It turned out to be one of the more popular things I’ve written. Over time I’ve heard from theaters around the world experimenting with the ideas explored in that post.

Here’s part of an email I got last month:

Hi Chris,

I hope you’re still at this address.

I read your blog post from ‘09 about discovering theatre models that are sustainable and actually move towards viability. We’ve started a theatre in Abuja (Nigeria’s capital) and are looking at innovative approaches to the business of theatre. We ran into some debt and are coming out of the woods. Now, we’re reinventing and also considering a government loan out of a fund that’s recently become available but we want to be as informed and tooled up as we should be. Also, case studies of successful models used elsewhere will be useful for us and encouraging to the banks, as you can imagine.

I wonder what other new and useful insights you’ve had over the years from discussing this — I guess what I’m asking is what models have worked for your friends, which we may stylise for our terrain and replicate?

Neat, right? The wonders of the Internet!

Totally neat. But also, truth be told, a little scary.

Is this thing on?

When real live companies with real live people and real live money are trying things based on something I wrote, I darn well want to feel comfortable that I’m not leading anyone off a cliff.

So, in that spirit,

An Addendum

Or maybe,

A Retrospective?

Anyway,

A Few More Thoughts On Designing A Company

Designing companies is hard.

As my own has grown, we’ve had to pick which new products we’ll tackle, how we hire new people, and how, exactly, we keep the office adequately caffeinated.

But it’s not just those things that go into designing a company. We design our company every single day. The creation of Figure 53 is a continuous act.

The little stuff adds up.

The little stuff is hard to copy.

People study successful companies. They look for what they can replicate.

Replication is hard. Actually, replication is impossible. Replication is copying. Copying doesn’t work.

When people copy the design of our software, I never worry about it. Someone who copies a design doesn’t know the next move. They didn’t get to that place because they figured out how to get there, they got to that place by a shortcut. But the shortcut cuts out all the important stuff.

Are you saying it’s impossible to learn from others?

No.

What I am finally circling around to say is this: I am proud of my original post, but if there is anything I would change, it would be to stress how inconclusive and exploratory those ideas really were, and are.

In retrospect, that post captures the initial moment of product design. A vision for a thing that Might Be, if only we can suss it out with a lot of hard work and corrections to our path.

It represents the point of departure for a unique creative act. The details have not been filled in. All the critical little stuff — the stuff that makes it or breaks it — has not been discovered.

It does not touch on many, many other pieces of the puzzle that will affect the design and implementation of the ideas in play.

And it definitely does not present the only valid option.

Fine, but can it work? Has it worked?

What’s “it”? The problem here is that there is no concrete “it”. There are dozens of possible implementations of those ideas. Some of them might work great. Many of them will fail.

(If you know any great examples of theaters that put memberships at the core of their being, please let me know in the comments, I’d love to learn about them.)

Design Patterns

Design patterns, in software, are architectural strategies that appear across many programs. They represent constructive techniques that appear frequently when dealing with particular kinds of problems.

Design patterns are a good place to start thinking about the high level form of a program. They also serve as a great communication tool; they’re coder shorthand.

But by definition, design patterns don’t dictate specifics, and they don’t determine whether a program will succeed or fail. They can help organize it, they can help clarify it, but they can’t, ultimately, make it good or bad. That’s up to the programmers, whose craft is to create unique software under unique circumstances.

It may be that my ideas from that 2009 post sketch out one design pattern for theater companies. I hope they do. I think they might.

But even if they do, they won’t dictate success. At best they can help organize and clarify. The devil is in the details, and the details are up to you.

I love her a lot.

More photos here.

Over a dozen people immediately responded or re-tweeted it. Amused by this response, I went to brush my teeth. I believe it was while brushing that the name “slowclapforcongress.com” floated into my head.

Here, for archival purposes, is what happened next.

Sunday night

Monday morning

Walked to work. Set up my laptop. Recorded this:

Uploaded it under the words:

Tweeted this:

And emailed a few friends.

Later that day

Initial response was positive.

Hey! We even got a couple more!

And by that evening, the page was looking rather full.

But I was tired and had to turn in.

