Read this

I’ve been planning to put together a list… Pema’s suggested reading for tech entrepreneurs. 37Signal’s brilliant Getting Real will be in there, as well as Adam Morgan’s fantastic book about branding, Eating the Big Fish. I’m reading another one that will make the list, Founder at Work by Jessica Livingston.

Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with the founders of some of the highest profile and most successful tech startups of the last 10 years. There is Steve Wozniak of Apple, Max Levchin of PayPal, Mike Lazardis of RIM, Blake Ross of Firefox and 28 more.

Not surprisingly, the interviews make for pretty compelling reading. Livingston gets the founders talking honestly about the highs and lows of getting their companies off the ground. In totality, the book offers some great advice and paints a wonderful picture of what life is like inside a startup shooting toward mega success. Great inspiration.

Toronto gets a new building by Will Alsop

I’m late to this, but if you haven’t heard already Toronto is getting a new design by the British architect Will Alsop. The building will be the flagship for the mammoth new film studio development being installed in the portlands – Filmport.

Most people in Toronto will know Alsop by his incredible (and incredibly controversial) Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Although I’m by no means a raving Will Alsop fan I do really appreciate the amount of high profile commissioning going on in Toronto right now. Buildings like this pave the way for more innovative design in this city – something that benefits Toronto in many ways. There are the obvious pluses like increased tourism of course, but beyond that I think beautiful, challenging architecture creates a much more inspiring urban climate for citizens. When we are surrounded by buildings that challenge us I believe it becomes easier for us all to have thoughts and ideas beyond the ordinary and mediocre.

First impression of the Lee-Chin Crystal

I was lucky enough to visit the architectural opening of the Lee-Chin Crystal at the ROM today. Here are some first impressions:

Daniel Libeskind has created an incredibly bold piece of architecture for Toronto. I think the Crystal will give architects permission to push the boundaries a little more in a city that has a generally conservative approach to public space. Now architects can tell their critics, “sure, it’s a little crazy, but it’s not as crazy as Libeskind’s Crystal!”

There are a few areas in the Crystal that open up – the atrium and the top floor for example. These have a fantastic uplifting feel and are some of my favourite parts of the building.

Unfortunately, one of the main things people were discussing in the Crystal was the fact that it wasn’t finished. There were floor grills missing, loose wire hanging from the ceiling and muddy footprints on some of the low walls. For a lot of people it was hard to look past this.

At many points in the Crystal Daniel Libeskind shows us the mechanics of the building. He used floor grills, uncovered stairs and glass to give us an idea of how the building functions and what holds it together.

The light is, not surprisingly, pretty spectacular in some of the spaces. As I wandered through the building it was interesting to watch people drawn to it – congregating around the windows.

A building as spectacular as this certainly didn’t need balloons at the entrance :(.

One of my favourite things about visiting the opening of the Crystal this weekend was seeing how excited Toronto got about it. This was the line for tickets on Saturday. It stretched down University and a block into Harbord. It’s not often that architecture takes centre stage in Toronto and I’m very glad that this weekend it did.

FOR MORE ABOUT THE OPENING OF THE LEE-CHIN CRYSTAL:

• Marc at Torontoist has a great post with lots of photos.
• Kagan McLeod and John Richardson from The National Post created a cool animated fly through.
• And for the real fan, there is always the live webcam.

Built to test

The first book I recommend to anyone building a startup is Getting Real by the guys at 37 Signals.

Getting Real preaches the idea of rapid development: Building only what is absolutely necessary as quickly and cheaply as possible and then getting it in peoples hands.

Every once in a while I need a reminder of these principals, so I was happy this morning to get a mail from my friend Andrew with a link to a post from Trizoko. Here are the highlights:

Scenario: “Dude, we need to build a rockin’ beta-ready product first. Then, we’ll test it. Yay!”

The problem with waiting until your product reaches that beta stage?
Your financial risks increase exponentially in:
* Resources.
* Time.
* Morale.
* Lost opportunities.
* Cash, cash, cash.

Now, let’s say you build your beta-ready product 9 months later.
What if the market reacts negatively to that product?

The pessimistic side would tell you to give up.
The optimistic side would tell you: “Wait, that just means we have to refine the product to their needs more!”

You’re choosing the right path with that last answer. But when you do, it hits you:

“We wasted 9 months in lost resources, time, morale, lost opportunities, and cash — when we could’ve received the same frickin’ feedback 8 months earlier!”

Instead, do this:
Build something quickly that’s test-ready.
Then start testing the sucka.
Measure the results: Are they promising?
* If not, dump it — you just saved lots of resources for better innovations.
* If results however looking promising, juice up more investments into it.

Do that in a continuous cycle, and you’ll build one ridiculously awesome innovation machine.

270 Dose magazine covers

Before GigPark I was lucky enough to be part of Dose, as the founding editor-in-chief. Helping to build, launch and run this Canadian media company was one of the most exciting projects I have ever been involved in. The team were incredible and CanWest gave us a lot of freedom to have fun and build a good product.

Here are a few stats about Dose:

Magazine, website and mobile platform launched on April 4th 2005
Approximately 70 staff bassed in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver
By May 2006 we had:
> 331K daily readers of our magazine
> One-in-ten 18-24 year olds read the magazine daily
> 200K monthly unique visitors to dose.ca
> 76% brand awareness amongst 18-34 year olds
Dose was closed on May 17th 2006

One of my favorite jobs at Dose was helping create the cover each day. We would come up with a few ideas in the morning news meeting and then at noon would huddle up and answer the following questions:

1. What subject are people talking about or could they be talking about today?
2. What is the one simple idea we want to communicate about this subject?
3. How can we express the idea in the most simple, powerful way?

Our creative director, deputy editors and culture editor were always at the noon meeting along with one guest contributor. Sometimes the meetings were a fun 15 minutes, and sometimes they were a difficult hour, but the results were something we were proud of more often than not. Maybe the most amazing thing was the fact that after the meeting the designers, editors, photographers and illustrators had only 7 short hours to execute the idea and create the cover.

Every single member of the Dose staff contributed to our covers, but these people were instrumental:

Jaspal Riyait, Creative Director
Duncan Clark, Deputy Editor
Ryan MacDonald, Deputy Editor
Basem Boshra, Deputy Editor
Ronit Novak, Photo Editor
Jordan MacInnis, Photo Editor
Celine Wong, Culture Editor
Teena Aujla, Associate Art Director
Daniel DeSouza, Designer

Here are a few of my favorite Dose covers. Click on them to view the full flickr set:
(I promise to put all 270 of them on flickr when I find the time)

Tickets for the Mesh conference went on sale this morning

This was a fantastic event last year and from the list of confirmed speakers it looks like 2007 won’t disappoint. There is a lot of buzz and limited tickets so register early.

Check out the Mesh blog for new speaker announcements over the next few weeks.

Inspiration

I hope everyone has a few people in their lives like my friend Dre Labre. I can sit down in a cafe with Dre (like we do every few weeks) feeling uninspired and leave an hour later buzzing with ideas.

Inspiration comes from many places – but I enjoy it most when it comes from a good friend you can just *jam* with.