David Siegel, CEO of Meetup, on the Future of Events and Communities
Unless you have been living under a rock, you are probably familiar with Meetup. They have become the epicenter of how people organize local and online gatherings and have become a fixture for many people and organizations.
David Siegel, CEO of Meetup, comes on Conversations With Bacon to dig into a broad range of topics. We discuss how the company has changed, where the future of communities is, the impact of COVID-19 on getting people together, his approach to leadership and growth, and much more.
This is a really fun and engaging conversation, in large part due to David’s authenticity and openness. There is no carefully crafted PR speak here: this is a genuine, frank, and open conversation, which makes for really compelling listening…and learning.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out, and grab the People Powered Plus pack with free templates, bonus content, and over $2000 of special offers.
Thank you to Marius Quabeck and NerdZoom Media for mixing the show!
Bitesize: Jason Warner from GitHub gives his recommendations for getting started in the tech industry
Jason Warner, CTO of GitHub, talks about how he would recommend to get started in the tech industry.
Listen to the full episode here.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
Miller Abel from The Gates Foundation on Building Financial Inclusion With Technology
Millions of people around the world have limited access to reliable, secure financial tools. This creates a vicious circle that keeps many people in poverty when they are faced with limitations in how they store, transfer, and send money. Unfortunately, this also disproportionately impacts women and can dramatically impact the ability for regional innovation and building businesses.
To help resolve this, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been investing in building a series of projects to make financial inclusion a reality. One such project is Mojaloop, an Open Source platform for enabling secure and dependable financial transactions.
I am thrilled to bring Miller Abel, Deputy Director and Principal Technologist at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on to Conversations With Bacon to talk about their approach to cracking the challenge of building financial inclusion. Miller has been fundamentally involved in the architecture, funding, and development of Mojaloop, and he shares the fascinating story of how they understood and delivered a pragmatic platform to make a difference.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
Bitesize: Todd Lewis from All Things Open on why they became a Certified B Corporation
Todd Lewis, founder of All Things Open talks about how important it was to them to become a B Corp, primarily to set an example of standards of practice that they and other people can live by.
Listen to the full episode here.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
Bitesize: Kate Drane from Techstars talks about the importance of global support for startups
Kate Drane from Techstars shares the startup accelerator program – Techstars For Life.
Listen to the full episode here.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
David Finkel on Work/Life Balance and Staying Focused
Work/Life Balance. How is yours? Good? Decent? Middling?
Let’s be honest, most of us suck at it. Well, David Finkel doesn’t.
David is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of 11 books and CEO of Maui Mastermind. His new book, The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family, Health, or Life is all about striking this Work/Life balance right, and I thought he would be a great guest to come onto the podcast.
Oh, and he was. I love guests like David, who take an insightful approach to their work, but based on a foundation of honest, frank work. My BS radar didn’t go off at all with this one.
In this episode of Conversations With Bacon, we get into a range of areas, including:
- Why working longer and harder doesn’t pay off (and what actually does)
- Why the 80-20 principle doesn’t go far enough (and how to take it to its most productive extreme)
- How to operationalize the work/life balance
- How to escape the “time and effort” economy
- How to structure the day and week to reclaim five or more hours each week in usable blocks
- What strategies to utilize to recover time and attention from distractions
There is a lot in this for all of you. Definitely give it a listen. Enjoy!
By the way, communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
Thanks to my friends at Nerdzoom for editing the show!
Bitesize: Jeff Atwood, Co-Founder of Discourse and StackOverflow, on platform responsibility
Jeff Atwood discusses the tools in Discourse that help keep conversations organized and easily accessible.
Listen to the full episode here.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
Bitesize: Angela Brown of The Linux Foundation discusses what contributes to the energy of events
Angela Brown of The Linux Foundation discusses what contributes to the energy and the core elements of a great event.
Listen to the full episode here.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
Rahul Vohra on Superhuman, Game Theory, and Product/Market Fit
Would you pay $30 a month for an email service, especially when Gmail is entirely free? I do.
A while back I started using a service called Superhuman. It provides a blisteringly fast, keyboard-driven, experience for email power users. Their value prop is simple: the value of your time saved in email is worth far more than the fee you pay for their service.
Part of Superhuman’s current success is based on that they clearly know the market their product is designed for. This is because they developed a Product/Market Fit Engine, which they shared publicly. Their approach works: they have designed a product their users love, and their engine has enabled them to identify the features their most valuable users want.
Rahul Vohra is the CEO of Superhuman and he comes on Conversations With Bacon to dig into all of this. We delve into:
- Their approach to designing and delivering Superhuman
- Their product/market fit approach and how it was built
- The role of game theory and gamification in building products people love
- Their on-boarding experience (and how it differs from other companies)
- How they have used email effectively for product education and training
- We even get into the survivability of startups with COVID-19
This is a really interesting discussion. If you are interested in product, marketing, or business, it is well worth a listen.