Tuesday

Oof. Woke up to find several new videos in my inbox. Then my friend and teammate Adam made a mashup of the ones I’d posted so far. Fun! I threw it at the top of the page.

Tuesday Afternoon – First Press

When I’d put my real contact information in the Whois database for the domain, I had a vague sense that it might actually be used. Nick Judd from TechPresident was the one who used it. He contacted me, asked a few questions, and then wrote this story:

The Internet is Getting Together to #SlowClapForCongress

As the day progressed, a few big-name Tweeters shared the link, including Katie Stanton, and an actress I didn’t recognize but had somewhere in the range of a million followers. (I’d link to her tweet, but I don’t seem to have saved the URL.)

And theeeeeennnn

{blink}

Wait, what?

@Lawrence, host of @TheLastWord on MSNBC?

Yes.

Wow. What a way to cap the whole thing.

And that was that. Quite a thrill, and a fun way to spend a couple of…

Wednesday Morning

Boing Boing: “Slow Clap for Congress: Sarcastic Youtube Meme”

Oh cripes.

As the merit badge states, “You’ve had a project mentioned on the Great Big Blog!”

Gosh, about the only way this could get better is if…

Wait, what?

Please tell me that’s a verified account, please tell me that’s a verified account, please tell me that’s

Okay, it’s verified, but that doesn’t mean it’s….

Oh cripes.

Is this thing on?

At this point, I respond with:

Successfully making myself look 13 years old when this tweet is subsequently quoted on the blog that originally broke the story and has now posted an update about its progress.

Chagrined, I note to myself:

OH HAI CNN

(or)

In Which It Gets Meta

(or)

CNN Reports About Chris’s Tweet About Reporters Reporting Chris’s Tweets

CNN Blog: “Congress gets (slow) applause for raising the debt ceiling”

And on the Tee-Vee

“Tell me about this website slowclapforcongress.com”

“Yeah, apparently somebody came up with another great idea. This slow clap, I think is the best way to show someone how little you appreciate someone [...] in this case it’s very sarcastic. You can watch these people slow clapping… this is how happy Americans are.

“It really is excellent.”

“I love this idea. Love it. Perfect.”

And…

The Washington Post

The Baltimore Sun

The Hill

Time

Newsweek’s Facebook account

The Seattle PI

And finally…

The Washington Post Opinion Blog: “Congress responds to ‘slow clap’ to resolve FAA mess — for now”

Now, I’m not dumb. I know that headline is by an opinion editorialist. It’s not factual reporting.

But if that was even 1% true… holy moly.

Friday August 5th

At this point, Slow Clap had nearly run its course.

The traffic to the site had evolved something like this:

On Friday morning, a local Baltimore news station had finally caught the story, and was really keen to do an interview. They called my house, they called my work number, they wrote in to my personal email, to my work email, they even filed a support request to the entire Figure 53 team.

By this point, though, I really didn’t have anything else to say about Slow Clap (not that there had ever been much to say in the first place). I was anxious to get back to focusing on my work, and not at all attracted to the idea of interrupting yet another day with a nerve-wracking interview. It took several attempts to convince them that no, I really didn’t want to drop everything to talk to them, but eventually they took the hint.

And that, finally, really was that.

Was it constructive? Not clear. Did it feel good to be heard? Yes.

Serendipity

Around this time, and completely by coincidence, I stumbled across an article reporting that we should “Use Sarcasm Instead of Outright Anger for Better, More Productive Conflicts”:

The study also showed that students exposed to sarcasm performed better on problems that required more “cognitive complexity,” or the ability to look at issues from more than one angle, than those that didn’t hear such comments. The researchers suggest that while the underlying anger helped to focus the students, the inherent humor of sarcasm helped to offset the damage that anger can do.

So maybe it was just the tiniest bit constructive after all.

First, the context

A few days ago, Brian Sierakowski published an exit interview with Baltimore entrepreneur Paul Capestany. Paul (who, alas, I don’t personally know) is a smart fellow who recently decided to leave Baltimore to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams in San Francisco.

I’m grateful to both Paul and Brian for taking the time to do that interview. I think all of us in Baltimore periodically struggle with the question of why we’re here. It’s nothing but healthy for the growing Baltimore tech community to understand why some people feel the world beyond offers greener pastures.

