A few random thoughts jumbled up and put together. 

Ran the first part of the workshop with Hella this morning and I think it went really well. I enjoyed the questions and how we found our way through trying a bunch of tools until we landed on a few core decisions. 

I’m particularly proud that I held myself back on giving too much judgmental input – As in: When faced with a decision, I asked them what they think makes sense and refused to say what I’d choose – to avoid influencing them. The data should speak for itself. 

A few things: I would probably not go into the market because it’s tiny, enterprisey and hard to find the person that cares the most about it. 

But they’re set on it and they’re being paid a salary so I guess I can understand why they’d go ahead anyways. 

They chose COO as core customer segment #1 which I think isn’t the right one. I think we found that CIOs are much more likely to respond to their message. But they chose COOs so that’s fine. It’s their venture. 

I’m still at Factory, decided to spend time here before heading out. Checked in with Niels for a beer at 7pm but I don’t think he’ll respond back in time. I’ll have to ask earlier to give him a chance to plan ahead a little. 

Who would I like to see of my friends? Jonathan comes to mind. Clemens is cool. Niels of course. Volker, haven’t seen him in a while. 

That’s already a good list. 

The daily planner is going really well, I like it. I invested some money into a nice Moleskine book and so I probably also want to like it but it’s good to do the goals by hand every day. As Grant Cardone said, I’ll have hand-written my goals 700 times by end-of-year. 

So, that I really like. 

For C Space I think we got all things out of the way yesterday so we’ll probably welcome new members tonight or tomorrow. 

Was a little stressful yesterday but we made it work. 

Gonna see Franzi tomorrow. Then she’ll be gone for a while traveling. And we’ll have part 2 of the workshop tomorrow to start running the first ad. 

I think it’s a good format. Plus I already can imagine a second course at a higher price-point. 

Plus, if I do it well tomorrow, I can branch out into other teams and maybe even other accelerators. That’d be nice. 

Gotta make sure I get a good video testimonial from Jonathan, Henry, Soeren, Peer, Tomas and Patrick. That’s actually a really nice list right there. They all have something different to say and I helped them all!

And I’d do it for free, too, because it’s a lot of fun. 

So, yeah, nothing exactly to write about besides just downloading a bunch of strands of life. 

I guess I’m also a little tired from the workshop but not TOO tired to write. It may get really cold on the bike ride home. We’ll see. From tomorrow on, I’ll probably put on the ski mask to keep a warm head. My mom bought that for me. It worked well last year. 

What else? Been posting regularly but I’m really not sure what to share today. 

Because I shared so much already with Tomas and Patrick. 

We scanned. 

Market Scanning. 2nd degree Cybernetics.

For Market Researchers: Social Trends is a free tool that lets you stay ahead of the curve by giving you the fastest growing Meetups in the ‘taste-maker’ cities of New York, Berlin, London and San Francisco.

Trend Watch Focus Berlin

There is a ton of activity in Berlin, Meetups are happening left and right. Over the course of the last year, I’ve seen oodles of fitness, social entrepreneurship and Blockchain-related Meetups come and go.

But today, I would like to share with you a shortlist of interesting communities that have shown consistent growth and strong “gravity” attracting high numbers of members.

Meetup.ai

Started only 8 months ago, Meetup.ai is a community built around Artificial Intelligence. With a consistent growth rate it has attracted 1,422 members to date.

From the founders:

Witness AI in Action
We believe in creating opportunities and connecting people with technology that goes beyond theoretical knowledge to real world applications. We believe in challenging the status quo and the unlimited power of technology to lift society into the next era

Professional Network
We invite everybody to an exchange of knowledge and offer an open environment for people to connect, find inspiration and imagination. We are shaping a community of exceptional personalities that has the sheer potential to push the limits beyond imaginable achievements

Conferences, Meetups, Workshops
We are hosting these kind of events, enabling people to enhance their personal understanding for the realistic applications of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and other disruptive technologies that will shape the world of tomorrow. We are providing resources and bringing great speakers to Hamburg for them to share their fascinating stories and unique insights from real world projects

Naturally, Artificial Intelligence is experiencing a huge lift over the past two years. Oddly, I haven’t seen as many growing Meetups around this topic in Berlin. Meetup.ai clearly has put in the work and that’s why I think you should keep an eye on them moving forward.

