Skmmr got picked to be part of TechCocktail!

Just got some great news. Skmmr has been selected among a handful of companies to present tomorrow night at TechCocktail in Boulder.

Eric, Andy and I have worked very hard on Skmmr and we’re excited to show it off.

We’d love your feedback as we roll out the beta very, very soon. Sign up to be a part of it here.

Skmmr (beta) - Tell your friends what to read.

Friends,

I’m incredibly proud to be releasing Skmmr in the very near future. Skmmr is a web app that lets you create a small, intimate circle and push content directly to your friends and loved ones through those same circles. That’s about all I can say for now. 

Eric Magnuson and I are behind Skmmr. It was beautifully designed by Andy Stone.

Give us your email and we’ll send you an invite to the beta shortly. We can’t wait for you to begin to share the content you’re passionate about through Skmmr!

Could Customer Service Usurping Be a Business?

This idea came to me around my fourth or fifth call to Comcast/Xfinity today, trying to get help with a strange problem affecting my cable modem.

What if, instead of calling the actual company related to your problem, you could call a third-party service, one that could help in a variety of areas, encompassing many, many companies’ knowledge bases?

This third-party service wouldn’t have mandatory scripts to read from; they’d do their best to do the right thing to help you out, looking in places such as their knowledge database or simply Googling for your problem, in an attempt to synthesize that information quickly and help you understand it better.

We complain so much about customer service when it’s bad and praise companies with extraordinary service. Yet it seems like nothing can be done about the bad companies.

Yes, a Google search can fix a lot of problems. I’ve found that when I’m looking for a specific answer, reading through forum threads that may or may not pertain to my question seem to be a waste of time most of the time. 

Is there a reason that Comcast needs to know my name and address before they can proceed to help me? Not really.

Why can’t I call up a friendly person who hears my problem and does their best to help. In the future, I only want to call someone if A) I absolutely have to have the company solve my problem, or B) I need a technician to come out to my home.

I think this is a legitimate business idea.

Please share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to know what you think. 

Why You Should Produce a Lot

Get Excited and Make Things

Across all forms of art there are those that produce in obnoxious and sometimes obsessive amounts. The Beatles, Tupac and Lil Wayne are just a few artists off the top of my mind that I pulled from this list of compulsive creators. There is a lot they can teach us about churning out work.

Not everything you produce will be a hit

This should be a fundamental understanding. Not everything you do will be popular or go viral. It doesn’t matter how popular you are online or offline, there are people somewhere who genuinely enjoy your work. And that number doesn’t matter.

We work things out when we create

Last week I was talking with my old Editor-In-Chief from the CU Independent, and I was telling her about my interest in getting back into blogging. She told me just to do it; the concerns that I had about what I was writing about would work themselves out with time.

As you produce, you work through things: emotions, fears, et cetera. Musicians are one of the best examples of this, pouring their souls into your favorite lyrics while working through those same emotions.

Practice

Every time you do something, you get better at it. The more novice you are, the greater and more noticeable your leaps are in proficiency. 

Keep making things. Talent is the desire to practice. And, most importantly, go have some fun.

thenavesinkbanks:

American Slang @ The Revival Tour (Brian Fallon/Chuck Ragan/Dan Andriano/Dave Hause)

it really doesn’t get better than this, does it?

Nope. It doesn’t.

Source: thenavesinkbanks

How Utah Will Soon End Homelessness

Utah gives the homeless homes, job training, social services like abuse prevention and access to mental health professionals and it works!

Incredible story.