Een lifestream door Coen Meerbeek

Shipping is fraught with risk and danger.

Every time you raise your hand, send an email, launch a product or make a suggestion, you're exposing yourself to criticism. Not just criticism, but the negative consequences that come with wasting money, annoying someone in power or making a fool of yourself.

It's no wonder we're afraid to ship.

It's not clear you have much choice, though. A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it's certain to lead to ennui and eventually failure.

Since you're going to ship anyway, then, the question is: why bother indulging your fear?

In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he's tired. Everyone is. That's not the point. The point is to run.

Same thing is true for shipping, I think. Everyone is afraid. Where do you put the fear?

Interessante presentatie. De vraag van Bas Koster is echter wel valide! Hij vraagt zich af hoe je om moet gaan met de quote van 37Signals. Quote: 'Treating content as a category on its own is missing the point entirely. Nobody cares about content. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, hey, I should read some content today.'

There's a gulf between hourly work and linchpin work.

You should pay people by the hour when there are available substitutes. When you rely on freelancers you can put a value on their time based on what the market is paying. If there are six podiatrists in town, and all can heal your foot, the going rate is based on their time and effort, not on the lifetime use of your foot.

On the other hand, if there are no short term substitutes, then you don't pay what the market will bear, instead you pay what someone is worth. Big difference.

Consider, for example, someone putting together a series of concerts for which they intend to sell subscriptions or even have the musicians sell tickets.

They could seek out pretty good musicians and imagine that paying them $500 or more per hour is very fair compensation. After all, that's more than a podiatrist gets, and she gives you back the use of your foot.

But when they find a linchpin, someone who will either make it easier for them to sell subscriptions or will bring an audience with them, the question isn't how much time it took for the musician to do her set, the question is what did she bring in terms of value, right? An indispensable person, someone with a rare asset, has few substitutes and an hourly rate makes a lot less sense.

So, if a musician is going to sell 300 subscriptions for you and you earn $200 a subscription from that effort, that person just added $60,000 worth of value. Who cares if it took a minute or a day? What's on the table is who gets what portion of the value added...

I had a college professor who did engineering consulting. A brand new office tower in Boston had a serious problem--there was a brown stain coming through the drywall, (all of the drywall) no matter how much stain killer they used. In a forty story building, if you have to rip out all the drywall, this is a multi-million dollar disaster. They had exhausted all possibilities and were a day away from tearing out everything and taking a loss. They hired Henry in a last-ditch effort to solve the problem. He looked at the walls and said, "I think I can work out a solution, but it will cost you $45,000 if I succeed." They instantly signed on, because if he succeeded, the project would be saved.

Henry asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the name of a common hardware store chemical and handed it to them. "Here, this will work." And then he billed them $45,000. That's quite an hourly wage. It's also quite a bargain.

A newspaper asked me the following, which practically set my hair on fire:

What inherent traits would make it easier for someone to becoming a linchpin? Surely not everyone can be a linchpin?

Why not? How dare anyone say that some people aren't somehow qualified to bring emotional labor to their work, somehow aren't genetically or culturally endowed with the seeds or instincts or desires to invent new techniques or ideas, or aren't chosen to connect with other human beings in a way that changes them for the better?

Perhaps we need people to sweep the floor or clean the deep fryer. But it doesn't have to be you...

Some people want to tell you that your DNA isn't right, or you're not from the right family or neighborhood. I think that's wrongheaded.

Bob Marley grew up in one of the poorest villages in the world. Sir Richard Branson has dyslexia that makes it difficult for him to read. Hugh Masakela grew up in Witbank, a coal mining town. It's not just musicians and entrepreneurs, of course. The Internet makes it possible for a programmer in Russia or a commentator in South Africa to have an impact on a large group of people as well.

We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that the factory approach (average products for average people, compliance, focus on speed and cost) is the one and only way. It's not.

We make a difference to other people when we give gifts to them, when we bring emotional labor to the table and do work that matters. It's hard for me to imagine that this is only available to a few. Yes, the cards are unfairly stacked against too many people. Yes, there's too many barriers and not enough support. But no, your ability to create and contribute isn't determined at birth. It's a choice.

Leuke video van Dan Pink over motivatie. Niet beter dan zijn TED presentatie maar nog steeds interessant!

Yes, I know you're a master of the web, that you've visited every website written in English, that you've been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny.

But what have you shipped?

What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?

Go, do that.

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Spanning Sync v3.1.1 Now Available

Spanning Sync v3.1.1 is now available as an automatic update for all existing users. New users can always download the latest version at spanningsync.com/download.

(Spanning Sync 3 requires Leopard or Snow Leopard. Tiger users should continue to use v2.1.3.)

What's New in Spanning Sync v3.1.1:

• Fixed a problem where contacts with an invalid URL could cause the sync to abort
• The user is now notified of software updates without having to open the pref pane
• Delete protection is handled better when calendar filtering of old events is turned on
• Now syncs the contact "department" property
• Syncing of the calendar "classification" property can be turned off
• Fixed an error ("attempt to insert nil") that could halt the sync
• Fixed a problem where the background notifier app wouldn't relaunch after an upgrade

As always, this upgrade is free for paid subscribers. New users can download Spanning Sync to start a 15-day free trial.

Spanning Sync is only $25 for a one year subscription or $65 for a one-time purchase, plus $5 off with a discount code.