Kawasaki's Books

If you haven't read Guy Kawasaki's last two books -- APE, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur -- and of course -- What the Plus: Google+ for the rest of us -- get over to Amazon and check them out!  Today's the day!

Brrrrr ...

Miss the beach?  It's definately winter!  Brrrrrr ...  

Going Bananas about APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch

I know a few million of you have probably already bought and read APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur - How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch which came out last night at midnight Pacific Coast Time, but for the rest of you, what's taking you so long? Just kidding, a little, but this is a book that so many people will find

FUN
FUNNY
INFORMATIVE
INSPIRATIONAL
INSPIRING
THOUGHTFUL
VIGOROUS
VISIONARY and
WONDERFUL!

Full disclosure, I know Guy and Shawn and worked with them on the last book, What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us, so I am a friend. Guy gives me cred in the acknowledgements section of this new book for just about forcing him to write it, so I am biased. But this book has so much more to offer than I thought it would in the beginning, I'm seriously impressed. It's so useful and practical, as well as amusing and inspiring, which you can count on from any Kawasaki book. As I wrote in a review of the book on Amazon, I can't think of anyone who shouldn't read this book. If you're a reader it's a must own. If you're a writer, it's essential. If you're a publisher, you can't live without it. And of course, entrepreneurs will love it.

Crossing i's and dotting t's -- I mean ...

Ever think about all the work that went into getting these books on a shelf?!   I do!   That's all I've been thinking about lately.

Exciting times here with my Kickstarter book project.  Again, thanks so much to all my supporters.  I've been meeting with editors and proofreaders to line them up -- a bit like finding a good midwife for a baby due in a few months.  They make it or break it honestly!  And as the title suggests, I can write the thing but I need someone else to cross the t's and dot the i's thank you very much.

Picture Credit:  CalTech Library

We Blog the World relaunching!

I was glad to hear what Renee Blodgett of We Blog the World has been up to lately.  She's just done a relaunch of her site and I asked her about it. 

1.       Why did you do the relaunch?

Renee Blodgett at We Blog The World

At We Blog the World, we realized that while there’s a lot of content for travelers out there on the web, there’s not a lot of content that is tailored around events, festivals and culture, specific to so many different countries under one umbrella. In other words, there is a wealth of resources on tourism sites for events and festivals specific to a region, however that content is hard to find and you have to do serious digging every time you want to go to a specific country or city. The content is fragmented at best.

Secondly, a lot of travel sites focus on either high-end luxury or they focus on adventure travel for backpackers when most of the world falls in between the two. Where does the discerning traveler go who’s already been to the popular hot spots and is yearning for more? We want to provide that content and a community that supports that interest and desire.

2.       Who’s your best audience and who do you want to reach?

We are trying to reach an educated savvy traveler who has done a lot of traveling but is yearning for more. We’re after those who think and ask:  I want to experience cultural events around things I care about most that will expand my mind: food/wine, arts, culture, entertainment, music and green/sustainability and what’s out there that I can experience beyond the traditional tours where I can expand my horizons, meet interesting people, grow and make a difference in the world? In other words: Renaissance thinking meets travel and cultural events. We are a catalyst that will connect the forces at play: those creating the experiences and those wanting to experience them and this is obviously worldwide not just in the U.S.

3.       Are you a global social media site? 

We’re not really a "social media" site, we’re a travel and culture site that is social media savvy. Our readers are heavy technology and mobile users who spend a lot of time online but also yearn for adventure. They also like to travel and want to expand their minds through new and unique experiences. Social media is a catalyst to help make that happen. Because We Blog the World heavily engages on a number of social media networks, we engage with our readers regularly and learn about what works and what doesn’t. Social media mobilizes things so much faster and we use social media to engage with our readers and to learn about what people love and don’t. We Blog the World readers come from the U.S., England, Canada, India, Australia, France, Singapore, Germany and the SE Asia in that order, although South America is growing organically.

Wow! Very exciting day here. My Kickstarter project was FUNDED! If you missed out and still want to fund my project, you can use my PayPal link up on the left ---> see it?


My fully funded project:  Founders Less Than Three video below!



Click here to check it out!

Getting Down to the Wire!

My Kickstarter has one week to go!  Please feel free to back me for  $25, $50, $100.  Best of all, if you pick the $125 level, you help me create a fictional start-up company and even make up a fiction CEO male or female. And that fictional way they will change the world with their fictional product -- it's all waiting for you!


