Tags: sketchnotes

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Getting ready for my “The Shy Entrepreneur” talk at the Toronto Reference Library tomorrow (Apr 10 Tue, 6 PM)

Posted: - Modified: | business, entrepreneurship, presentation, sketchnotes

Here are my notes (click on the image for a larger version):

shy entrepreneur

I’ll tell stories along the way. =) Looking forward to it! (I may even remember to record it if I don’t get too flustered…)

Sketchnotes: William Mougayar (engagio) at Third Tuesday Toronto

Posted: - Modified: | entrepreneurship, meetup, sketches, sketchnotes, social

20120327-william-mougayar-third-tuesday

(Click on the image for a larger version)

William Mougayar shared lessons learned from serial entrepreneurship at the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup. He also demoed his recently funded startup, engag.io, which promises to be a social inbox for comments and conversations across different websites.

My thoughts after the talk:

  • Blog comments and online interactions are great ways to build trust relationships. (Hear that? Comment more! Winking smile )
  • It would be nifty to have a social inbox, particularly one that’s also a relationship management tool
  • $500k seed funding can get people pretty darn far
  • It’s fun getting speakers to autograph the sketchnotes =)

Were you there or have you attended other talks by William Mougayar? Have you used Engagio? (Seems to be down at the moment, pity.)

One nifty thing about Third Tuesday Toronto is that they fly speakers in and they coordinate with meetups in other cities to get the maximum coverage. Join the meetup to find out about upcoming events.

Related links:

If you like this, you might also like my other sketches. I like turning presentations and books into quick, easy-to-review images. Enjoy!

Here’s the text from the image to improve people’s ability to search for it:

William Mougayar @ Third Tuesday Toronto
@wmougayar @engagio
See also Paul Graham’s chart

Stages of a startup
Clear vision or Blurry vision (more realistic)

When Christopher Columbus set sail, he didn’t Google America.

Social Capital
Got to know people through blogs
I’ve made 3,000 comments on Fred Wilson’s blog
Got asked to moderate Fred Wilson’s blog
8 weeks to a minimum viable product
Demo of engagio
-inbox
-My contacts
-Person’s profile (one place to follow)
-Sites
Neat, would like to try this out
5 Lessons
1. Be wary of selling enterprise software
Very difficult to sell to a large company when you’re a startup
2. Have an original (but simple) idea
3. Don’t believe your own
4. Relationships don’t matter. Trusted relationships matter
5. Don’t quit trying

Fragmentation of the social web
Commenting is important = Potential relationships
Value in the conversations
Bet a beat story about startups & alcohol from blog conversation

Replying
Sharing/Linking/Liking
Monitoring/Listening
Signal
Noise
Online advocacy is on the rise

Q&A
Platform? Rails, MySQL, Solr, Twitter Bootstrap
Multiple users? Next week
Yelp? Maybe if API
Equentia? Some ideas for discovery. Get to 100K users first.
How did you get away with looking like Gmail? Haven’t gotten a call from Google yet.
Business? Focusing on end-users.
Funding priorities for spending?
Engineering & marketing
product development users
Building more social features into the product
Summarizing comments?
Maybe talk offline after.
Pivot reactions?
Excited. Still had other clients, but could move on.
Personal profile?
Automatically populated, can be edited.
Profile resolution?
Merging profiles with authentication
Mobile app? HTML5
Track other sites? In road map, may have to create plugin.
Business model? Get to look users first also, business intelligence/analytics.

Notes: SachaChua.com
Twitter: @sachac
March 27, 2012

Sketchnotes: Dave Ley, Jen Nolan, Leo Marland and me at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information’s career panel

Posted: - Modified: | career, sketchnotes

ischool_to

(Click on the image for a larger version)

Kelly Lyons and Isidora Petrovic invited Dave Ley (CIBC), Jen Nolan (IBM), Leo Marland (IBM), and me (… figuring things out! also, formerly IBM…) for the March 12 career panel for the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information students. People were curious about the job process. They wanted to know what managers were looking for when hiring, and how information graduates could differentiate themselves from people with more technical backgrounds. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had lots of stuff to share about learning, sharing, working with passion, and getting hired even if you don’t have any actual work experience. It turns out a few people were interested in entrepreneurship too. Yay!

