Pretty rad.

They do the LaughingSquid stickers too.

If you don’t know how custom silk screen stickers are make, this video is for you:

Next week John will sponsor Ignite Boulder for the 15th straight time. I wanted to say thanks. Thanks John, for supporting and doing so much.

Go and read it. Here is the direct link: http://dojo4.com/blog/the-fear-startups

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. How many founders are motivated by fear? By proving someone wrong? By the hope of a better tomorrow? By the need to build software?

Would you start a company? What is the main fear holding you back.
Would you jump out of a plane? Is it fear, preference, or goals holding you back?
Would you reach out to someone that you admire or who can help you? What is holding you back?

What is the fear holding back the next big thing?

I was driving through Colorado yesterday thinking about the fear that was the settling of The West. Imagine 300 years ago in Colorado. It is interesting to think about the fear, but also the possibility, that was available.

Perhaps we need to reframe how we fear?

Someone dropped out of the Global Economic Forum “Startup Brazil” keynote and it was offered to me. The one problem, I was rocking a travel / break up beard that looked like this:

It was great but had to go. My friend Seb from What Took You So Long also wanted a bit of a shave so we looked up a few options. We got to a few closed down places and finally found one that was a) open and b) looked amazing.

After:

Then Seb.

Now walking around a very hot Rio with a much cooler face. The cabin building look will come back when I strike ground.

Fuck yeah Boulder.

Please share it around the webosphere.

It is SXSW time again. Time to get excited. Here is my guide to how to have an amazing event:

Forget the hype. Those that hate SXSW for the hype are like those that hate Disneyland for being “fake.” SXSW is the most talented group of creative people in the world gathering in a city for a few days to talk about business, trends and the future by not talking about business, trends and the future.

If you watch and listen you can see the future of the tech space. You can meet the people building it. You can hug the social media ninjas that will try to destroy it.

SXSW is, at the core, a time to meet the people that see what you see in tech and society.

First Hyde Rule of SXSW: Everyone has a Story. You can apply this to life, or you can apply this to just this conference, but everyone there will have something to learn from. I’ve landed $10k consulting gigs in line for a beer and gotten into intense debates about the value of local commerce at 4 AM that lead to millions of investment dollars to gardens in schools (true, odd story for sometime later). I’ve met lifelong friends while waiting for a drink. Be friendly to everyone.

Second Hyde Rule to SXSW: Sit the Fuck Down. You are going to be on your feet running from thing to thing. When you get to where you are going, sit down. Talk to people away from loud speakers. Take many moments out of your day to sit and talk about a subject that you care about with a group. Say you are going to a keynote, perhaps the Julie Uhrman & Josh Topolsky Keynote (I’m really looking forward to it). Get there 45 minutes early. Sit up front. Introduce yourself to everyone around you. You like The Verge, can afford SXSW and are excited enough to show up early? PERHAPS WE HAVE SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT. I hope Josh signs my ear.

Third Hyde Rule to SXSW: Find Lead Blockers. Take a long look at the amazingly presented schedule and find a few things that you have to go to. I hear this session is going to be moderately interesting for those that can read AND like travel. Take an hour and skim the sessions. Find things that make you go I BETTER GO TO THAT OR MY GRANDKIDS WILL HATE ME. Now that you have done that, throw it away. Those sessions, in my experience suck. You know too much about them already. Go to something unexpected. Something new. Something fresh to you. Something a person that you just met said they are going to. Follow them. Play some Mark, Sue. Let entropy be your guide and chance be your savior. Go to random stuff other people are excited about. Get excited about it too.

Fourth Hyde Rule to SXSW: Go to Lame Parties. Not to piss off every friend hosting a party at SXSW but they all kinda suck in this glorious way. You wait in line for an hour to get a free $3 beer and resort to networking by YELLING because the geniuses think that pumping Gangnam Style at concert levels will lead to people to get real close when they ignore each other while tweeting about the appropriate level of music at a party for geeks. That bar next to the party? Yeah, a lot of people are in there. The line for a drink is zero. Grab people fromt he line, yell, “this place is dead anyway” and grab a beer and breakfast taco.

Or go to rad parties with some of the world’s best music. That too.

Fifth Hyde Rule to SXSW: Wear Technical Footwear. You are going to walk 5-10 miles a day (at least I do). If you wear one of those overpriced pedometers by Nike you will score a few 8000 point days. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t bring your laptop. Don’t bring a bag. Don’t bring an SLR. Just bring yourself, and perhaps a wallet if you are feeling unskilled (I went five days of SXSW 2009 without spending $1).