Click here to check it out!

Sunday Morning Sermon:   Back to the School of God's Creation

It was still August and I started seeing "back-to-school" ads everywhere.  There were offers featuring yellow school buses, red school books, snacks for recess and the usual palate of orange, crimson and brown fall leaves.  It was hot and there was nothing autumnal about it.    Summer was weighing me down -- hot and humid -- all around me.  It was getting on my nerves, all this talk of 3-ring binders and pencils and pens.   It just wasn't the right time.

But then it happened.

About a week ago, I got up early,  as I usually do, to go for my walk on the bike path, tied on my sneakers and went out the door expecting the usual summer morning, maybe even a hot one, but instead there was a cool breeze and it was darker at 6:00 am than usual.  It got my attention.

I walked down the hill to the bike path, joining it in Arlington Heights, heading towards Lexington.  Not crossing too many people as I went -- a jogger here, a biker there.

My quiet morning's walk on the bike path is private and safe. The concerns of the day haven't started to take over my thoughts.  I haven't cast off the dreamy state of sleep quite yet.  The big green lush canopy of summer leaves welcomed me.  The full shady arch of leaves offers safe passage.   I still felt swaddled, held tight in the soft sleepwalk of dawn, with occasional bird songs to encouraged my steps,  but mostly wrapped in a comforter of quiet.

After a bit of bike path, crossing the line from one town into the next, I started to notice things.  I was waking up.   Things had changed.  It was fresh and cool.  Like a kid passing me a note in class, the breeze had a scribbled a message for me.  It  was was easy to read, spelling out the word September, in big letters, a month I love.

Now it was time for back-to-school specials.  And something very special was going on here.  I was back in the school of God's love and majesty.   I looked all the way up, to the tall tall trees, and was thrilled by what I saw.  It came in a flash of awareness.  I nearly blurted it out loud.

He did this.

He can do this.

All this.  The tall trees, the big, quiet forest, the chipmunk on the side of the path with his little paws, even the few people I saw -- made them.  I said "Good Morning" to each in passing, to honor them and him.  We were all in on this big secret.  You wanted to shout out, "Look at this!  Look at what he did!  He made this morning!"


All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.
All things wise and wonderful, our dear God made them all.  

And then I got it.   I recalled the big lesson I'd learned many times before, but was happy to be reminded of it.  The lesson of our faith.

How can we ever worry. or wonder, or fret over a single thing, when we live like this, in his love and grace?  In this majestic creation of his love?

Soon, He would take these leaves and with little effort, paint them in a riot of color -- splashes of vermilion and orange and yellow and a little green here and there, left behind, just to remind us he had made the lovely summer before. with all its ripe fruits and gardens full of vegetables and herbs,  and now would he lead us safely through autumn into winter.

Good trick.

But more than anything I was struck by a sense of knowing that when you walk in his world, with his son by your side, there is nothing but comfort there.  He leads us through long happy days of summer sun and he would lead us through bleak times of occasional hopelessness and darkness.  And we could still know one thing -- the important thing.

Nothing can hurt you when you walk with Him.  And if you must leave this earth in a sudden moment, or slowly, even painfully, what a friend you have.  What a guide.

Sometimes, you have to go back to school to remember this fundamental lesson of our faith, to know him.  To know he is always there.  To know you can let go and let God.  He's got your back, as some would say.

And to be reminded that we need only thank him on a regular basis, by sharing our kindness and faith with others.  That this is our business.  This is the way to thank him for the profound mysteries all around us, which he executes without a hitch.  We're talking about the guy who knocked off the Earth in 7 days.

So let me end with hoping you'll take a morning walk on the bike path and be thankful for all his gifts.  We're about to enjoy one of the best ones -- autumn in New England.  And I'll close with some of the words to the hymn, All Things Bright and Beautiful, just to celebrate our thankfulness.

The cold wind in the winter, 
the pleasant summer sun, 
the ripe fruits in the garden, 
God made them every one. 

I Get Knocked Down:  Still Anything is Possible

It's the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend and I dropped a bunch of teens off at coffee shop in Arlington. They're young, sexy, pretty and handsome, thrilled to be heading into Harvard Square on the bus to knock around. And they are excited, happy, silly. Are you?

I pull away and I'm trying to put my finger on that feeling. It's the feeling that anything is possible.  Anything!




