-8PM on Friday, February 10th.

Attendance is free but you must RSVP to reserve your space to: rsvp@redmethod.com

About RED Method, Inc.

RED Method, Inc. is the world’s innovation and thought leader in enterprise mobility solutions, creating mobile systems that address the needs of an untethered enterprise workforce who has made Austin, TX their home. RED Method fuses technology, data, and design into end-to-end solutions for mobile business including sales, marketing, customer service, product development and logistics.

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Example of letter to Congress:

I am writing to you as a voter in your district. I urge you to oppose the Senate version of S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act. The PROTECT IP Act is dangerous, ineffective, and short-sighted. The House version — just introduced by Rep. Goodlatte — is far worse. Over coming days you’ll be hearing from the many businesses, advocacy organizations, and ordinary Americans who oppose this legislation because of the myriad ways in which it will stifle free speech and innovation. We hope you’ll take our concerns to heart and oppose this legislation.

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Shopping for storage the old-fashioned way is a headache. You can easily waste hours calling facilities, getting spammed by “free quote” services or clicking through outdated websites.
New Austin-based start-up SpareFoot solves this problem by organizing every storage facility in one simple marketplace online. In just a few minutes, you can find and compare storage facilities in your area, check out photos and read customer reviews. For example, check out the Austin storage page and click on one of the available units to see the full features of this site.

Founded in 2008 by then-UCLA students Chuck Gordon and Mario Feghali, SpareFoot stated out as a person-to-person storage website that helped people rent extra space for storage in private residences. Then they realized there was a larger opportunity for this platform in the traditional self-storage industry and now SpareFoot boasts the largest selection of storage units with real-time pricing and availability on the web.

Every day, SpareFoot continues to grow and evolve. Their tight-knit team of employees is super motivated, working towards establishing their company as the technology and thought leader of self-storage. The team works long hours and manages to have a ton of fun, too. They love Austin and are so grateful that they found a group of investors here that has allowed them to turn two men’s dream into a reality.

This website is great because it easily guides you through the process of finding convenient storage companies and it’s as simple as knowing your new zip code. Go to SpareFoot and type in your zip code to get a detailed list of storage facilities in that area. You will quickly be able to find rental units that meet your storage size requirements, the size and price per unit, what amenities that facility has and if there are any available specials. Once you find the perfect storage unit, reserve it online for free. It’s that easy!

The best thing about using SpareFoot’s website is it’s like shopping online without any obligation to buy. Browse around the site and see the best deals on renting storage units in your neighborhood. Just a few clicks can save you hours of work and frustration. If you like Internet start-up success stories-in-the-making, you should like us on Facebook and follow along on Twitter to hear what’s going on right now.

Here are some statistics from last year:

Statistics for SXSW Music 2011

• Music FEstival Showcasing Acts: 2,098; International acts: 596 from 57 foreign countries
• Music Festival Stages: 92
• Music Conference Participants: 16,353 (from 53 countries)
• Music Conference Sessions: 181
• Music Media in Attendance (approximate): 2,941
• Auditorium Shores Stage Attendance over 3 days: 45,000

Statistics for SXSW Interactive 2011

• Interactive Conference Participants: 19,364 (from 63 foreign countries)
• Interactive Conference Sessions: 935
• Interactive Media in Attendance (approximate): 2,508

Statistics for SXSW Film 2011

• Film Conference Participants: 13,409 (from 37 countries)
• Film Conference Sessions: 105
• Films Screened: 140 Features: 153 Curated Shorts (from 4,911 Submissions)
• Film Festival World Premieres: 66; North American Premieres: 15; US Premieres: 15
• Film Festival Attendance: 66,842
• Film Media in Attendance (approximate): 1,541

Statistics for SXSW 2011 Trade Show, Exhibits & Parties

• SXSW Trade Show Exhibit Spaces: 566; Attendance over 4 days (approximate): 65,200
• ScreenBurn Arcade Exhibit Spaces: 137; Attendance over 3 days (approximate): 27,200
• Gear Alley Expo Exhibit Spaces: 48; Attendance over 4 days (approximate): 20,100
• Flatstock 29 Poster Show Exhibit Spaces: 97; Attendance over 2 days (approximate): 12,000
• Style X Exhibit Spaces: 132; Attendance over 2 days (approximate): 15,700
• Official SXW parties: 103

Additional Impact of SXSW on the City of Austin

How To Volunteer

As you can imagine, the resources needed to help put such an event are huge, and SXSW is asking for volunteers to help as a conference and production volunteers. What is the difference you might ask?

Conference volunteers have a flexible schedule, they can schedule hours anytime throughout the 10 days of the SXSW week (March 9-18, 2012) on up to three crews. Conference Volunteers work hours toward a perk of their choice. Click here for more information about working as a Conference Volunteer.