Sixth Hyde Rule to SXSW: See A Film. Your SXSWi badge has a few films you can see. They generally are the more interesting / popular premires. Go to at least one. A nice break and time to take a breath and reflect on the experience you are having.

Seventh Hyde Rule to SXSW: Abandon All Tech. Your phone data will most likely not work, just plan on it. Put down your tech and look up at people.

Eighth Hyde Rule to SXSW: Skip the Marketing. The marketers are out in full force. Your job is to ignore them and find the makers. Skip the overly sponsored pitch-a-thons. They are a distraction to the real event.

The press will also be out looking for stories. “What is the killer app? What is the next Twitter?” If you meet one of these folks look them right in the eye and say “Andrew Hyde is the killer app” and walk away like a unicorn into a rainbow.

Ninth Hyde Rule to SXSW: Have Fun. Stay out late. Go for early morning runs. Wear a horse head at a party. Introduce yourself to a blogger you read. Get front row for your favorite band. Plan something big. Get inspired. Enjoy the passion for life that all these creators have. Bottle that up and make your work a little more focused and grand this next year.

See you there. Somewhere in Austin at least.

Toolboothhootrote Band? Toolboohoolrote Band? Horrible compression in the image there, but why? Why would an author put an image of a map in their book so corrupted their readers can’t read it?

I looked into just why do kindle images look so bad it and what I found is pretty sickening.

Well, Amazon makes publishers compress their books and charges them wildly different prices (from .01 to $9.99) to deliver that book to your kindle. Children’s book with lots of images? You might pay $9.99 to Amazon to have that book downloaded, then they get a 30-70% commission.

I wish that had to be plastered in large font on every kindle sold.

To put it another way, the publisher of this book could have chosen to make this file awesome for the reader but pay more $ from their commission more to deliver it. Amazon makes authors pay for the download of each one of their digital books (.15 per megabyte).

So Amazon’s policy on images in books: if you make them large enough for people to enjoy, we will charge you for that. When my travel book first launched I was paying almost $2.00 to have a file delivered over wifi.  $2.00 to send something you could attach as an email. That. Is. Crazy.

Now here is the kicker: if I complain to Amazon that this image in that awesome book I just read is unreadable, THEY WILL REFUND MY MONEY AND NOT PAY THE AUTHOR.

Seems fair, right?

You would think you would reward authors for providing awesome content, right?

Fix this Amazon.

I’m on a plane about to land in Colorado to spend a few weeks in Boulder. Even after all my travels I keep coming back. It is a place that I love. A place where my heart is. A place, well, that I will never be the best at anything I do.

I had a realization while talking about Boulder to someone in Estonia. In this town, you are always second place. You will never find something that you are the best at. It is the golden rule for me, in often hilarious ways.

Perhaps a story will help.

In 2006 when I had just moved to Boulder I learned how to ride a unicycle. On a Saturday morning in the summer I rode it over a mile to the local Farmers Market. On parking it (who would steal a unicycle) a guy stopped me and asked if I had ridden that down.  ”Yeah! Over a mile!”

“Yeah man, you take that on any off road trails? I’d love to take mine up Flagstaff.”

I looked down at the guy’s shirt. It read “Moab International Off Road Unicycling Championship.” There was an outline of someone doing a 10 foot cliff drop on a unicycle. My jaw was gasping at the realization that people actually did this and this random dude says “oh yeah, this, this was a fun jump.”

They guy WHO IS ON THE POSTER of the Moab International Off Road Unicycling Championship, and likely the champion, just ran into me randomly.

“Yeah, there are some new guys in town that are doing some really fast rides up at Walker. Like hour loops.” He was referring to a six mile loop mountain biking trail that had taken me over three hours on a bike the week before. A six mile off road unicycle ride, and fast. “Want to go?”

Event organizer, writer, cyclist, cook, parent, teacher, runner, designer, coder, boss, sidewalk crosser, crossword puzzle solver, breather, or thinker? You won’t be the best at that here.

A neighborhood road ride features Lance Armstrong yelling “your level of doping disgusts me!” The rider in the front replies back “what, you got caught? That must suck.”

World champion runners come here to be passed going uphill by a grandmother with a stroller talking about their relaxing yoga session on their cell phone but complaining about that really loud breather who was getting their om on better than she.

Charity fundraisers are held at the gym or wikipedia.

Welcome to Boulder, where everyone is competitive and everyone that is happy has learned to be humble.

My type of town.

Also a fun game, if you ever meet someone that lived in Boulder and didn’t like it, try to figure out what they thought they were the best at. It is often cycling…