jonathan kressaty

Today I had the privilege of attending the Arizona Technology Council's quarterly Keynote Speaker event, with Dr. Michael Crow (President of ASU) as the primary speaker. Dr. Crow spoke mainly about how ASU and his "New American University" concept are providing new resources to and working well with local, national, and international technology companies. He spoke about removing the traditional "silos" of higher-education by integrating disciplines while keeping them separate enough to properly teach and convey their principles. He mentioned briefly something about tenure, and how tenure at ASU is looked at as a political safety net, ensuring that professors with old ideas and professors with new ideas can only revamp a program or way of teaching by showing that their way is adequate or better, rather than through political means. He also mentioned that through this, tenure is not a safety net for your job - if you're not doing your job and achieving proper results, "we're going to fire you." I liked this. I didn't like how Dr. Crow was in front of a group full of business people in the IT sector and he didn't once mention the business school. Not when he was talking about interdisciplinary items, nor when he was speaking about integrating with research, nor when he was speaking about ASU becoming the New American University more and more. But maybe it just didn't fit in or wasn't appropriate.

Dr. Crow had to leave a bit early in order to go meet with the Governor and the presidents of the other universities; we applauded and he stepped out. Then, Dr. Rick Shangraw (Vice President of Research & Economic Affairs) stepped up to answer some more questions. He (kind of) answered a question about how ASU is providing resources to local IT companies. In his response, he mentioned that often times, when ASU is working on large projects both internally and in relation to research and grants, they will go to an outside firm to handle the IT. He said that they did this because unfortunately universities can't handle the consistency and protocol required to properly integrate and manage production IT in many situations. He then mentioned how most IT at ASU is put together by graduate students, and that it's stored in a closet and when "stuff is turned on it never works." This slightly upset me, as he was essentially telling a group of people who are looking to hire ASU graduates in the technology sectors that ASU was unable to prepare them to deploy real-life, effective technologies.

Dr. Shangraw then spoke about how, were he still a manager of a company with an IT component, he would rather find someone who he had to teach IT rather than teach the "entrepreneurial" drive because apparently we can teach a person IT, but we can't teach them to be an entrepreneur. This upset me greatly, especially after my last blog post and considering the fact that there were 3-4 people in the room from the ASU Entrepreneurship Initiative office (which exists to help ASU to teach entrepreneurship). I see this as a disconnect - he was almost arguing that entrepreneurship is not a learned behavior; you either have it or you don't. Is this the message he was trying to convey? I don't know, but this is what I heard and, to be honest, I don't really look at this as something you can misspeak about.

My point? Dr. Crow, you said you'd fire people who aren't doing their jobs. In the 18 months the entrepreneurship program has been in full force at ASU, it seems that we've seen very little increase in students seeking out the resources that are in place, very few additional ventures started in conjunction with the university and the W.P. Carey School of Business beyond the usual fare that stem out of Edson, and senior staff members in your own office that aren't fully aware of the program's goals. Has it occurred to you that maybe it's time to do a purging in your own building? 

ASU, we have a problem. We have a push that is unprecedented in the university system in the United States; a push to become what our University President has called "A New American University." I personally believe this to be an extremely important quest, one which is crucial to promoting the growth and development of one of the nation's largest institutions. Part of this ambition lies with Entrepreneurship at ASU - a program that is supposedly designed to promote innovation and entrepreneurship with staff and students alike. This program, however, seems to have only demonstrated that ASU, the W.P. Carey School of Business, and the Entrepreneurship at ASU organizations are still stuck in the dark ages of a corporate driven world that favors pomp and fame over innovation and action.

I am calling out these three entities as the major players in all entrepreneurial activities sponsored by the university, and I am accusing them of doing just about everything completely wrong. As of the spring semester 2009, 62,476 students were enrolled at ASU. A recent press release from the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards praised ASU by honoring them with the number two spot on their list of student entrepreneurs at the university. There were 31. That is one-twentieth of a percent (.05%) of the enrolled students in a state where ASU says 98% of businesses are small businesses. 

The worst part? I promise you they missed countless students still involved with the university who are managing and creating businesses everyday.

ASU celebrated Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) for the last few days. The daily email that was sent out in conjunction with GEW had a section each day dedicated to what the University referred to as a "student entrepreneur." Three of the five featured were student employees of the university. No business. No startup. Now, maybe my definition is off, but working for the university and calling yourself a "creative problem solver" doesn't really convey the sense of responsibility and persistent action that many people believe the label "entrepreneur" requires. Why not talk to Sharon at Polytechnic who operates a personal shopping service, or Neil who contracted house painting in the valley, or Andrew (a freshman) who runs a web design and consulting firm, or Kim, a recent graduate operating her own copy writing and marketing consultancy. More importantly, were these 4 people in your count of 31?