Production Volunteers are restricted to working on only one crew throughout SXSW week. Production Volunteers earn their perks based on the number of shifts worked. Click here for more information about working as a Production Volunteer.

Make sure you know what type of volunteer you want to apply for before you do so, and remember that SXSW offers really good perks to both conference and production volunteers. These perks range from t-shirts all the way up to a Platinum Badge.

If you are not from Austin, there is also an Out-of-Town Volunteer option available for people from all over the world wanting to help at SXSW. Below are some of the requirements if you want to become an out-of-town volunteer:

• Must be at least 16 years of age*
• Work a minimum of 30 hours on a Conference Crew or minimum number of shifts on a Production Crew
• Conference and Production Volunteers must arrive in Austin no later than March 8, 2012 if you’re working during Film/IA or March 12, 2012 if you’re working on a crew that operates only during SXSW Music.
• Have a valid email address (no sharing of email addresses, please)
• Responsible for working with SXSW Crew Chiefs or Staff to create your own schedule
• Acknowledge and adhere to the Volunteer Policies and Guidelines
• Arrange travel and housing accommodations prior to applying as an OOT Volunteer

*Some crews will require additional age requirements. Check the OOT Crew Descriptions for more detailed information.

Are you ready to be a volunteer at the next SXSW festival? click here to register and learn more about this awesome program today!

It looks as the Inc article suggests that Ozzie is working in some sort of collaboration/communications tool targeted to mobile devices, and now that I write that I see a possible relationship to the name Cocomo with the words: Collaboration Comunication Mobile? or perhaps the name refers to this Cocomo:

From: http://www.cs.unc.edu/~stotts/145/cocomo.html

Also, the former Microsoftie Matt Pope who worked at Groove Networks with Ozzie also suggested in a tweet on January 4 that this new project was a communications product and that they are in the look of an awesome designer. In this tweet, Matt added a link to a job post hosted in 37 signals job board that lists the following mobile, social and client side technologies as the preferred experience:

• iOS & Android, in both phone & pad form factors
• HTML/CSS, JS, WebGL as applied to the mobile environment
• Email & SMS, Facebook, Google+, Twitter
• Our multi-faceted identities, and issues of privacy & openness
• The social anthropology of our ever-growing use of mobile

Also, from this job post you can read that Cocomo intends to have people working remotely from different locations, as they put it in the job ad: “We seek ultimately to be a location-free startup.”

The site (or page) http://cocomo.com which is live but only shows a link to an email address was interesting enough created with Microsoft SharePoint Team Website… if you browse to http://www.cocomo.com/default.aspx you’ll see what I am talking about. This is interesting, it tells me that they are in such a rush that they just created a page using Microsoft’s SharePoint Team Website and use it as a landing page. It also tells me that ironically enough, Ozzie and his team are working in a collaboration mobile product and using Microsoft’s SharePoint Team Website to collaborate in this new venture themselves… hey, SharePoint is a great product if you know how to use it and have all the resources to manage it.

The product that they are coming up with seems could be a competitor for some of the productivity and project management tools out there such as do.com, Trello, Pivotal Tracker, Assembla, Jira, Lighthouse, etc… or perhaps these are some of the tools they are considering to use while building their own product. The assumptions above are based on a few tweets that Matt Pope sent during the month of November and December, before saying goodbye to Microsoft.

I have always been a fan of Ozzie and I wish him and his team at Cocomo the best of luck in this new startup, I am sure these guys will build something useful and I can’t wait to try it.

Cheers!

Ricardo.

Step 1

Download the language files for the language you would like to translate your blog to. You will need to download two files, one with the extension .mo and the other one with the extension .po. The files are named using the two digit language code_two digit country code. For the Spanish file I needed I downloaded these files:

• es_ES.mo
• es_ES.po

These files can be downloaded from this site, just look for the folder labeled using the same format, language code _ country code:

http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-i18n/

The exact url for the files I downloaded is this:

http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-i18n/es_ES/tags/3.3/messages/

Step 2

Save the files mentioned above to wp-content\languages. If the folder languages does not exists, just create it.

Step 3

Open the wp-config.php file using a text editor, look for the following string “define(‘WPLANG’, ”);” and update it by adding the language file you downloaded. For example, in my case I updated this line to the following:

define('WPLANG','es_ES');

That is all, I hope this is useful for you and if you have any comments or better ways to localize a WordPress blog please let us know in the comment’s section.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 49,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 18 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Video Credit: shadoPRoX

2011 has been a busy and challenging year. It’s been a year of building, of change, of growth, and a year of reflection. I’m thankful for your continued support and for the encouragement of my friends and peers. 2012 is going to be a great year- one that I’m looking forward to very much. I hope you have a great holiday season and a Blessed and prosperous New Year!

Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year!

We appreciate your friendship and your business.

Ricardo D. Sanchez

image c/o old school value

We all have heard the phrase “Ideas are worth a dime a dozen”, but I’d like to think that ideas are actually worth a lot, good ideas that is. But how do we know which ideas are good and which ones are bad? the truth is, we can’t.

It would be impossible to execute on each idea that comes to mind, but talking about your ideas with other people might help you pick which ones to follow and which ones to ditch or save for later. Remember to take other people’s opinions about your idea with a grain of salt, people tend to see uncommon ideas as bad ideas but in reality innovation usually is the result of thinking different and the willingness to take risks… in other words, some of the best ideas are seemed as either bad or crazy ideas by most people.

There are organizations such as TED which promote innovation by allowing people to talk about ideas “worth spreading”, what ideas are those? who decides which ideas are actually worth sharing? that is my point, no one really knows what a good idea looks like in the beginning, there is no pattern other than the fact that some of the greatest innovations in history started with ideas that didn’t seem good or popular.

Was Netflix a good idea back when it started? how about Twitter? do not judge other people’s ideas or your own, it is really easy to criticize but really hard to come up and follow-up on ideas, just try it. Jason Cohen from asmartbear.com wrote a great post giving out some examples on how easy it is to criticize when listening to other people’s ideas…

Ideas vs. Execution

Execution of ideas is what really counts right? while being able to execute ideas is obviously very important, so it is to have ideas to be executed. Both ideas and the ability to execute are necessary to achieve success on anything that you do. It is all about JFDI (Just Fucking Do It), so the next time you have an idea, don’t waste time trying to figure out if it is good or bad, or if it makes sense… just do what you need to do to make your idea a reality, you will more likely end up making a lot of changes to your original idea along the way and that is OK.

People say ideas are worth a dime a dozen because they usually see people (or themselves) coming up with ideas and never really doing anything about their ideas but talk about them. Talking about your ideas is good, but you do need to start doing something that moves your idea forward, do not fall into the trap of waiting for the “right” idea because those right ideas are made over time, after working on and making changes to an idea that probably didn’t seem as the right idea in the beginning.

Excuses are easy

Excuses are just like ideas, we come up with lots of them all the time. The difference is that we don’t have a problem coming up with excuses, we rarely doubt our excuses, it is easier to choose an excuse than it is to go against the current, moving forward with your bad or crazy idea.

It doesn’t mater what excuses you come up with, they are usually just very easy to come up with and most people like easy. Here are some of the excuses I’ve come up with myself and others I have heard from other people:

• I have a family
• I don’t have money
• I don’t have time
• My idea sucks
• I don’t know anyone that can help me
• I am too old, too short, too tall, too fat, etc…
• I don’t know how to sell
• This is not the right time
• I don’t know how to begin
• My language skills aren’t good enough
• I live in the wrong city
• I cannot move to another city
• I don’t have technical skills
• I don’t have business needs
• My idea isn’t ready yet
• It is not the right time of the year
• It is too risky
• It is too hard
• People will make fun or think I am crazy
• I don’t have a business model
• The country where I live does not offer opportunities
• etc…

I am sure you can come up with many more excuses that either you or someone you know have used in the past, these excuses prevent us from following our ideas, our dreams, and on top of all of these excuses there is also the fear of rejection, the fear of fail, we as humans do not like to be put on the spot or be rejected, we care too much about what the others think of us.

JFDI

Why not? if your idea is bad then at least you’ll be able to find out about it and hopefully will be able to modify your idea and push it forward. If you don’t try it at all then the problem is that you’ll never know if your idea was good or bad… how will you know if you don’t try it? I believe that in life everything has consequences, if you don’t do anything then there will still be consequences and they will likely be bad, and that is the worst you can do, do nothing. If you always keep doing things, you’ll come up with bad ideas, you will fail but you will also gain some times and the more important thing is that you’ll be placing yourself in a position where winning becomes a possibility.

I am writing this post as a way to motivate myself to keep pushing forward with my ideas, my dreams, my life, I truly hope that at least one of you gets motivated to keep trying and JFDI!

There are two main type of entrepreneurs, those who talk about doing things and those who actually do them.

Unfortunately, entrepreneurs experience many distractions today that usually do not lead to anything good for their companies. For example, instead of spending time on building and selling their products many startup founders get stuck reading entrepreneurship books, blogs, forums, attending events, meetups, and the like which for the most part do not help them make their business better. Also, there are these other distractions such as getting funded, spending too much time meeting with investors, tweeting, reading TechCrunch and the like instead of building products or more importantly, selling a product or service… let’s keep in mind that the main goal of a business is to sell a product for a profit big enough that allows the business to exists and expand if necessary.