And I'm thinking,  Shit, that's it!  That's what it feels like to be an entrepreneur! That's the feeling you get in an accelerator! You are surrounded by BRAVE, CRAZY, ANYTHING-IS-POSSIBLE people 24x7 and once you've experienced that, it's a bitch to live any other way.

I mean face it, most businesses are all about, "Oh sorry, we don't do that here," or "Oh no, we've always done it this way," or "Why reinvent the wheel?"

Okay, ready, SOMETIMES THE WHEEL NEEDS REINVENTING! And that's what enterpreneurs have -- insane amounts of optimism and the ability to jump on an opportunity and make something happen.

Whether they're chasing a hot girl down the street, chatting up a stranger in a bar, reimagining how a time-honored practice can be completely revamped, they are open to all possibility.

What a way to live! On the edge of possibility, creativity, chutzpah and welcoming new ways of thinking and bringing new products and things into being.  They try things.  They fail on a regular basis.  They are ready to try try again.

Oh yeah! They get knocked down but they get up again!  He sings the songs that remind him of the good times.

And that's what I'm writing about.  Thanks again for all the support.

Thanks to my fellow Kickstarter project managers for sharing their stories last night at our event at the Microsoft NERD (New England Research & Development Center) in Cambridge. Laurie Kahn, who just hit her pledge goal yesterday spoke about her project Love Between the Covers, a documentary film about romance writers. Joel Brown left beautiful Newburyport to visit the city and talk about his guide book to the gorgeous area around his home -- The Essex Coastal Byway Guide. Check it out here. Ian Schon added his great Pen Project to the other bibliophile projects. His pen is terrific and like the others, despite making their goals, you can find them all on Kickstarter and still buy into all three. And my project is starting to take baby steps -- it's only 2 days old -- and you can find my Founders Less Than Three video here.

Kickstarter

So here goes! I'm kicking off my Kickstarter project today, with a little help from my friends. It's called Founders Less Than Three and you can support it right here!

It's a novel all about entrepreneurs -- five CEO guys and five CEO girls and their teams are building new companies from scratch and racing to get funding.  Boston is the best place in the world to found a start-up and my enterprenerds come from all over the world.

It's early here in Boston and I am thinking about my characters getting up, washing their faces, getting ready for the day. It's 5:30am, so a bunch of them have been working all night at their offices at Kendall Square. It's just one of those things, you figure you'll grab the T in time to get home late and then you just keep working through the night instead.

If you haven't tried Kickstarter, this is a great time to join. You can support my project for as little as a $1.00 and there's no complicated sign-up process and all that. Have you ever bought anything from Amazon? If so, then that's all you do with Kickstarter -- it all runs through Amazon and you don't even pay for a month (and only if my project gets fully funded.) So try it out and be sure to peruse the other amazing creative projects over at Kickstarter as well.

Guy Kawasaki's Cool New Stuff

Guy Kawasaki's set up a mailing list if you want cool stuff about his upcoming books and other projects he's been working on.  Just go to this link.

Congrats to Psykosoft!

If you were at TechStars Boston this past year, you noticed a truly fun, nutty, excellent, international, mega-creative team called Psykosoft, run by Mathieu Gosselin who is CEO but calls himself the "Mad Captain" btw.  He's French.

Psykosoft just got $500K from Atlas Venture -- you know that guy Fred Destin -- and Balderton in London -- they are super cool and that means painting like a master just got a lot easier!  

Here's the serious version with lots of nice links to talk to these guys.

You'll be talking to them for sure, since this is pretty painting software that will work on the mysterious Microsoft #Surface.

PSYKOPRESS RELEASE

PSYKOSOFT, graduate of TechStars Boston 2012, secures $500k seed funding for product innovation and global talent search

June 22, 2012 

Cambridge, MA

Tours, France

Munich, Germany 

Copenhagen, Denmark. 

This press release comes from many places because Psykosoft, the ‘crazy creative software factory’, knows the creative class is spread across the globe.  As the creators of the winning web app, Psykopaint, the international team at Psykosoft is thrilled to announce they have raised a $500K seed round co-led by Boston-based Atlas Venture and London’s Balderton capital with angel investments from executives at Harmonix (Guitar Hero) and Brightcove.   

Psykopaint, the company’s flagship app, is already attracting more than a million unique visitors a month, with a growth path that is doubling every few months.  

Just as Instagram lets you stylize your photos, Draw Something dares you to show off your silly sketches, now Psykopaint lets you paint like a great master, literally in the style of Renoir, Monet or Van Gogh.  