There were a number of events hosted through the university that were positioned as helpful sessions to allow potential and current student entrepreneurs to learn and grow their ideas and businesses.  Yet, there were no sessions on how to file incorporation paperwork with the Arizona Corporation Commission, or where to get help with business taxes, or resources on how to utilize ASU assets to assist in the creation and management of a student's small business. There were no panels of student entrepreneurs talking about their successes and failures. There were coffee meetups and cocktail parties.

As a small business owner, entrepreneur, and student, I'm insulted and appalled. ASU, you have got it all wrong. Because you are so focused on proving that you have entrepreneurial activity, you have completely forgotten that it should never have to be proven at all - by providing the resources and helping students be entrepreneurs, you should be at the very front of the list because your students will be happy to let everyone know that "I got here because of ASU." I've spent three and a half years in the W.P. Carey school, and almost all I've learned is simply how to work in a cubicle with an ignorant boss and small groups of people who are defective at their jobs. That's harsh, but true. I've also met dozens of brilliant and wonderful friends, professors, and administrators along the way. What frustrates me is that many of them see these problems and don't have any course of action to take to fix them.

I direct this letter not only to ASU, but to three important individuals. Michael Crow (President of Arizona State University), Robert Mittelstaedt (Dean of the W.P. Carey School of Business), and Terree Wasley (Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University). I am emailing a link to this post to all of you, and hope that this touches you in some way. I also have a request - I would love to meet with any or every one of you in order to give my time and effort to help make ASU all that it can be for student entrepreneurs, even though I am on my way out via graduation. I further challenge you to take the next step - find time when all three of you are available, and have a summit or town hall meeting to discuss these challenges and what can be done to promote true, real growth and innovation in the areas of business and entrepreneurship. I even have some lovely friends who frequent a co-working environment in Chandler who are willing to host such an event.

In the years I've been at ASU, my only regret lies in that I did not take action against the issues I saw as I traveled through my program. I now want to fix that, and wish to dedicate as much of my free time as I can to help push the programs and initiatives already instituted to their maximum potential, and help provide students at ASU the resources they need to start their own initiatives and continue to grow both the state and the university beyond what anyone ever expected.

I also request something of any student who reads this - give up your internship at some bank and go start a business. If you don't have money to do so, go ask your parents to introduce you to a wealthy friend (trust me, they have some). When you've finished fundraising and started your business, fail. Fail spectacularly. You will never hear anyone in the W.P. Carey School tell you that, and yet it is quite possibly one of the absolute most important lessons to learn in the business world. Congratulations - you just learned more than any internship is ever going to teach you.

Having a problem like this is amazing - the need is there, and the want, and the drive. With a little push in the right direction and some real interaction between the community and the university, the ASU Entrepreneurship Initiatives can actually start doing everything they say on paper.

For the past few months, there has been a movement in Arizona. Some of you might say that this movement has been happening for a long time, but I'm a firm believer that it's only now starting to take hold and take off. The creative class in Phoenix is starting to blossom and spread, and that is a wonderful thing. However, we have also very quickly become a group that is not only more social than ever, but a group that has decided that event after event is a necessity in order to help combat our geographic obstacle (read: the Valley is effing HUGE). This is not necessarily a bad thing. However, not only have these events happened in rapid succession, but it was decided that many of these events should happen in a very short time period. This is a problem.

I see it as two fundamental issues.

Firstly, it's a problem because we are very quickly becoming a group of people who are giving up DOING something in order to attend a conference. It's not an issue because the events are bad, or the attendees are stupid, or the venues are too unreachable. It's an issue because we're becoming a bunch of tech and creative posers. We're saying that we all want to do wonderful things, and yet many of those things aren't happening. This is probably a necessary step to take in order to start that kindling and make the movement tip, but since it's so clear that it is an issue I see no reason why we can't combat it from the start.

The second issue stems from that point, in that we're essentially isolating the people that actually are doing something. Asking people who have client meetings, deadlines, and phones to answer to take an entire day out of their schedule for a conference where "All the people who won't return your phone calls and who you've been trying to meet" is possibly the most backwards entrepreneurial concept I've heard in a long time. Shouldn't those people be doing all they can to connect with the contacts they need, and not rely on an event that's going to cost $100 just to get someone to return an email? If they can't get back to you, they probably aren't as important to you as you think.

For this specific issue, I propose a solution. Let's ask those same people to attend an event from 9PM to 3AM on a Sunday night. Yes, many of the current attendees are doing client work at night like the rest of us, but we all use that as our "crushit" time and would probably be more willing to attend the event were it not in the middle of the week. Also, let's not group everything together in a 5 day period. Have an event a week, or every two weeks, because we all know that the further we get from our events, the lesser our interactions in life are.

For the record, I did not attend AZEC, PHXWC, or any of the social gatherings that happened in the past week due to commitments to my business and education. I will be at PodCampAZ this weekend.