Zero Waste Berlin

A beautiful social movement to reduce waste to zero is a Meetup perfectly suited to Berlin. While “only” 257 members as of today, the constant growth, regardless of seasons, shows how it is a consistent concern to people in Berlin.

If you look at the curve below, you’ll see very smooth and straight growth which makes me think it will continue to grow organically for the coming year. And with that I expect to hear more about Zero Waste in the future!

Token Engineering

The Berlin Token Engineering Meetup is another high-growth community that has attracted over 500 members in the past 6 months. Overall, a nice growth curve with an acceleration between June and September with an otherwise constant trajectory.

With more than a few hundred Blockchain Meetups in Berlin alone, this one stands out by having grown to 500 members around the very technical aspect of the field of token engineering. With this kind of growth I expect this community to continue to thrive and prosper.

From the founders:

Come join us and plant seeds for an active and intelligent community around which we can build a new engineering field - Token Engineering.

My HumanCharger device is finally here, after a long, long, long, long wait.

I’m very excited and happy!

Here are a few things I noticed:

Unboxing and First Impressions:

• Nice, clean packaging
• Easy to open
• Was able to turn it on right away
• The device itself is made of smooth metal and feels nice
• The earplugs seem standard, made of plastic and rubber
• The LEDs are smaller (2mm diameter) than I expected and as bright as I can imagine they get (not blindingly bright though)
• There are bright LEDs in the ear-plugs and not “fiber-optic cable endpoints” as Oleksii and I had theorized for heat-management.

• Technical specifications from the booklet:

  • Typical session duration: 12 minutes
  • Average light intensity: > 10,000 lux (within 1cm of the LED)
  • Peak wavelength: 450nm

First Use

• The earplugs fit comfortably in my ears though I’m not sure if they’re positioned correctly. No guidance found in the booklet.
• The earplugs got warm but not uncomfortably so.
• The battery was empty less than 10 minutes after start. I think that it was low on power to begin with, so I’m charging it now. That makes sense, I didn’t expect it to be 100% charged.

So, right now I’m waiting for a re-charge and the experiment will begin by tomorrow morning. I’ll probably write a few more posts on the progress I’m making with the HumanCharger.

Over the last year I went on a deep-dive to learn a new skill: How to market and, by extension, how to sell products that I love.

I’ve enjoyed the learning-process. But to be honest, I’m frustrated because my progress has also been slow.

Well, the good news is… I’m finally “getting there” to a point where I can finally perform.

But, maaaaannn, this took much longer than I expected.

This made me think about how I absorb new things…

First off, I’m a total “single-tasker.”

Yet, once I’ve absorbed it, I can speed up execution and perform fast. Over and over again.

I want to believe that – while my enthusiasm goes full Dunning-Kruger – my performance compounds over time.

I see others breeze through what takes me days, weeks and months. It’s hard not to feel down sometimes.

My “slow but steady” learning style has been my mode of operation since University. Instead of taking all required courses, I usually took half the amount.

While half as fast as others, I was usually top of my class in each of the courses I did take.

Well… when I’m learning something new, I can tell that my brain is completely focused and engaged. I can’t think of anything else for that period.

It’s like when you learned to ride a bike.

In the beginning it was hard and slow. You gotta keep your balance, move your feet, steer with your hands.

It required full attention and time to practice and “sink in.”

Then, with a little bit of consistent practice it got easier and required less attention. To the point where you don’t have to think about it but do.

So, long story short. I’ve learned a lot this year. It took me much longer than I expected.

It’s been very frustrating…

But I’m also noticing how it’s becoming easier and easier every day.

