FreelanceCTO.com

We are broadcasting the Media Summit 2010 live from NYC today. Take a look at our shareable and embeddable widget:

It’s just a taste of things to come…

The Social Media Club panel on Google Analytics event that I participated in is now online. I had a great time speaking with Erica Fourette and the other panelists. I hope that everybody who attended (both offline and online) got at least one or two good bits of knowledge or science out of the discussion. 150+ people were in attendance at Mahalo. SMCLA also had a very large online viewing turnout, too. At one point before the event, I realized that I was trying to do 3 things at the same time: a) talking to Efren (TechZulu) about how he broadcasts the event b) setting up pizza and beverages and c) meeting my fellow panelists (I only knew the moderator) before panelizing together. I went with c), but I made sure to buy (later that week) the same Canopus encoder that Efren has for our own efforts and grab a slice and a soda on my way to the panelists meetup. The whole event was a most enjoyable – well done, SMCLA!

Here is TechZulu’s recording of the event:

I am helping OpenColony look for an Interaction Design Manager. Do you know of anyone who fits the bill? This is a great gig. Here is the job description:

We seek an interaction design manager with agile design and technology experience, a leader with vision and the ability to execute and productize their ideas. Can you make an impact in a smart, culturally diverse environment? Do you enjoy dynamic interactions, services and systems? If you have been successful at integrating interaction design into an agile development environment, this is an opportunity to significantly impact our organization’s products and product development processes. You can make an impact on the overall culture and processes here. If you care about being socially responsible and working for justice, we share your values. Sound good? Then email us: contact@opencolony.com

Responsibilities
• Participate in cross‐disciplinary round table discussions.
• Design for rapid product and service development in global, innovative Web Product and Services Company.
• Help hire, manage and develop a team of product‐specific interaction designers with strong programming and rapid prototyping skills in San Francisco and Bangalore.
• Help hire and introduce a graphic designer to organization in order to design across products and services offerings.
• Design and Deliver flexible, consistent, collaborative interaction guidelines/tools for products and services organizations.
• Provide vision and leadership for Studios and Professional Services teams.
• Interact with the customers and in‐house stakeholders to conduct Customer Research (contextual inquiry, interviews, exploratory sketching, card sorting, etc) and effectively translate it into actionable experiences
• Design and build solutions for complex applications, including analysis of workflow, creation of Lo and Hi‐Fi wireframes and functional prototypes for content‐driven web sites and applications
• Manage workflow and deliverables for the Interaction design team.
• Impact existing products and services offerings as well and new product and service offerings in the pipeline.

Qualifications
• 7‐10 years interaction design experience.
• Demonstrable experience designing and implementing flexible customer experiences and products.
• Experience hiring, training and managing interaction designers.
• Experience managing or peer‐peer with technical, design and UXD functions.
• Demonstrable technical and interaction design innovation experience.
• Degree in human computer interaction, digital arts, social science or computer science.
• Rapid prototyping and coding experience in HTML/CSS and JavaScript a must.
• Business Strategy and Organizational Design Experience a plus.
• UXD, Research and Visual Design experience a major plus.
• International management experience and/or experience managing teams in different countries a must. Multiple languages a plus.
• Excellent communication, collaborative and presentation skills.
• Portfolio of work to demonstrate conceptual, research and implementation processes and skills.
• Expert in interaction design and industry best practices.
• Experience in client facing role in an agency, management consultancy or professional services firm a plus.
• Passion for complex web applications, process and system design.
• Strong attention to detail.
Sound good? Then email us: contact@opencolony.com

Fast Company has a great article on why you should start a company in Los Angeles.

Since 1994, I have spent about half of my time in the Bay Area and the other half in Los Angeles. LA beats the Bay for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is that Los Angeles focuses on building viable businesses, whereas the Bay Area largely focuses solely on technology…for the sake of technology. Los Angeles has a lot more opportunities in a number of very large-scale verticals, which means a wider variety of work and types of work for tech workers than the Bay Area. Speaking of industry verticals – Entertainment, Advertising, Automotive, and Lead Generation (to name a mere few) are all based in the Southern California area. And of course, there is the weather!

Jeremy Allaire has a great article about the future of new technologies like HTML5 and it’s impact on the current ecosystem of delivery vehicles for content and applications.

Last Friday, the LA CTO Forum hosted a discussion on the various metrics used to measure ourselves and our companies. I was asked to participate, and eagerly dug into my archives. I found a bunch of old examples, sanitized them, and was struck by how much metrics evolve over the lifecycle of a company. I was inspired enough to put together a diagram that describes how the metrics for a product or startup company evolve over time. My files are here:

• The Evolution of Metrics
  
• Examples of Metrics for Startups
  

Here is a basic description of the contents of each report:

• Definitions – definitions of metrics
• Dashboard – dashboard view of key metrics
• Executive Summary – summary of key metrics
• BizDev Funnel Lite – early stage business development funnel
• BizDev Funnel – later stage business development funnel
• Marketing Funnel – early costs/revenue numbers
• Member Funnel – tracking and monetizing users
• Customer Satisfaction – customer satisfaction by product
• Customer Support Triage – large product defects, customer support in triage mode
• Customer Support Daily Recap – daily metric for support
• Customer Support Steady – later stage monitoring of support
• Operations – some simple operational metrics
• Engineering Triage – crisis-based tracking of engineering errors
• Human Resources – some basic hiring metrics
• Revenue – an early set of of metrics for revenue

You may have a different interpretation of how to measure things, so please feel free to change the parameters to suit your needs. Let me know what you think.

-=John

• We can't enter but our friends can! RT @LuxuryLink: Win a trip! 5 nights for 2 at a FL luxury property of your choice.http://ow.ly/13P5s #

• So what have you done lately for Haiti? Did it top this? Toledo strip club gives "lap dances for Haiti" http://ow.ly/15FGw #

I just got TouchMouse from Logitech for my iPhone (free download). Very cool! A free wireless trackpad for my iDevice – so far I love it!

I’ve never been a trackpad fan, and it’s perfect for those times when the mousepad is just too far away. It will probably drain the battery fast, but I’ve only needed to use it while in tethering distance to my laptop. For watching movies on your TV off your laptop, this app is awesome.

Get the TouchMouse app, then download the Touch Mouse Server, and it’s on!

“Hey buddies!

Check this out! I am so psyched. I was one of the top 10 people to playing ultralivesports trivia last Thursday night during the Celtics/Lakers game. I got this reward where I can broadcast tonight’s game (both the tv part AND the trivia game) on my blog. You can also see it on my FaceBook page.

Enjoy the show everybody!!!

-cheeselobber”