This isn't a message to insult anyone or say that somebody or group did something wrong; instead it's a request that we not try and forget what these events are truly cultivating - creativity, innovation, and what I believe to be the most important aspect of business. Friendship.

I spent the weekend participating in the conference events that comprised Phoenix Design Week (PHXDW). It was NOT what I expected. I am not a designer, but part of running my own business includes doing things I've never done before, and web/print design is one of those things. I attended in order to learn some new things and (hopefully) make some new friends who might be helpful, friendly, and just plain cool. What I found was an amazing group of people who are so passionate about their community that they're willing to go all out in order to further that community. Through controversy and many conflicting views, I left the conference with one feeling, most appropriately voiced by my friend Kim - "Designers of phx! You want community? You got community:#phxdw. Keep it up." 

This plagued me all day, especially the last part - "Keep it up." So, after sitting here following an evening of working and hanging with Gary Vaynerchuk at his book signing, I realized something that I believe is fairly profound. The quantity and quality of our interactions online as a community is directly related to the time since our last large-scale social gathering. In fact, the size and scope of the gathering could even dictate the scale of this correlation.

Essentially, the more time since our last gathering, the lower the quality of the community discussion. This can be applied on a large scale (something like PHXDW) or on a smaller scale (something like East/North/West Valley Friday Night or Ignite Phoenix). Either way, there is an initial influx of discussion followed by a quick drop off that then returns community discussion to levels previously seen as normal.

The point at which an event is necessary can be demonstrated with a simple supply and demand curve. To skip the econ lesson, it seems as if there is a tipping point where the necessity (demand) to have an event meets the ability (supply) to create such an event. Mark Dudlik hit this equilibrium when he decided that the Phoenix design community was in need of an event.

Part of PHXDW was a sometimes-heated debate over whether or not we should look to other communities and cities throughout the country and world for guidance on making Phoenix the established community it is itching to be. From these discussions, it occurred to me that maybe instead of focusing on creating the culture, it's the actual gatherings themselves that spur the community. More importantly, even though we are geographically discouraged from gathering en masse on a regular basis, it's not so much the fact that we can all attend but the fact that the event is happening. Think about how many times you've seen an event's hashtag on Twitter that is occurring in San Francisco or Chicago or New York and you've commented and put that hashtag in your tweet - you were a part of the conference. You added to the community, became a part of the community, and furthered that community through participation. Many people who were unable to attend PHXDW still participated and benefited from the panels, discussion, and interaction that was happening miles away from their location.

All of this drives a question about what we can do as a community to keep the quality of our interactions at the highest level possible. At the end of the day, I don't really have a point yet. I have no answer. I have observations that might inspire someone else to find an answer or two about some of the discussion.

I'm interested in what others think, and would love to hear your thoughts. If you want to talk more about the basic economics behind social networks, ask me.  I'm happy to talk about my thoughts, and would love to hear how absolutely wrong I am.

I've known about Twilio for awhile - I actually build 90% of the app I'm about to demonstrate here about 4 months ago, but after seeing the contest they were running this week, I decided I'd give it some quick polish and make it useful. Essentially what I've created is a custom PBX for Ripstyles. It's simple, clean, but directs people to the correct phone number and will give them order status over the phone by simply typing in an order number.

Please keep in mind that since I haven't had a chance to fully test this, it is not yet implemented into the Ripstyles phone system. You'll still get a legit, live human being when you call us :-)

Call 1.866.960.9433 - you'll get a "Thanks for calling Ripstyles" message. It'll give you some options to choose by pressing a number on your phone keypad. 1, 3, and 4 will take you to sales, support, and the operator respectively (though for now the demo just tells you where you would be connected to and hangs up on you). Option 2 is cool - it asks you for your 7 digit order number and then will tell you the status and some info about that status, followed by an option to talk to the operator.

Try it: dial 1.866.960.9433, press 2 at the prompt, and then enter 1001588 as your order number.

Cool huh? Twilio queries my web application that is used to administer the entire Ripstyles system, grabs an order status via your order number, and reads the status along with a description. No personal data is given out, so there's not a security issue there. This system is also tied to a test database, so don't get too inquisitive kids!

Option 5 is also neat, and makes use of some of Twilio's really super duper cool features - it lets you leave a message, then enters into my database all of the info about your call and queries Twilio for a transcription of the audio. Cool huh? After you leave a message, I get an email with the phone number and transcription, and can log into my system and see all the call information (see pic to left).

I can also see debug database info on that call just in case it looks like something went wrong. Transcriptions sometimes come back wonky, but they're more of a convenience in order to get an idea of what a customer would like before we call them back.

An automated system like this will be new for Ripstyles; we've always answered the phone with a human, so moving to something that is computer controlled will be a little strange. However, Twilio has made it so that there is a level of control that not only allows us to get great data at every stage, but also get our customers to a human as soon as possible while alleviating some of our call load.