I wanted to give an update on my usage of Giraffe.app – My personal Goal-Setting, Plan-Making and Task-Executing workflow.

Reaching Cruising Altitude

It’s been great. Actually better than that. This week I finally started to achieve “cruising altitude” by executing relatively consistent. Look at the image below. After relaunching and losing the old track-record and a severe cold 2 weeks ago, I’m finally getting to a consistent output per day. So instead of big spikes and low valleys, I’m stoked to start seeing consistency.

Adding Sparklines For Balance

Sparklines help me balance out my efforts by seeing which venture has gotten a lot of attention while others lie dormant. I use them for quick glances on what to work on next to ensure progress on all fronts.

Add Fun With the Mascot

I like having the little Giraffe as part of the UI. Makes it more fun. Less technical and it makes me smile a few times a day. He’s so silly!

Snappy Response-Times

The UI is still snappy and fast, even after adding 100+ tasks over the last weeks. The Execute tab loads in 562ms (aka. Half a second) which means the rewrite was worth the time and effort.

Simpler and Fullscreen Mobile View

Another small change based on using the app on mobile every day. I made it so it’s fullscreen now, and I removed a lot of the noisy elements (breadcrumbs, sparklines, charts, headings) to come up with a simple, effective list.

Overall, I’m stoked and excited and am proud of using it every day while maintaining consistently productive output.

As you may or may not know, I built a Meetup Monitoring Tool last year that allows market enthusiasts like myself to:

“Discover the Fastest-Growing Community Trends Today So You Can Stay 2 Steps Ahead Of the Curve … Without Wasting Hours On Fruitless Research”

I started about a year ago keeping track of the Meetup member counts in Berlin, then quickly expanded to New York, London and San Francisco. By today I have a 365 day data-set of growth for each Meetup in those cities. It’s really cool I think!

Each day you can get the Top 10 Fastest Growing Meetups per city and it looks like this:

You’ll see the list sorted by Growth – Which means that Meetups are on top that rapidly grew. Note that sometimes, the Meetups are still very small. In the example above, “SF Dating, Relationships and Sexuality” is on top while it has “only” 150 members.

Let’s look at it more closely to confirm. It went from 1 member to 150 which means it grew fast. Secondly, and in a way more important, the progress is nice and steady. It’s got a healthy, continuous growth curve.

However, the ranking is just machine-based, simple math. It takes a little bit of human research to spot really interesting topics beyond the growth rate (I’m working on an AI solution to make even this part automated, but for now, bear with me)

Based on the data of the past 90 days I’m beginning to call out the Meetups that you should know about before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon. So, without further ado, here’s the first one:

🔥This Month’s Hottest Meetup in San Francisco 🔥

Starfish Mission

As far as I can see, the hottest Meetup in San Francisco this month is “Starfish Mission.”

Why? Because it has an outstanding growth rate and insanely steady, geometric growth over the last 7 months! Consistent growth, steep slope and more than 1,500 members at this point. I think you should keep an eye on this one. Note that it doesn’t have to be in the No.1spot to be the most interesting!

You many wonder: “What is Starfish Mission?”

As per the organizers:

"Starfish Mission is a blockchain centric co-working ecosystem inspired by the passion of the local bay area blockchain community. The organization’s mission is to inspire collaboration, promote education, and unity amongst the many in the community who seek to change the world using blockchain and decentralized ledger technology."

This Meetup started 7 months ago.

Here is a close-up to give you a more detailed view.

Over the coming days I am planning to publish more further Meetups that I think you should be aware of.

If you want to stay ahead of everyone else on these emerging trends, shoot me an email at Alexis dot Rondeau At Gmail dot Com and I’ll put you on my private email list. You’ll then get the fastest-growing Meetups before everyone else.

I totally forgot to mention this, but I made a card deck last year that has helped me explore and discover needs as part of my personal development.

I’ve used the deck to rapidly and easily identify and understand those parts of my life that were either helping me move forward or that were holding me back emotionally.