When following patterns, rules, templates, methodologies, etc to build your business, you are limiting creativity and innovation, and the power to be different. While processes and following patterns are good for things that aren’t necessarily in need of innovation, it is not what you want to do when designing a new application or creating a new business. For example, as part of starting a business you will need to incorporate, create a bank account, etc… these are the things that it is OK to do according to an existing process, because it involves many other people who are already prepared to follow a defined process following specific rules, etc. However, if you are designing a new application to solve an existing problem, you should aim for creativity and innovation instead. There is always room for improvement when developing a product and a business, if you just follow instructions on how to do it, creativity will not be part of the process and this is not what you want. Instructions, guides, manuals and the like are good when building furniture but not when you are trying to build something new and innovative.

A business should not be a machine that you can steer and control as a car, a business should reflect the personality and creativity of founders and the people who work in it

Let’s go back to the Lean Startup topic to explain why I think it should be just another option for entrepreneurs that aren’t really ready to try something new and accept the risk involved with it. The idea that startup success can be engineered by following a process that can be learned and taught sounds just silly. A business should not be a machine that you can steer and control as a car, a business should reflect the personality and creativity of founders and the people who work in it. A creative and innovative company cannot be made into a machine since it requires the creativity and naiveness of the people running the company, it needs to be different, it needs to be personal.

If you are the type of entrepreneur that spends more time reading books, going to events and tweeting, you should know that you are spending valuable time doing things that will more likely do nothing for your business. The advice given in books and blogs should always be seen as only one point of view, not a guide on how to run a business. Every business is different, every entrepreneur has a different background, a different goal, every customer buys a product for different reasons, etc. There is not a single method that will help you achieve success on your business, and if somebody tells you otherwise it is because they are trying to sell you a book or something like that.

In software development there are many methodologies and patterns, as a developer I have never followed all the rules as described in books and white papers, instead I just grab what I think is useful for the application I am building and ditch the rest. This works for me. Many developers are very religious about what methodologies and patterns to follow while writing code and this is something that I find interesting. Many of these developers aren’t looking at the big picture, at the long-term goal, which is in most cases to create an application that will work well for many years without too much maintenance and doing what it was created for. Many believe that to achieve this goal, you do need to follow some methodology that somehow will work well for any development project or team… wrong. As in software development, many entrepreneurs fall into the idea that they need to either be a lean startup or not… I also find that very interesting. There is no reason to follow any methodologies or processes and hope that it is the right thing for your business or software application… why limit yourself to a specific set of rules. Do what you think is better for your business, use common sense and spend time in your business to find ways to make it better and achieve the goals that you want to achieve, no one knows better about your business or goals than yourself.

Entrepreneurship should be about trying new ways to create and offer new and existing products to customers.

It should also be a blank canvas for entrepreneurs willing to take risks and to show how existing procedures and products can be done differently in new and exciting ways. People that decide to become entrepreneurs often do it to liberate themselves from the corporate world, full of procedures, rules and red tape. And at the same time, a large group of these entrepreneurs start building businesses following a defined set of rules and methods which stops them from using their gut to build their businesses any way they want. In a way, these entrepreneurs are just employees of their own business, where is the fun on that!
There are exceptions of course, there are certain steps when building a business that if followed carefully, can make your life easier and move faster. Entrepreneurs can take what they think is useful for them and their unique situation and move on, do not waste time trying to make your company a perfect startup according to some book or methodology,  instead try to follow your gut, get out of your safety bubble and start selling your product, go back to basics.

It is all about doing what you think is right for you and your business at the time. For some products or services, it might pay off if you actually build something first, and then present it to your potential customers, convincing them that what you just build is what they are looking for, it is called selling!

Many of you are thinking right this moment that if you create a product first without knowing what your customers really want you might end up spending several hours or months creating something that in the end no one wants, and my answer for that is yes, you are right, and that is a risk that some people will always be willing to take and others will not. No one really knows if a product will become successful or not, not one. I know that the idea of Lean Startup is not to waste time building something before knowing that someone will actually pay for it… I agree, however talking to potential customers and getting people to tell you that they will buy your product once you build it is also not a guarantee. Again, it is about trying different things, in some cases you can go with what customers are telling you and in other cases you just need to follow your gut, or scratch you own itch and just do it. Customers do not always know what they want.

Innovation is not born from building products based on customer feedback, innovation is the result of passionate people who have a vision.

There are companies that have almost always followed their own gut and build products based on the idea that people actually do not know what they want. Think of Apple computer. During the past few decades Apple has created products that have been both innovative and successful, they have also created products that haven’t been well received by its customers. Do you believe that Apple will be as successful as its been if they followed the Lean Startup methodology or any other for that matter? How about Twitter? innovation is not born from building products based on customer feedback, innovation is the result of passionate people who have a vision.