This morning, as part of the conversation, my friend Mike Subelsky published his own take on the question: “Should we all move to Silicon Valley?”

Now, why I’m adding my two cents

After I read Mike’s post, I checked out the comments down at the bottom.

Down there in the comments, a person by the name of “bhalliburton” shared the following thoughts:

1) There is a difference between a small business start-up and a scalable start-up. (Stephen Blank terminology)

A scalable start-up has to target markets > $500m in size because it intends to become a >$100m revenue company in a few years time.

You can start a small business start-up (a business that feeds your family by serving a known customer with a known product) anywhere – it probably pays to start it in a geography where your customers are.

A scalable start-up needs to be in a place that maximizes your access to highly specialized talent and a place that makes you appealing in an acquisition.

I think the ecosystem for scalable start-ups in SF is simply extraordinary [...]

I don’t actually disagree with the core point of this comment. I think it’s framed in a rather patronizing way, but I don’t disagree that this specific kind of “scalable” start-up is probably going to have some kind of advantage in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the context in which this advice is framed, patronizing as it is, is not unusual. I’m learning to ignore this attitude, because we clearly share different motivations, and that’s okay.

But.

After some solid arguments on the advantages of San Francisco for “scalable” start-ups, we arrive at the conclusion, which is simply this:

SF is the best place to start a tech company.

And on this point, I’m motivated to reply. ‘Cause that just ain’t true.

“If you want to be an actor, ya gotta be in Hollywood!”

Mike shared with me an early draft of his post, and it included this quote, which he had heard from another Baltimorean who chose to move west to Silicon Valley.

This quote, to me, pretty well summarizes the attitude that “the best place to start a tech company” is in San Francisco.

This quote also, as it turns out, epitomizes everything I’m trying to avoid in my artistic and entrepreneurial life.

The implication of that quote is there is only one kind of actor: Hollywood megastars, or people who aspire to be Hollywood megastars. It implicitly dismisses all other actors. They don’t even qualify for the name.

There will be (a few) Hollywood stars, and if you want to spend your life pursuing your 0.0000001% chance of being one, you’re probably ever-so-slightly statistically better off moving to Hollywood.

That’s not invalid, but jeebus, how stifling! Are we seriously idolizing a vision in which all actors live in Hollywood? That’s the path to success?

I think San Francisco is probably the Hollywood of certain kinds of tech companies.

And I think Figure 53 is almost certainly better off in Baltimore.

Moreover, I think it’s irresponsible to argue that one city in all the world is the place you should move to start a tech company.

bhalliburton implies that my vision of a tech company is cute but not worth the time of serious entrepreneurs.

I get really tired of that. 37signals gets really tired of that. Other awesome tech companies who are changing the world and making good money doing it, I would venture to guess, get really tired of that too.

If startup culture means fostering crowds of high-aiming, high-risk tech companies that absorb lots of money but rarely succeed, making Baltimore a hub for startup companies isn’t that interesting to me. The drive to cash out leaves me cold. I don’t know exactly what a Baltimore-specific tech culture could look like, but I’m totally okay if it doesn’t look like that.

I’m also totally okay if that’s the culture that some people love. That’s cool! I think those kinds of companies are important!

But let’s not needlessly count out a diversity of creative activity. There’s a lot of ways to succeed. Let’s celebrate, and pursue, all of them.

For thou didst form my inward parts,
thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.
my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought…
Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance;
in thy book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

With thanks to Sarah Tipson.

Those little jerks are tireless.

Inside the package was a jewel case and a note that began:

Hi Chris!

Since your reminiscence was in Brian’s memorial, representing the younger generation, I thought I’d send you a copy of the service. You probably will recognize most of the musicians, since your dad performed with them.

The “Brian” is Brian Howard, who died one year ago on Tuesday. The reminiscence is something I wrote here the day after, which Brian’s wife Lynne asked if they could read at his memorial service.