It’s also a radically insightful tool for…

• Relationship Development
• Customer Needs Research
• Design Research

In short, the cards are like “Google Maps for Your Needs and Feelings”

The list comprises of about 50-60 core needs published at Center of Non-Violent Communication’s website which has the following (incomplete) list of needs and desires:

CONNECTION acceptance affection appreciation belonging cooperation communication closeness community companionship compassion consideration consistency empathy inclusion intimacy love mutuality nurturing respect/self-respect safety security stability support to know and be known to see and be seen to understand and be understood trust

PHYSICAL WELLBEING warmth air food movement/exercise rest/sleep sexual expression safety shelter touch water HONESTY  authenticity integrity presence PLAY  joy humor PEACE  beauty communion ease equality harmony inspiration order AUTONOMY  choice freedom independence space spontaneity

MEANING awareness celebration of life challenge clarity competence consciousness contribution creativity discovery efficacy effectiveness growth hope learning mourning participation purpose selfexpression stimulation to matter understanding

(© 2005 by Center for Nonviolent Communication Website: www.cnvc.org Email: cnvc@cnvc.org Phone: +1.505-244-4041)

Why Use Needs As a Starting Point For Personal Development?

A major reason to use these “Needs” as my starting point for personal investigations was that, according to one school of thought, emotions (positive and negative ones) are always the result of an important need that’s either met (positive feelings) or unmet (negative feelings.)

Universal Needs, Individual Responses

Furthermore, while needs are relatively universal, the individual response to them are highly individual. I find this deeply fascinating.

For example, if I’m currently in need of community and that need is met, I may feel positively calm.

Someone else may feel positively excited for the same reason.

If my need for community isn’t met, I may feel negatively frustrated while someone else may feel negatively bored:

So, to better understand my emotions (and my actions that come from them) I use the inventory of needs to navigate an otherwise complex ball of golden twine also know as my psyche.

There are a bunch of ways to use the cards, but I’ve found two that work the best for me.

Strategy 1: Drive By Intuition

The first one is simply to spread out the cards unsorted and start to pick out those cards that I intuitively respond to. Once I’ve found a handful or so needs that I’m interested in, I start to discuss them with a partner or coach or simply with myself.

The main questions then are:

• Is this a met or unmet need?
• How does it make me feel?
• If it’s an unmet need, what can I do to change that?

The last question can quickly drive out an action I can take today to make my life better.

Strategy #2: Dump and Sort

The second strategy is even simpler and just as effective to get to a selection of met, unmet and irrelevant needs:

For each card, I ask myself:

• Is this an important, met need?
• Is this an important, unmet need?
• Is this an irrelevant need at the moment?

Going through each card, I wind up with three stacks: MET, UNMET and IRRELEVANT.

I then focus on the UNMET needs again because they contribute to my feeling the most unease and devise action items to solve them.

Needs are Values

I never really connected with when people, and more often, companies, talked what their values. It just seemed so abstract. Co-incidentally, discovering important needs also becomes the list of my personal values. Things that I value above all else.

Still got a few packs

**Sorry, all sold out at the moment! **

Last but not least, I still have a few packs that I produced last year. If you’re ready to turn on your own “Google Maps to Your Psyche” and discover and understand yourself more deeply, let me know. I’m selling them for $47 per pack.

Just shoot me an email at Alexis dot Rondeau at Gmail dot com and, if I still have a set, I’ll mail it to you.

Cheers!

Wednesday afternoon, at home, not crazy about being here but I think I’m dragging out the cold I got over a week ago, so I took a nap just now and feel better. Didn’t feel up to bar at all this morning and still went on a nice bike-ride with my dad. We visited Factory which I decided isn’t a place that I want to go to anymore. 

I also realized, based on my father’s observation, that the vibe of people sitting alongside long tables in silence at their computers totally feels like a factory. That they look like factory workers, quietly typing along and not talking to each other. 

I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ve felt so alienated there for so long. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. 