I’ve condensed some of the points from the discussion into this graphic, and the organizers say that the video will be up on YouTube sometime. =)

Sketchnotes: Sal Sloan of Fetching! at the Toronto Public Library: Small Business Networking Event

Posted: - Modified: | business, connecting, delegation, entrepreneurship, sketchnotes

fetching-small

(Click on the image to see the larger version)

The Toronto Public Library hosts monthly networking events for people who are interested in starting a small business. Most people have not yet started a business. It’s a good opportunity to ask questions and learn from someone who has figured some things out.

Sal Sloan came up with the business idea for Fetching! when she got a dog. She had signed up for a fitness bootcamp, and the combination of exercising herself and walking her dog wore her out. Why not combine the two activities – help people exercise with their dogs? With a $10,000 loan from her parents, Sal started Fetching! by focusing on exercise for people and obedience training for dogs. With early success, Sal broadened her scope to focusing on helping people have active fun with their pets. She has been doing the business for two and a half years, and continues to work part-time on another job. This helps her grow the business organically by avoiding financial pressures.

One of the lessons I took away from the conversation was the power of delegating work to other people. Sal knew that other personal trainers could run sessions much better than she could, so she hired good people whom she could trust to represent her company. She’s looking for someone who can help her with the business side so that she can grow more, too. After I bank some money from this consulting engagement, I might start my delegation experiments again.

The session was an interesting contrast to last month’s meetup with Kristina Chau of notyouraverageparty, who had been in business for three years and who was struggling to scale up beyond herself. Sal has clearly put work into figuring out how to scale up, and it’s great to see how it paid off.

Meetup sketchnotes: The Publishing Side of WordPress, Andy McIlwain

Posted: - Modified: | blogging, sketchnotes, wordpress

The Publishing Side of WordPress(Click on the image to view a larger version.)

At today’s WordPress Toronto meetup, Andy McIlwain shared tips on brainstorming, scheduling, and sharing blog posts in WordPress. The lively discussion brought out lots of other tips, too.

The key thing I took away from the talk was that Evernote is awesome and that I should definitely look into it more. I’m also looking forward to checking out Content Rules for more writing tips and Plinky.com for blog post ideas.

After the talk, I had a fascinating conversation with Robin McRae and Ann Brocklehurst about information architecture and personal knowledge management. Lots to think about. Glad I went!

Check out Andy’s blog post below for slides and full notes. Looking forward to the next meetup!

Related links:

Visual book notes: How to Read a Book

Posted: - Modified: | book, reading, sketchnotes, visual-book-notes

Whenever I want to pick up more tips on how to read better, I turn to How to Read a Book. This is not some speed-reading manual that overpromises and underdelivers. It’s a thoughtful, practical guide to getting the most out of your reading: picking the right speed for a book, taking better notes, building a topical index of books and their relationships with each other… (Still working on that!) The book has plenty of tips for reading specific subjects, and even includes exercises to help you improve your skills.

If you already enjoy reading books, this is probably going to be a fantastic book for you. If you’re working on getting more books into your life, this might have some tips that will help you read more strategically.

How to Read a Book
Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren
New York: Simon & Schuster 1972 Rev. ed.
ISBN: 0-671-21209-5

Visual book notes: The Start-up of You (Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha)

Posted: - Modified: | book, career, connecting, sketchnotes, visual-book-notes

(Click image for a larger version)

The Start-up of You is a book about networking and career planning using tips pulled from the startup world, sprinkled with hip jargon such as “pivot” and “volatility.” It’s a decent book for people who are new to connecting or cultivating their network and who also like reading about technology and entrepreneurship. If you’re a fan of The Lean Startup and similar entrepreneurship books, The Start-up of You is like seeing those ideas applied to other parts of life. It’s easy to read, and it flows well.

I liked examples such as the “interesting people fund” and the idea of having A-B-Z plans. There are good tips for asking your network better questions (p208), too. If you’ve read a lot of other networking or career growth books, though, you might not come across many new aha! moments here, but it’s a good startup-influenced view at managing your own career.

The Start-up of You
Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha
2012: Crown Business
ISBN: 978-0307888907
(E-book and audiobook also available. The Toronto Public Library carries this book.)

Are you a visual learner? Check out my other sketchnotes and visual book notes!