In the jewel case are two DVDs which hold a recording of Brian’s service. I’ll be honest: I haven’t watched them. (Or listened? I’m not even sure if it’s an audio or video recording.) I just don’t think I’m quite ready to do it yet. Somehow, at 31 years old, I’ve never been to a funeral. Not once, not yet. Not because I’ve avoided them, but because I’ve somehow known only a very few people who have died, and those few have had funerals far away at times when I was unable to travel.

And so, as special as it is to have been part of Brian’s service, I can’t yet bring myself to see it. Instead, I’m going to leave it on my desk. One of these days I’ll pop it in and listen to the music they played to honor him. Just not yet.

But Brian is on my mind today, and ever since the day this package arrived in the mail. Ever since NPR included him in a list of remarkable lives lost in 2010. Right now, I’m finding the memory of Brian’s calm, warm spirit extremely…timely. I mean, I’m a firmly non-superstitious person, but that doesn’t mean I can’t reflect on synchronicity.

For me, the synchronicity of this moment is in the bubbling excitement I feel as the little company I founded begins to find its legs. Sometimes I get so excited I have trouble sleeping. I wake up euphoric at the friends I get to work with and the stuff we get to make. And then, behind the euphoria, a little kernel of fear, telling me that these things go in cycles, that there will be a slog, that something hard is coming, that there will be endless surprises, and not all of them will be good.

And then, behind that, there’s Brian.

Calm, self-deprecating Brian. Goofy Brian. Brian, who was one of the original four people who who made a computer that changed the world, and you’d never, ever know it until someone else told you.

Brian, who did not seem to consider his work at Apple anything more (or less) special than…. well, than any other honest, hard-working job.

For the last couple of months, a quiet, kind Brian has been hovering in the back of my consciousness. He quietly listens, as he did in real life when I was a kid, to my slightly manic scheming and my eager, excited ideas. He doesn’t say much back. He’s just calm, and he listens, and maybe he even smiles a bit at the corners of his eyes.

A year before he died, Brian wrote:

Personally, I am not worried about my life ending. Really, it will be the people around me that have to deal with it, going on living with a me-shaped hole in their lives. For me it will just be over, so no concern of mine. …But I’ve had a good life, long enough, in a beautiful place, doing interesting things, surrounded by great friends and family. For me, that’s enough. And it’s a lot.”

— Ruminations on chemo, etc., February 9, 2009

After the last time we saw Brian and his wife Lynne, on a visit to Tennessee, Lynne sent me a picture she had snapped on the trail where we hiked.

I remember this moment very clearly. I was sitting on the trail alone, watching the waterfall. Brian came over and sat next to me. We sat there in complete silence, and stared at the water. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him over my shoulder. I wanted to say something, but there really wasn’t anything to say. So we just sat. I am grateful to have this picture, but I don’t need it. I was paying attention very very hard during those few minutes, so I remember them pretty well.

I’m excited about this year. I’m hopeful, and I’m stoked. But if ever I get a little too excited, too far down that road of what might happen, what could happen, what I hope will happen, what I fear will happen… there are waterfalls all around me, and it’s awfully good to just sit and hear the water for a while.

For the record, the project went like this: collect a bunch of noise-makers. (Xylophone, brick, dry leaves, old car horn, and, of course, cow bell.) Have my parents make noise. Walk away from the noise until I can’t hear it anymore. Measure the distance at which the sound becomes inaudible. Do this twice for each sound source: once facing toward the sound, once facing away. Graph the results. Discovery: ears are not omnidirectional.

I always thought that was a pretty damn great science fair project for 2nd grade. Apparently the judges did too, because someone overheard them saying my parents had done it for me and therefore docked me points.

Not that I’m still bitter.

Definitely not still bitter.

Goals: Simplify! Streamline!

New tool: Adobe Illustrator. Haven’t used it before today, and it seemed like making a monogram would be a fun way to learn. Here’s the result:

Hey! It’s my first monogram! And my first time using Illustrator! It could have been a lot worse!

Now, before I sign off and go make dinner, an admission:

My only rule for this site is that the design can only be something I’ve made myself…. but I broke that rule a tiny bit today. If you mouse over the little monogram in the header, you’ll see a question mark from the Symbolicons set designed by my friend Jory. Thanks Jory!

By the way, those Symbolicons are on sale right now. You should probably go buy them.