So, I think it’ll be best to cancel my subscription this week and avoid paying another $130 per month for a place that I don’t enjoy. I’ll be able to put that money towards things that give me joy and move me forward. It’s kinda sad because the Factory building is really nice. But I also realized that the endless amount of heavy doors you have to open and close to get from A to B really disrupts my flow of thinking and working. 

I also think I will cancel my Drip.com subscription and the Javelin.com subscription, too. In both cases I can use other, cheaper services. I will keep my Clickfunnels subscription because that’s been really working well. It’s a good tool and I’m learning a lot with it. For Drip I can use Mailchimp for which I still have an account. For Javelin I’m already using Evernote instead. 

What else? 

What would I like to share today? Brainstorm…

• Birthday dinner
• Taking care of yourself when you’ve got a cold
• Getting better after a cold took much longer than I expected. I’m on day 10 and still don’t feel 100%.
• I had felt a cold coming up first on Wednesday, two weeks ago. I felt weak and I noticed how I couldn’t concentrate. Then, that Thursday I felt okay again. Weaker than usual but I didn’t mind. Thursday night I had a sore throat though and that led me to believe that I was about to crash. Friday morning was okay again, I still worked through a bunch of action items, but then at night I finally crashed into bed. Saturday woke up sick, with a running nose, coughing. Saturday I didn’t leave bed for most of the day and I cancelled plans. Sunday, felt a little better, just well enough to briefly see Franzi. Monday, back in bed, Tuesday getting restless again. Wednesday thinking I’m fine again when I wasn’t.  Thursday, lots of work but not feeling great. Friday, Saturday and Sunday feeling relatively normal but still coughing and sneezing. Monday, Tuesday and today still feeling weak. Which brings us today where I’m back home and though I wish I was more productive, I’m also glad to be here and probably going to take another nap before going for dinner with my dad. I thought I had rested enough about a week ago and was on the mend but I’m still not feeling 100%. So that’s a big learning for me. It takes much more time to feel and be back to normal than I expected. I could have used a 10X massive care-taking action instead of just doing the absolute minimum and hope I’m better soon. Good insight.
• Living modestly
• Taking Massive, 10X Action – The chapter I read today
• Not having internet at home – Results Month 1
• Still waiting on the HumanCharger delivery – Frustrated
• How I still very much enjoy working from the library
• Having made the decision to stay in Berlin
• Currently listening to
• Giraffe progress and usage

What else…?

---

Recovering from a cold took me much longer than I expected.

In fact, I’m on day 10, yet still don’t feel 100%. It started two weeks ago. 

I had felt a cold coming up first on Wednesday. 

I felt weak and I noticed how I couldn’t concentrate. 

The next day I felt okay again and forgot about it. (I was still weaker than usual but I didn’t mind.) 

Thursday night I had a sore throat though and I realized I was about to crash. 

Then, Friday morning I felt okay again. I still worked through a bunch of action items, but then at night I finally crashed into bed. 

On Saturday, I woke up sick, with a running nose, coughing. I didn’t leave bed for most of the day and I cancelled plans. 

On Sunday, felt a little better, well enough to see my friend. 

Monday I was back in bed, frustrated, Tuesday I got restless again. 

Wednesday I thought I was fine again but I wasn’t.  

Thursday, I got a lot of work don but didn’t feeling great. 

Friday, Saturday and Sunday felt normal but I still coughed and sneezed. 

Monday, Tuesday still felt weak. 

Which brings us today where I’m back home. 

I wish I was more productive, but I’m also glad to be here. 

I’ll likely take another nap before going for dinner with my dad. 

I thought I had rested enough about a week ago and was on the mend. But it’s taking much longer to get back to normal. 

I should have taken care of myself earlier and much longer.

So, I’ve been pretty good at publishing at least one post each week for the past two months. I’m proud of having published a bunch of posts that I hope someone in the future will find useful. 

But here’s the rub: Right now, I’m just writing “anything goes” style, meaning that whatever happens to be interesting to ME that day, I write about it. 