Psykosoft was born in the premier accelerator in Europe, London’s Seedcamp last year and then in January 2012 was chosen to be in TechStars Boston, the very selective Kendall Square accelerator program.  

Psykosoft CEO, Mathieu Gosselin will use this investment to attract a dream team of top talent across the web, who will speed Psykosoft’s development as they perfect new ways to create and paint from photos, focusing on the Apple iPad and Windows 8 platforms, including the new Microsoft Surface.   

In fact, Psykopaint is one of the leading creativity apps already available in the Windows 8 Store.  “We’ll use this money to hire awesome people, make the tablets versions amazing and create other new top secret products,” Gosselin explains. 

As Gosselin has said, “At Psykosoft we’re crazy. We believe in originality, we believe in personality, we believe in emotions … Things that are not usually associated with software, but software is just a means to an end. And the goal is to make an artist out of everyone.”

Psykosoft will put creativity tools, which are fun, original and easy to use, into the hands of users of all ages.  Gosselin, will source the best talent, across the world, in the places they love to work, live, and innovate.  His current team already includes some of the top talent in the field, including an ex-lead developer of Aviary, the exciting suite of web-based creativity apps. 

Mathieu understands how truly creative people work and says wisely, “If you were building a sports team, you’d search worldwide to find the best talent.  Location shouldn’t matter. Amazing people are dispersed like nodes on an intelligent network, they don’t always live near you and they don’t always want to gather in the same stupidly busy and expensive place.  If you are in Beijing, Belarus, Beirut or Bellevue but share our vision, love to create stuff and have talent doing so, I don’t care where you are, I want you!” 

Please contact Mathieu Gosselin for  any questions

Email: mathieu@psykosoft.net 

Phone: +33 6 40 30 39 76

Skype: peutichat

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/psykosoft

Psykopaint (The Web app): http://www.psykopaint.com

Psykosoft (Company site): http://www.psykosoft.net

Mathieu Gosselin self-portrait made with Psykopaint:

http://images.psykopaint.com/gallery/2012/06/fullsize/297407.jpg

http://www.psykopaint.com/gallery.html#/painting/297407

Psykosoft Logo:

http://psykosoft.net/assets/images/branding/psykosoftLogo.png

Psykopaint Windows 8 Screenshots:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5mtoo2dqfms1ofe/UGK905hj2t

Psykopaint Web Screenshots:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ua7nb3a5y68p9gh/qWjjoE4O2O

Techstars pitch video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6LXQnSentg

About Atlas Venture:

http://www.atlasventure.com

About Balderton Capital:

Balderton Capital is one of the largest venture capital firms in Europe, committed to finding and helping talented entrepreneurs build great companies. Based in London, it manages $1.9 billion in committed venture capital. Since 2000, Balderton has invested in over 100 companies, principally in numerous European countries but also in the US and Asia. Notable investments include Bebo (sold to AOL for $850m), Betfair (floated on the LSE in 2010), LOVEFiLM (sold to Amazon in 2011), ScanSafe (sold to Cisco Systems for $183m) and MySQL (sold to Sun for $1 billion). 

http://www.balderton.com

I Paint Like a Master

My PsykoPaint painting of "When Meteors Visit Tuckerman's Ravine"

Yoga Time

When you do yoga you think about breathing, it's true, but you also think about time.  Time is a crazy animal, very sly, hard to figure out, sometimes shy.  Every morning when you show up on the yoga mat, time might feel like little wooden blocks, maybe with M, T, W, Th, F, S and S stamped on them.  Alphabet blocks that you pile up day by day, moment by moment.  Or time might feel like water flowing to you, through you, around you.  Or maybe time feels like wind.  Pushing your back some days or wafting past you others.

When you do yoga, time is always playing tricks with you, or more accurately, the way you experience time is so different from one session on the mat to the next you could swear some greater force is messing with your mind.  

I do a set of yoga exercises from a great Rodney Yee DVD most mornings and of all the benefits it delivers -- physical, mental, psychological -- what it really shows me is how our consciousness of time is so mutable.

My experience of time is sometimes quiet and slow moving like an old horse in a soft green pasture. Other times, my awareness is flying in all directions like a wild bird flapping its wings madly, trying to escape to the bigger blue sky.  Even worse, some mornings my thoughts are just ping ponging and ricocheting from wall to wall and to calm them down seems next to impossible.

Try it some time.  Give it some time.  High time you did.  And, oh yeah, namaste!

Photo Credit:  Gaiam