Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Building the New Economy

Kansas City finds itself at the forefront of creating a new economy. An economy that we are working on right now, regardless if we know it or not. Google Fiber is a catalyst but the real work will be done by people. People, not fiber, will build the Kansas City of tomorrow.

It's not easy to work on something new, keeping ones momentum can be difficult. As we build new services, products, companies and markets we will hit many bumps in the road; challenges that can rob people and teams of their energy. It can be helpful to keep the big picture in mind. The new American economy will be created with or without our help. We either work to implement our ideas now or read about someone else pulling it off; those are the only two options. The choice is always clear.

Friends, family, blogs, experts, strangers won't get it, they won't see it, they can't see it and you can't help them see it. But you can see it. You know it's there, even if it's still fuzzy.

Here's a great 10 minute TED Talk from Erik Brynjolfsson (he also coauthored a great book with Harvard professer Andrew McAfee, about many of the same concepts)

Erik talks about how this new economy is different, about where we've been and where we're going. This context gives new ideas, products and services an exceptional platform to stand on (or behind, new ideas often need protection!). It offers a framing for what's changing, what's different and why your work is so important. Even in those times you may forget.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Welcome to the latest tenant at the H4H house: Phil Jaycox!

Our latest hacker (officially #5 with the H4H program) moved in last Saturday. His name is Phil Jaycox and he's a fellow midwesterner from St. Louis.

Here's a great shot of him considering his next move during the white elephant gift exchange during Venture Fridays at Red Nova Labs last month. Yes, Phil visited the Homes For Hackers house when he was in KC in December. We're super-pumped that he was such a great fit for the program and decided to take the plunge and move to KC!

Phil's startup idea is called "CouriALL" and in his own words is: "a network of couriers/courier service to help provide delivery of products to smaller businesses that don't necessarily/normally ship or deliver".

Please give a warm welcome to Phil when you see him. He'll be checking out the weekly 1 Million Cups and KCSV sessions today for the first time!

Friday, December 28, 2012

The case for pure unadulterated speed

One thing I feel like I've learned with this whole homes for hackers gig is that I enjoy doing things fast. Sure you make more mistakes that way, but you get a ton of things done. You might make mistakes, but if the momentum is carrying you along, you can go back and fix the mistakes before anyone notices and faster than you would have done without the inertia in the first place.

Here's my quick list of the benefits of churning out things fast...

Benefits:

  • lots of stuff gets done quickly
  • gives you inertia to get the boring stuff done too
  • you can make mistakes, fix them and move on in less time than moving slow
  • you can prototype faster
  • get stuff to market faster
  • get feedback from users faster
  • it's fun! 
Of course there's some downsides too, like increasing your errors, lessening code quality, skipping over important details etc. But who wants to dwell on the boring stuff like that? 

Friday, December 21, 2012

Homes 4 Hackers Hits Airbnb

The H4H house is now officially listed on Airbnb! I'm still working on the final prices, but as of right now you can rent a Google Fiber-powered room at the hacker house for:
  • $49/night
  • $200/week
  • $600/month
In fact we have our first guest, Vince Vaughan, staying at the house today! Vince is a KC native living in Liberty that wanted to rent the room for a couple nights just to come to the house and check out the Google Fiber! 

Is this the start of a new fiber tourism industry for Kansas City?

UPDATE: One of the gripes I was having with the Airbnb listing was that the website specifically wouldn't allow me to use the phrase "Google Fiber". Any time I used that phrase, it was swapped out with the phrase "(website hidden)". Then today I received the following email:

Hi Ben,

My name is Naseem and I work as an engineer at Airbnb.  I noticed that we were scrubbing the word "google" from your listing here: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/841162  

We scrub various keywords to prevent people from taking transactions offline, since offline transactions are a major source of fraud.  Sorry for the inconvenience, we're figuring out how to improve this system.  In the meantime, we've updated the code to allow "google fiber", so you should be able to update your listing now.

Please let me know if you have any problems with this.

Thanks,
Naseem


HOW COOL IS THAT! I just love these Airbnb guys. Amazing. I had a customer service call with Crystal K yesterday and she was amazing too. Emailed me right back. No wonder these guys are kicking butt and taking names! 

Welcome to Kansas City: Nick Budidharma of LeetNode!

On Monday we had a new hacker move into the Homes for Hackers house on State Line: Nick Budidharma. Nick comes from South Carolina and is working on a gaming server startup called LeetNode. He's built several gaming servers already and has them co-located here in Kansas City. He's also a semi-professional gamer with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and spends disciplined amounts of time every night training for upcoming competitions.

Please extend a warm welcome to Nick if you see him around in the KCSV!

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Welcome to Kansas City: Synthia Payne of CyberJammer!

Last Sunday we helped Synthia Payne move into the Homes for Hackers house at 4428 State Line Road. Synthia's startup is the first one in the house that truly exploits fiber.

She's looking to use fiber to do distributed orchestras, remotely. Kinda like what musicians do when they want to work from home. Can't find a suitable place to book your choir rehearsal? Just do it all online with everyone playing from the comfort of their own home. Are you a music teacher that would love to do band contests with other schools? You could connect remotely to each other's classrooms and have a battle of the bands remotely, using fiber.

Less than 24 hours after officially moving in, Synthia was at the CityAge conference representing the KC Startup Village asking questions of the panel! Go Synthia! ... and welcome to Kansas City!

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

We Have Fiber!

Google Fiber is fully installed at the Hacker House as of 2pm today! A preliminary speed test showed speeds of 700MB down! Let's hope for even faster once the kinks are worked out. If you're in KC and curious, feel free to stop by the house at 4428 state line road, check it out and support the Homes for Hackers project wherever possible.

 Now to get an AirBnB room setup at the hacker house and have the first Google Fiber tourists!