Now, that’s a lot of fun, but I’m questioning if I’m making the best use of my time this way. Right now, I don’t have a specific audience with this blog. Maybe my friends and family who, once in a while check it out to get a sense of what’s on my mind. I guess that is an audience, but I also speak with them on the phone. 

I’m really wondering if I should write and publish…

…more deliberately – on a specific topic for a specific audience– or just for myself as I have. I’ve been racking my brain for a week now and have not come to a decision. 

Well, actually…

What I have come to as a decision is that what matters to me right now even more is to increase the regularity first. That was an initial goal (to publish something of value every day) and that has suffered because I haven’t formed a solid routine yet. 

Some days I might be in the position to post something. Some days I might not. (For days where I don’t have wifi, that’s okay, I can still write it in Evernote)

Anyways, so I just realized that, while I don’t know yet “where” my blogging is going – I can’t seem to make up my mind –, I do know that it needs to be more regular, daily. 

For me, developing a daily creative practice is more important than knowing exactly what to write about. 

In fact, I have a feeling that with more practice the direction will start to emerge.

Thanks for reading!

Alexis

PS: Here’s is a quick retrospective I’ve done today to help me think through my next step…

Background: As you may have seen, I built myself a goal-setting, planning and execution app that helps me to consistently, every day, work towards my dreams. After reading several motivational books, they usually would boil down to the advice to “Set a goal, make a plan and make progress every single day.” I think that’s solid advice.

With that in mind, I tried to follow this advice but I couldn’t find a tool that would allow me to do it all in one place. I tried every task manager and todo list out there, but none allowed me to (inclusively)

• Set high-level goals
• Plan, break down and prioritize those goals into tiny, bite-sized tasks and
• Execute on a simple todo list that’s auto-generated based on my planning, break down and prioritization

For years, I had tried to represent this flow with apps like Evernote and Google Docs (for writing down my goals), Omni Outliner (for breaking down and prioritizing the tasks needed) and Trello (for keeping an active backlog that I could work off of.) But nothing was integrated.

So, two months ago, I knew exactly what I wanted and built a simple Rails web app that gave me that flow. The app itself worked but it wasn’t particularly well-built. My biggest question, the reason I built it, was “Will this actually help me be more motivated and productive?”

I started to use my app for 6 weeks. It did precisely what I wanted it to and I concluded two weeks ago, that this wasn’t just a nice idea but a valuable tool.

Now, as I had added new goals and broken them down into easy, 5-minute tasks, my database had grown to 300+ nested tasks.

That’s when the app got slow. To the point where I couldn’t use it anymore without feeling frustrated again. (Because to me, Flow is everything.)

I figured this is the right time to throw away the prototype and start building a “real” piece of production software that has:

• Complete feature-parity and look-and-feel to the prototype
• Full automated test-coverage for all features
• A significant speed-up even with hundreds or thousands of sub-tasks

The list of features from the prototype became my backlog so it would be the “same app” overall. Since the prototype had gone through several iterations already, I knew exactly what I wanted.

I decided to write feature-level automated tests because I think they’re the highest level of quality assurance that makes sense at this stage (I still might throw the app out if it doesn’t work for me down the line.)

To give you a sense, here is the ‘Completing a task’ feature-test story in prose and then in code:

• Given I am on the execute tab
• And I have an un-started task
• When I click start
• Then I see the button complete

…becomes..

I experimented with different performance improvements and landed on storing the “task tree” (the slowest piece in the prototype) directly in the database, as a binary object using Ruby’s Marshal.load and Marshal.dump. Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

Overall the development experience has been great. I use strict outside-in TDD/BDD, where I

• Write the test based on the “Given, When, Then” prose from the backlog.
• Run the test and see it fail
• Fix exactly the reason the test failed
• Rinse and repeat until the feature is done and the test passes

Anyways, after a few evenings, the app has now MVP/prototype feature-parity and I’m using it every day. It’s fast. It’s a bit nicer now and maintainable because of the tests.