Communities are changing the way we do business. Discover a concrete framework for building powerful, productive communities and integrating them into your business. My new book, ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams’, is out now, available in Audible, Hardcover, and Kindle formats. Be sure to check it out!
10 Tips For Rocking Your Zoom Calls
More than 5% of the US population (including myself) works from home on a regular basis. During the current coronavirus pandemic, however, we’re all experiencing a trial by fire when it comes to remote work. Most of us aren’t used to using Zoom so often and a lot of (sometimes hilarious) teleconferencing faux-pas are peppering our days.
Just take the care newscaster featured on Last Week Tonight as an example. While giving his report live, his cat was behind him cleaning itself enthusiastically. Believe it or not, no one remembered what he said – the cat stole the show.
I myself have been working remotely for years. I’ve seen the ins and outs of teleconferencing from the very beginning, and I’ve seen (and made) quite a few faux-pas. From connectivity issues to distracting backgrounds, there are lots of ways to Zoom call correctly…and incorrectly.
That’s why I decided to give you a list of 10 Zoom DOs and DON’Ts that can help you in this time of remote work, so that you can nail your e-meetings and stay productive!
#1: Get a Good Webcam & Mic
Nothing is more frustrating than a bad audio or video connection. In a time when Zoom is all we have to communicate, good video and audio is essential. Get a decent mic and camera. Sure, your laptop has these built in, but they generally suck.
I love the Blue Yeti mics, but any decent headset will do.
On the webcam front things are more complicated right now due to limited availability, but Ebay, OfferUp, and other sites often have decent second-hand webcams available. They are well worth it.
#2: Avoid Zoom Backgrounds.
Did you hear about the woman who led a meeting as a potato because she didn’t know how to turn off the filter? I know it’s fun to flip through the backgrounds and filters, but they can be pretty distracting, especially as you see people weirdly morphing in and out of the background. I had a call with someone last week and for most of it their right arm was floating in midair like a dismembered ghost.
I know, I know, you are going to have to tidy up your office. It is the price we pay, folks. In any case, people love seeing where people live and their lives – it brings everyones’s personalities out.
#3: Use the Beauty Filter
Oof, early morning calls. We all know you probably woke up 5 minutes before your Zoom meeting, everyone did.
If your team prefers video calls over simple audio, use the “touch up my appearance” setting to make yourself look more put together in meetings. I am not sure what kind of voodoo they have built into Zoom, but it really works well.
Of course, I rarely use this feature. I have a beauty filter built directly into my face. Honest.
#4: Ride Mute With The Space Bar
We’re all stuck at home in our quarantines. That means young children, barking dogs, and more noise distractions that could disrupt your meeting.
Mute is your friend. Seriously: I have seen people not realize they were unmuted start yelling at their kids, their dogs, their spouses. I have heard people talking smack about people on the call. I even heard someone take their laptop to…well…the bathroom unmuted.
Stay mute as default and then use Space to unmute for the thing you want to say. Boom. Problem solved.
#5:Use Quick Invite
Many people still don’t use Zoom, or don’t know how. For a client or meeting for someone who you’ve never Zoomed with before, this is a simple way to make sure they’re able to join the meeting easily and quickly.
When you’re in a meeting, type ?Cmd+I or Alt+I to open the Invite window. Then simply send it to anyone who you want to invite to the meeting.
#6: Record Your Meetings
Sometimes, you want to remember what was said in a meeting. Zoom gives us the option to record the entire session. This is dead handy, especially if you need a record of key decisions and outcomes.
Type ?Cmd+Shift+R or Alt+R to start recording any meeting.
Type ?Cmd+Shift+P or Alt+P to pause/resume recording.
#7: Share your Screen
When it comes to certain projects, describing something verbally just isn’t enough. Sometimes we need to show. Zoom allows us to share our computer screen easily with others for these cases!
To start a screen share, type ?Cmd+Shift+S or Alt+Shift+S.
To pause/resume a screen share, type ?Cmd+Shift+T or Alt+T.
#8: Have Some Fun
Since most of the US is now in quarantine, we’re missing our social interaction. But did you know social interaction is a critically important factor to good health and longevity? Stay mentally healthy by zooming for fun with your friends.
Coordinate a Zoom session with friends on an evening. Get together and have a few drinks or snacks. My wife and I have learned how to mix cocktails from friends on a Saturday night over Zoom. My parents have been playing games over Zoom with their friends. Get creative – it is incredible what you can do.
Here is an example from last night here at Castle Bacon:
#9: Use Break Out Rooms
Zoom now has a feature called Breakout Rooms built in. With it you can break a larger group of people into smaller groups for discussions.
For example, I join a regular marketing call with some folks. Around 40 people join each session. Then, near the end of the session we all break into groups of six where we have a discussion for around five minutes. Then, we come back to the main group.
This is an awesome way for people to get to know each other in a more intimate setting.
#10: Use the Slack integration
Many of you will be using Slack at work.
Well, the Zoom Slack Integration is pretty neat. You can use it to start Zoom meetings right inside Slack. Just types /zoom to see the available options.
There you go. Happy Zooming!